Forced Dissolve, Clips Between Frames

[Rex Olson]

Editing on the timeline with m2t & avi files, during the normal course of editing: trimming and sliding clips around, some clips will seem to land with the in or out point between frames. When I butt another clip up to it, it will force a dissolve. To resolve it I must zoom all the way in and adjust the in or out point so it lands on a frame.

This is happening to me on two different systems and is an intermittant yet persistant problem.

Is this happening to anyone else out there?

[ScorpioProd]

Yeah, I know your pain...

I've seen the same kind of thing with frame boundaries not always lining up. :(

"An intermittant yet persistant problem" is how I would describe it as well. Of course, I have the problem with just AVIs. It can make it hard to keep things synced.

[cholo]

I see it too. It shouldn't be possible to have a clip's in point not land at an exact frame.

[John Perkins]

If you can tell us how to make it happen, well be glad to fix it, however, thus far we can not cause it ourselves.

You will have to be very specific, I've spent much time looking for this and never produced it in SpeedEDIT.

[Rex Olson]

I tried, maybe someone else can give it a go.

[ScorpioProd]

I tried, I can't tell you how to reproduce it, either.

All I can suggest is having someone do REAL editing with SE for a while at Newtek, and it WILL happen.

If it happened with mixed framerates, at least I could understand it, but when it's happening with everything at the same framerate, I can't understand it.

And I do know that Bob Tasa also encountered this when porting MCE to SE, so, he FORCED MCE to only use frame boundaries for markers and cuts.

[cholo]

I know how to reproduce it...

Place a clip on the timeline, anywhere. Let's say it covers from 0:10:00 to 0:20:00. Now move your playback head to 0:13:10, but don't place it exactly at that frame, place it between that frame and the next (the playhead can rest between frames). Now press i to set an in point at that frame for your clip. Zoom out and move your playhead with your mouse to the end of the clip, it should just snap there. Now zoom in and you'll see a little extra bit of the clip beyond the last frame. Place another clip at the playhead position and a 1 sec fade will suddenly appear bewteen both clips, extending the previous clip's ou point by one second. Voila!

This bug poses many problems. For example, with a 24p timeline and 24F hdv material from my camera, if I set the in point at the right place, SpeedEDIT will double read the frames and it'll playback with a strobe effect. With a 60p or interlaced project, it'll just go nuts and skip frames here and there to compensate for the inadequacies in matching clip frames/fields to timeline frames/fields. I had reported the bug and even sent some clips showing this erratic behavior, because out of synch clips in the timeline render out this way as well. I've had to rerender entire projects, because a clip in the middle of the sequence was strobing or jumpy and I never noticed it upon playback or noticed it but dismissed it (blaming my video card of course).

Anyway, hope this helps.

[Adam_LightPlay]

I get it a lot when I scrub to a location, and then do a cut. (Since you can scrub between frames). The work around is to try to remember to use the frame advance or back keys before hitting C or I.
Maybe they could give us a preference choice that the scrub bar always snaps to the nearest frame.

[dee]

i run into this when i was setting some markers in realtime. very annoying.

The work around is to try to remember to use the frame advance or back keys before hitting C or I.

yeah, this makes it then worlds slowest video editor.

Maybe they could give us a preference choice that the scrub bar always snaps to the nearest frame.

i agree!

[cholo]

So, John, any success?

[caddaraman]

I too am having this problem and it is driving me nuts. I can place a number of image sequences in story board with some still images mixed in for pauses and my in and out points seem to get messed up. It causes black frame flashes when I try to do a real time preview of my work as well as rendered out.

I even tried rendering these image sequences to an avi thinking that would help but I still have an occasional black flash between the end of an avi and a still image.

I thought maybe I did not have the timeline ripple set correctly. Can you even change the setting in storyboard? I thought the storyboard was a simple play this clip then the next then a still with duration whatever and so on.

This does not occur in the first third of a 10 minute segment but seems to reveal itself more about halfway through.

[Jean]

Hi.
Can't believe this problem hasn't been worked out yet.

