[...Long...]

My system setup:

Pinnacle 11.1.2, updated as of 4/12/08, Vista32 SP1, 3 GB memory, Intel dual core 2.4 GHz,  Raid 5 disk array, ATI x1950 512 MB,  Sony HDR-SR5.

I have been beating my brains trying to get the first project completed here, and the following is my bug list.  Note that I fully realize others may or may not have seen these, and Studio appears to be sensitive to specific system setups.  I do want to say that Studio has an excellent user interface, final video is high quality, and if it worked more reliably, I would be very satisfied.  I've been in engineering 25+ years now, so I can usually tell the difference between specific system problems, user error, and software bugs.

1.     Single Frame Flashbacks.  This one I have not solved yet.  These appear to be screen flickers during playback, but are actually a single frame erroneously inserted into the video from approx. 5 seconds previous to the current timeline. The audio is unaffected.  It plays correctly in preview mode.  This is intermittent, my current DVD has about 25 of these in a 40 minute project.

2.     Lockups during rendering.  Render would consistently lockup between scenes with a transition at certain places in the project.  Trimming 10 frames from the start and end of the scenes got around this bug.

3.     Saving and restoring a project does not retain the disk image type for make disk (ISO / VIDEO_TS).  It must be set every time.

4.     If I edit a scene, then continue to edit other scenes by clicking directly on the scenes (instead of closing the scene editor and opening it again), the user interface will lock up after about 5 or 6 scene clicks.

5.     One of the recommended "voodoo" methods to fix some bugs is to copy and paste the entire timeline to a new project.  When I do this:

>>> Occasionally the entire audio track will shift to the right several seconds for no apparent reason.  It can be moved back manually.

>>> When I copy and paste with a DVD menu, the DVD menu looses all its chapter links and they must be set again manually.

6.     DVD menu corruption.  The layer ordering of the chapter titles in the DVD menu gets corrupted sometimes and two of the three chapter titles are no longer viewable.  Manually editing the menu, breaking the grouping, bringing the chapter title back to top fixes this.  This happens randomly.  I have also had the entire DVD menu go totally green at one point, no images.

7.     Project video format corruption.  I had my project format set to “Use first scene” mode, which was AVCHD 1440 x 780.  I then inserted a title at the start, and the project was secretly changed to DVD SD mode.  With a title at start I cannot force project back to AVCHD format.

8.     Short scene lockup.  If I had a very short scene, and placed a transition whose transition length exceeded the short scene length, rendering would lock up when it got this scene. 

9.     Transition corruption.  During rendering all transitions were corrupted, flickering, black screen, etc.  I finally had to create a new project to get around this problem.  It didn’t happen again.

10.  Random user interface lockups.  Many instances of UI lockups at random different places.  No CPU, no disk activity.  Sometimes if I wait 30 seconds it will come back to life.  Have to kill the application otherwise.  Project recovery works well.

11.  Studio is running 167 threads??? This is not so much a bug, but I can’t believe this application uses this many threads to run.  I would say a whole lot of the random bugs / system issues are related to bad software design and thread synchronization issues.  If this is not very carefully done in design, it will cause major problems.  This applications shows all the classic signs of threading problems.

I burned about 10 bad DVD’s, and ran make movie 20+ times. I got a successful DVD, but it still has the frame flickers that I want to remove.  There is nothing “wrong” with my system.  I use it every day and have run many high end applications on it without problems.  Studio just has an unacceptable number of bugs, please fix them.

Tom 

12. 

A very useful and reasonable post. Some of these I've not seen before, and assume they are Vista specific.

Your point about threading issues is most interesting. S11 doesn't make much (any?) use of multi-core CPUs when working on SD other than load sharing, but it's AVCHD performance is reported to make much more use. Are all your reported bugs encountered when using AVCHD?

With no 7 - I don't know why a title changed the project settings. I assume you had already loaded some HD material?. The project format should be set by the first thing you put on the timeline in real time. After that the project setting should change even if you put different material before it on the timeline.

Hi Tom.

I use 10 not 11 but a couple of these look familiar:

1. Make sure that the end of a clip doesn't contain a remnant frame from a following clip. This occurs sometimes (in 10 anyway) when the movie is busted into clips using the auto function. If this is the case, just toggle between break where the flash occurs, move back one frame, cut the clip by one or two frames using the razor blade, move forward again and delete the offending clip. However, because it's 11 it could be a whole new bug needing a new approach.

8. Somewhere in these forums is a reference to the clip needing to be at least one frame longer than the transition.

I hope it helps and good luck with the rest.

