Puzzling intermittent missing frame

terrypin wrote on 8/13/2016, 10:21 AM

This has me baffled! At the end of a 2 minute movie, at precisely the point where a still BMP image butts up seamlessly against the end of a video clip, on playback of that part I occasionally get a single empty (black) frame displayed. Can't reproduce it consistently. Possibly happens more often on switching to another movie tab or application and then returning.

Stepping through those few frames with the right arrow key, 19 times out of 20 or more it plays correctly. But then it will suddenly show that pesky black frame. Setting a range of a couple of seconds over that join and looping repeatedly, I can't get the empty frame.

I've rendered it twice now and as luck (?) would have it both recorded the black frame. About to try a third. (EDIT: That showed the missing frame too )

In case it's relevant, the text caption is key-framed to rise vertically from off-screen. (BTW, when I d-click any title in MEP 2016, to edit it, I get a white flash in the tabs area, or two flashes if the currently selected tab is not Title. I'm wondering if that's somewhow related.)

I'll provide more info if required but meanwhile has anyone seen any behaviour like this or have any suggestions please?

High res screenshot: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP2016-EmptyFrame-1.jpg

Comments

Kami_1 wrote on 8/13/2016, 2:45 PM

I don't have an answer, but wanted to say that I've also been getting empty spaces, even without still photo being inserted. I usually don't see them but MEP informs me when I export.

johnebaker wrote on 8/14/2016, 4:45 AM

Hi Terry

Is the End1.bmp a still frame from video and was the last frame of the clip?

If it was the very last frame of the video step back a frame or two and create a new image.

If the black frame is still there then try replacing it with a jpg version of the image.

HTH

John

terrypin wrote on 8/14/2016, 3:03 PM

Hi John,

Yes, the still was from a video clip and I think the last frame (although the video was static for the last second or two).

I bridged the one frame black gap with a copy of the still image and rendered again in order to finish the short movie. But I mean to return to explore this weird behaviour further and will try a JPG to see if that gives a different result. I only chose BMP here (my usual choice is JPG) to get max quality - although I doubt if there would be any noticeable difference.

browj2 wrote on 9/5/2016, 10:29 AM

Update - See towards the end

Hi,

I had to get back from camping to check this out. In the video of the last DVD that I encoded and burned, I would occasionally see a flash on the screen at hard cuts. I noticed this when editing the project and in some cases I created very short transitions to overcome the problem, usually without success (I will have to check). I didn't check the exported file to see what happened at the time, I have now. I didn't try it in MEP, only VPX, but your problem looks similar.

The image is taken from the VOB file. I am getting a black frame in the export where there is no black frame on the timeline. In the original project, there is a background file on track 1 and the photo is on track 3 and overlays part of the background. When the overlay photo changes, a black frame is introduced in the export. There are several of these in the export.

Terry, is this the same as your problem? Has anyone else experienced this? Any solution or this a bug that may have been fixed in a recent patch, or not? I'll try encoding this again.

Update

I looked back at the source and it was rather convoluted. I had created the original with Heroglyph handwriting text overtop of the images, then exported to mxv, imported into the final video for burning. The black frames show up in the mxv. I had made transitions of the photos but it seems that the black frames may have been a problem introduced by Heroglyph.

Now it has changed. Upon opening the original project, in one case only, the Heroglyph text takes up 2/3 of the screen with a black box and the text being hand-written. Didn't happen before. The others are ok and I can see the transitions. Re-exported to mxv and now have this new result - one bad handwriting, transitions work now where there was a black frame before. Just have to fix one case of handwriting. I can only think that something was fixed in the interim.

You can ignore my questions. I'll keep checking.

Thanks

terrypin wrote on 9/5/2016, 2:06 PM

Hi John,

I won't pretend I have a full grasp of your problem, either the earlier or the later, lesser one, as your project seems a fair bit more complex than mine. But I think we can be fairly sure there's something fishy going on here!

browj2 wrote on 9/5/2016, 2:13 PM

Hi Terry,

It seems that it may have been fixed in a patch, as I don't have the same problem when I export the same project to mxv. No more black frames. However, another Heroglyph problem was introduced but only on one instance of the title, not on the others that are identical, except for the date. So the problem is likely gone.

It was in your post about the black frames that reminded me that I had a problem. The DVD's with the bad frames have now been distributed to the various family members and it seems that I am the only one who noticed the black frames.

Thanks for reading through my mess.