I talked about it int 2003 !!! I guess newtek is aware of it since : http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10517

the same thing hapens in TED since the beggining of VT.

I was confident that when programming speededit they would change this part of the code and not just "copy-paste" ted's core on this matter.

John, I will send you a 5 minutes speededit project where I got this problem almost 10 times.

speededit must be "exact-frame-only" the time bar and in-out of clips, MUST fall to a frame, and never "somewhere" in between.

Look at all others nle (premiere pro for exemple), when the timeline is zoomed in to the max (frame by frame view) if you scrub then, the time bar "jumps" from one frame to the next, and it does that even if the displayed timeline is zoomed out, that's just how nle's work. that's why they don't have this problem, the "in between frame" just doesn't exist !

[Bobt]

John I can tell you it happens ALL the time.
There is all kinds of code I have to garuntee that time is on
a frame boundry in SE. It just happened to me last night when I was
testing LWConnect. I thought it was an out and out bug but no it was
the timeline out of frame alignment.
I had clips in the front of the timeline and I placed a stack
of clips behind the clips in the front. I cut em to match and and made
a stack 5 high after 2 short clips in the front of the timeline.

It looked like I butted up the clips to the ones at the start of the timeline but
the first 2 clips overlapped by some milliseconds throwing the stack off.

I could not figure it out until I did the debug.
It seems that cutting and trimming and dragging into place seem to make it happen.

Anyway in code I have seen it happen enough to write my own patch for it.

My suggestions it test clips in the center of the timeline after a cut trim and placement. Drag them to butt up to the previous clip. Also try trimming the outpoints as well. Work in the center of the timeline with a few clips in front.
Best advice I can give you to see if you can make it happen.

Bob

[Lightwolf]

Just chiming in to say that I've had this problem a few times as well. Extremely annoying to say the least.

Cheers,
Mike

[cholo]

speededit must be "exact-frame-only" the time bar and in-out of clips, MUST fall to a frame, and never "somewhere" in between.

Except for audio clips. You need more than 1/30th of a second precision for proper audio editing. This is an area where speededit shines over it's competition.

[ScorpioProd]

And how do you get better than one frame of accuracy in audio editing in SpeedEDIT? It's not like we're doing analog scrub sound, the sound is in 1/30 pulses when you scrub. As for the competition, I recall Adobe's suite can get down to sample level for audio editing. Remember, audio isn't a traditional Newtek NLE strong point.

I think that the real problem is, as John has stated before, SpeedEDIT is time based and NOT frame based. I guess in mixed framerates this can be a good thing (as long as you're not worried about exact 2:3 pulldown cadence), but when working in a single frame rate I really see NO advantage, and it can lead to the problems we're hitting.

I wish we were frame based. Seeing my scrub bar stuck between frames gives me no joy.

[cholo]

Ah! Suppose you're editing a song to make it fit inside a 30 second spot. You try to match the beat for both sections, but the exact cut falls in between frames. By moving your playhead the amount necessary and setting the in point where you need it, you can make the waveforms align very precisely ;)

[ScorpioProd]

Are you sure that you can set the in point/out point between frame boundaries?

[KiloWatkins]

Can anyone see if they have a clip at XX:00.01 creating this issue? I have had it as well, but then I was going to use a fade anyways. I have not ran into black frames though.

[Lightwolf]

By moving your playhead the amount necessary and setting the in point where you need it, you can make the waveforms align very precisely ;)
Now if I could trim/slip/slide audio clips using the keyboard on a subframe level... then we can talk ;)
(Incidentally, does anybody know shortcuts to slip/slide move clips using the keyboard only? using the mouse for accurate editing either requires massive zooms resulting in the erratic behaviour described here - or is just not accurate enough and a lengthy, slow process).

Cheers,
Mike

[ScorpioProd]

Well, nudging of clips is done by selecting the clip, holding down ALT, and using the left or right arrow keys. This will let you move a clip one frame at a time.

