Why do I get black/blank spots in my movie?

JohnKlee wrote on 6/27/2010, 3:46 AM

Sometimes I get blank (black) screens in my movie when it should be playing the video. I get the audio portion, but not the video. It seems there's no rhyme or reason for these intermittent blank spots. Sometimes they'll be blank, sometimes they won't. Any idea what's causing this problem, and how to fix it?

Comments

john-auvil wrote on 6/28/2010, 7:01 AM

Dropped frames

How was the video captured?

Usually this happens during the capture process from analog capture devices, and it can be the cause of resources and drivers that are used. I had this when I was capturing on VHS recordings and isolated it to the capture device I was using at the time, I received a new driver for it, and things were smooth after that.

I have also had dropped frames from downloads as well, I am not sure what causes that other than possible connection and I end up having to manually do cut scenes to cut out that black flash as I call it. It is a pain, but since the drop is usually no more than 2 frames from what I note at a time, it doesn't really do anything negative to the video.

It is just a lot of work if you have several in a project and requires you to zoom in and out ungroup the video and audio so you can cut out the black out and move the pieces back together.

JohnKlee wrote on 7/3/2010, 3:15 PM

John Auvil,
The problem is not that there are a few black frames mixed in with good frames. All the frames show up normally, even when I drill down to the frame- by-frame view. The movie sometimes will show the normal frames with imagery and other times will just be black. Is there some reason for the apparent randomness of the problem?

john-auvil wrote on 7/5/2010, 8:13 AM

Sounds more like the video card/graphics card is strained to produce the image or the codec’s for this particular video is not 100% native and therefore is causing some instability. It could also be resources, make sure that the system is not running an excessive amount of start-up programs

I would see if there are any driver updates for the graphics card, as-well-as any updates for the program.

What format is the video in question?

JohnKlee wrote on 7/5/2010, 11:12 AM

The video is a .MVP -- is that what you mean by the format? I'm working on a new computer (5 months old). Also, sometimes after I save a movie, some segments will be missing the next time I open up the movie. Usually the audio portion remains, but the video portion is gone. This is even after I lock all the tracks before saving.
How do I find out what graphics card I'm using? (in order to run an update)

JohnKlee wrote on 7/5/2010, 5:59 PM

Would it help to click on "Update Codecs" in the Help section? It says "Update MPEG-2 codecs." Would this help or just compound the problem? I am running MEP 15 and some of the comments on the forum say that version 15 has some serious problems.

JohnKlee wrote on 7/18/2010, 12:39 PM

THE SOLUTION: To answer my own question...the way I solved this problem of black spots occurring randomly was to lock all the tracks, save the movie project, exit completely out of the Movie Edit Pro program, then re-open the movie, and immediately burn the movie to a DVD. When the dialogue box came up occasionally, asking to rewrite the chapter headings, etc....I left both of those boxes unchecked, then clicked on "Encode All." Using this procedure, I have not re-encountered the black spot problem thus far.