Sony Movie Studio 13 - Black Preview Screen and Rendered Video

[kapparomeo]

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry to register just for tech support, but I am honestly at my wits' end and have no idea what to do next.

This appears to be a common problem with multiple versions of Vegas and Movie Studio judging by internet searches and it's been brought up on this forum in old threads before, but unfortunately the internet is thin on actual solutions, and I'm desperate for your help.

I am using a legal copy of Movie Studio 13 Platinum (Build 943).
My OS is 64-bit Windows 7.
My graphics card (as shown under the display adapters tab in the Device Manager) is an Intel(R)HD Graphics 4000.

When editing a project on Movie Studio 13, clips will play in the preview screen only as blank, black video. I can still hear audio but everything visual from the video clip is only soldi black, and occasionally green (viewing a frame of an affected clip in the pan & crop window will appear red). This also happens whenever I render the project - whatever appeared black in the preview will also appear black in the final rendered video. This also appears to happen at random - an inserted clip may play normally at first, but then after a time only start playing black with no obvious trigger as to the change. Sometimes a clip may appear normal but it drops frames intermittently, so that it flickers black. These black sections are also apparent on the editing track itself, not just on playback - if I step through the tracks frame-by-frame the black sections will also appear there. Sometimes thumbnails of the clips appear on the editing track, at other times they are

Please see below for links to screenshots illustrating the problem. The last link is a video showing the flicker in action as a clip starts showing black partway through.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_blackpreviews.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_blackpreviews2.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_blackpreviews3.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_blackpreviews4.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_blackpreviews5.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_blackpreviews6.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_blackpreviews7.avi


While the examples shown are all iPad .MOV files, it's something that I've observed with other video formats as well, including .AVI files.

I have tried unchecking "close media files when not the active application" in Preferences.
I have tried enabling and disabling GPU Acceleration in Preferences.
I have tried restarting the computer.
I have tried shutting off antivirus.
I have tried Disabling Resample for the project's clips in Switches.
I have tried uninstalling, reinstalling, and updating Quicktime.
The video track is not Solo'd or Muted.
Sony's own email tech support is unresponsive and I can't find anything in their Knowledgebase which addresses this problem.

I do not believe this to be a memory issue because the Resource Monitor indicates that I have 2Gb of available memory left while Movie Studio is open, although the majority of it is Standby memory. At least, I hope it's not a memory issue, as I work from a laptop with no room to upgrade...

This is something that is killing my video editing and has caused a great deal of waste and frustration... any assistance would have my great gratitude.

[poisondeathray]

Where your IPAD files VFR (variable frame rate) ? - that's a common cause for these problems . Use mediainfo view=>text

What kind of AVI files were affected? again use mediainfo

It's a fairly common issue with quicktime on windows, but the fact that you experience this with other formats including AVI is disconcerting, because normally that would be the "fix" - converting the videos to another more stable I-frame editing format in CFR

[kapparomeo]

Thanks for your response poisondeathray

I tried out the MediaInfo program you linked and here are the results for two separate clips in the same project:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_mediainfo.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55788038/vegas13_mediainfo2.png

Unfortunately any .AVIs where I've observed this effect were deleted a while ago so I can't give any data there.

I'd really not rather have to convert the files if at all possible, because I'd then have to start the project all over again from scratch and lose a lot of work. What makes this error peculiar is that it's not immediate, it only seems to kick in after time - I was editing these files without problems for several hours and it was only after time had passed that frames started being dropped and clips not playing right.

[poisondeathray]

The last 2 Dropbox links are down. Just copy & paste the text view, no need for an image for medianfo

With buggy files, you sometimes have to replace them using the replace function (your edits are saved, all instances are replaced)

Your description is classic for quicktime in vegas, especially VFR ones. Quicktime can be problematic on windows for many users, not just in vegas . The usual response is to find the "right" quicktime version, but you've said you tried uninstall/reinstall, but sometimes it's an older specific QT version matched to a specific version of vegas that you require. For example, there was a QT update a few days ago - that might have broken some things if you updated to that. One one of my computers, I had to try several versions before vegas was "happy" with it (same black screen issue) . I went from something like 7.74, 7.7, 7.45, 7.6.5 to 7.6 - and I think it was 7.6 that finally "worked" . I hate updating things. You know the saying "If it a'int broke...."

But the other possibility is hardware issues like memory corruption, psu issues etc... so run some hardware tests and stability tests. e.g. memtest 86+, prime95, occt etc...

[kapparomeo]

Are these any better?

======================

General
Complete name : C:\xxxxxxxxxxxx\IMG_4395.MOV
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : QuickTime
Codec ID : qt
File size : 29.2 MiB
Duration : 13s 830ms
Overall bit rate : 17.7 Mbps
Recorded date : 2015-07-04T10:40:19+0200
Encoded date : UTC 2015-07-04 08:40:19
Tagged date : UTC 2015-07-04 08:40:31
Writing application : 7.1.2
Writing library : Apple QuickTime
©xyz : +46.0260+007.7514+664.468/
Model : iPad mini
Make : Apple
com.apple.quicktime.creationdate : 2015-07-04T10:40:19+0200
com.apple.quicktime.model : iPad mini
com.apple.quicktime.software : 7.1.2
com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709 : +46.0260+007.7514+664.468/
com.apple.quicktime.make : Apple

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=30
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 13s 830ms
Source duration : 13s 843ms
Bit rate : 17.6 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Minimum frame rate : 28.571 fps
Maximum frame rate : 30.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.284
Stream size : 29.1 MiB (100%)
Source stream size : 29.1 MiB (100%)
Title : Core Media Video
Encoded date : UTC 2015-07-04 08:40:19
Tagged date : UTC 2015-07-04 08:40:31
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 13s 828ms
Source duration : 13s 862ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 64.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Channel positions : Front: C
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 105 KiB (0%)
Source stream size : 105 KiB (0%)
Title : Core Media Audio
Encoded date : UTC 2015-07-04 08:40:19
Tagged date : UTC 2015-07-04 08:40:31

==============================================

General
Complete name : C:\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\IMG_4460.MOV
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : QuickTime
Codec ID : qt
File size : 52.8 MiB
Duration : 26s 768ms
Overall bit rate : 16.5 Mbps
Recorded date : 2015-07-04T11:41:05+0200
Encoded date : UTC 2015-07-04 09:41:05
Tagged date : UTC 2015-07-04 09:41:17
Writing application : 7.1.2
Writing library : Apple QuickTime
©xyz : +46.0233+007.7478+1608.757/
Model : iPad mini
Make : Apple
com.apple.quicktime.creationdate : 2015-07-04T11:41:05+0200
com.apple.quicktime.model : iPad mini
com.apple.quicktime.software : 7.1.2
com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709 : +46.0233+007.7478+1608.757/
com.apple.quicktime.make : Apple

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=30
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 26s 768ms
Source duration : 26s 790ms
Bit rate : 16.5 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Minimum frame rate : 28.571 fps
Maximum frame rate : 30.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.265
Stream size : 52.5 MiB (99%)
Source stream size : 52.6 MiB (100%)
Title : Core Media Video
Encoded date : UTC 2015-07-04 09:41:05
Tagged date : UTC 2015-07-04 09:41:17
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 26s 767ms
Source duration : 26s 796ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 64.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Channel positions : Front: C
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 205 KiB (0%)
Source stream size : 205 KiB (0%)
Title : Core Media Audio
Encoded date : UTC 2015-07-04 09:41:05
Tagged date : UTC 2015-07-04 09:41:17

[budwzr]

Try using an older copy of Quicktime.