[Lightwolf]

Well, nudging of clips is done by selecting the clip, holding down ALT, and using the left or right arrow keys. This will let you move a clip one frame at a time.
Any similar option for slip and slide (well, slide only I suppose)?

Cheers,
Mike

[KiloWatkins]

Well, nudging of clips is done by selecting the clip, holding down ALT, and using the left or right arrow keys. This will let you move a clip one frame at a time.
__________________
Eugene
Scorpio Productions

Great trick when zoomed in to locate clip or project markers as well.

TIA Eugene

[Rex Olson]

Now I see that it does only seem to happen when cutting (c) the clip as scrub bar is between frames.

I think if it worked the same as adjusting in and out points:
Drag = frame mode, Ctl-Drag = non-frame mode,
Scrub = frame mode, Ctl-Scrub = non-frame mode.

That would work for me!

At least I know the work around now, thanks Adam. :thumbsup:

[cholo]

Are you sure that you can set the in point/out point between frame boundaries?

Try it.

[ScorpioProd]

Try it.
I did. It didn't work for me, in terms of attempting to set an in or out point between frame boundaries.

BUT, it did work if I tried to cut the clip there.

Of course, the interesting part was, it then treated the cut point as a frame boundary and therefore moved all the other frame boundaries on that clip to compensate. At least that's what it looked like it did.

Call me crazy, but I like my frames staying "real" frames.

[caddaraman]

Is there a work around for this problem? I experience it after simply adding some content to the storyboard, ie: avi clip or image sequence then a still image. I am about to render out a completed project and I would like for my in and out points to begin and end on a frame. As of right now, I see black blank frames randomly between the end of a clip and a still image.

I really like speededit however this is very annoying to say the least.

Why doesn't the maximize video tool in toolshed fix this? I think it worked one time but the problem seemed to ripple on down to the next combination of frames.

I posted the other day about this http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65446

and the other day
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65584

After discovering that this is not an isolated case, I am wondering what the workaround would be.

My project settings adhere to 30fps. Do I have to constrain a clip to multiples of 30? ie: 300 or 600 or 420 ect. And should I constrain a still duration to an even second?

Currently just as an example of what I have, ie: my first clip is 441 frames so at 30fps this would be 14.7 seconds. Is this my problem?

Should I round up or down to say 420 or 450 frames for that clip so at 30 fps would = 14 sec and 15 sec respectivly?

The ability to set speededits units to FRAMES would be a nice fix. Is this possible?

This presentation will be viewed on the 28th wednesday, so I am running out of time, and I really would like some kind of workaround advice.

Thanks in advance

[Jean]

Hi

Cholo,
this video editing problem can't be considered an audio editing feature.
this is more important to be able to edit correctly, on a frame basis

than, some times, for some people, in some cases, needing to cut a music

to a 10 th of a frame.

the best way to content both worlds would be for newtek to correct this

huge problem, and after, create an option to switch from "frame

based editing" to "time based editing".

without touching to speededit's core, a patch that makes the timebar and clip boundaries realign to the closest exact frame, would suffice... while finding the time to really correct it in future versions.

(Bobt you said you wrote your own patch for it ? have I understood you correctly ?)

[cholo]

Jean

I know it's not supposed to be a feature, I'm just looking at it from the glass half full POV :) Ideally it should work the way Lightwolf described and only for audio clips (not even mixed audio/video clips).

[John Perkins]

Ok, finally reproduced it. The cut (C key) is not obeying the rules and snapping to frames.

We fixed many of these before shipping SE, but this one slipped through. Until we release a fix, you may want to use the arrow keys to snap to frames prior to using the C (cut) shortcut.

If you find any others that are not snapping correctly, please let me know.

Thanks!

[Keith Nealy]

Nice work, guys.

These are the important things we need fixed, like the render issue, as well.

Bells and whistles are one thing... but we need the basics to work flawlessly if we are to edit professionally and at least compete on the level that speedEDIT is the "fastest editor on the planet".

I wish Andrew and the crew luck as I'm sure they have their hands full now with NAB approaching.

aloha,

Keith