Dan

Bricker, this same thing happens in 11.1 Ultimate also.

I have only used AVCHD files so far.  I started with a HD project and then I burned a DVD and it had changed to DVD SD at some point.  I didn't change it.  Sometimes it is not exactly clear why some settings changed.  Cause and effect get a little foggy.

The rendering does not handle error conditions very well.  If it encounters an error or imperfect frame, it tends to just die with little information.  You then have to use trial and error to fix it.  Because running the rendering takes a lot of time, this is a long and frustrating process.

The rendering process does saturate both CPU's on my system, and it completes pretty quickly, finishing make movie and disk burn in about 1 hour or so.  So performance is good.

My frame flickers occur somewhat randomly in the middle of scenes.  They do seem to space themselves consistently about 30 seconds or so apart.  I've had disk burns that had no flickers, but I don't know what it is related to, if anything.

Studio should maintain an official list of  known bugs, and any work arounds.  My guess is that they are worried a public bug list would make the product look bad, or be used against them by competitors.  This is a false economy because it slows down / prevents the issues from being fixed, and leaves the program less stable.  Reinventing the wheel by myself finding work arounds that are already known wastes my time.  People would be more inclined to report bugs if they saw evidence they were going to be worked on.

 

 

Studio should maintain an official list of  known bugs,

That one made me laugh. He's called Bittmann.....

 

I'll push this thread to those at engineering and lets see if we can get some answers.

I see Jeff's taken-up smoking

Glad I found this thread.  I'm also a new Pinnacle user after purchasing a Sony SR11 HD camcorder.  My editing experience is limited to AVCHD only.  The single biggest issue I have so far is the same thing the original poster mentions, single frame flashbacks, and it's driving me nuts.  I'm seeing them in almost every video I render, maybe one or two flash frames for every minute of video.  Specs are as follows:

Pinnacle 11.1.2, Vista32 w/SP1, 4gig RAM, Intel dual core E8400, nVidia 9600GT, Sony SR11.

As best as I can tell this problem isn't happening to everyone.  I've just spent the past hour browsing videos on Vimeo and there are quite a few Pinnacle/SR11 users and I'm not seeing frame flashes in their videos.  I was able to reproduce the problem on a friend's laptop with completely different specs (other than the same version of Pinnacle).

Any help would be appreciated.

I get them occasionally - if what you are referring to is usually in the middle of a transition and the Clip A momentarily shows up for a fleeting frame (or a bit more). In many of my cases it happens with a still (jpg) transitioning to a video (mts). In a few cases, the still even acts as if it has been zoomed in on.  I am rendering to standard DVD. I typically go back to the timeline at that spot, add an effect, allow to fully rerender and then remove the effect allowing to fully re-render that portion and then remake the movie. Hardly efficient.  But it works. 

Thanks for the reply, Mark.  I'm not doing anything you mentioned.  I get the flash frames with no editing whatsoever.  I drop a video clip (length of clip doesn't matter) from my SR11 into Pinnacle and simply choose to recode to mpeg2, mpeg4, WMV ... it doesn't matter.  The flash frame problem shows up on unedited clips straight from the cam regardless of what format I render to.

This sounds like a rendering bug to me.

tscharf:

Studio should maintain an official list of  known bugs, and any work arounds.  My guess is that they are worried a public bug list would make the product look bad, or be used against them by competitors.  This is a false economy because it slows down / prevents the issues from being fixed, and leaves the program less stable.  Reinventing the wheel by myself finding work arounds that are already known wastes my time.  People would be more inclined to report bugs if they saw evidence they were going to be worked on. 

There is a pretty good list of possible bugs HERE.

1.     Single Frame Flashbacks.  This one I have not solved yet.  These appear to be screen flickers during playback, but are actually a single frame erroneously inserted into the video from approx. 5 seconds previous to the current timeline. The audio is unaffected.  It plays correctly in preview mode.  This is intermittent, my current DVD has about 25 of these in a 40 minute project.

Thank you for posting that.  I upgraded from 9 to 11 Plus. I make tribute videos which run 50-100 jpegs usually using only transitions, panning and music.  I've made oh 100 using Pinnacle 9 (which was quirky but most often I could work around) I like 11 a lot except for the fact I now get these flipping flickers.  Most of them I catch during playback before rendering not always though and time is always an issue with me as I turn this videos around typically overnight.  It's a pain to now have to watch for the flickers and then change transitions or order of pictures.  Is there an easier work around.

Welcome and thanks for posting!

You get these for just slide shows? Wow! I don't think there is any particular workaround other than what you mentioned.  Sometimes re-rendering (add effect or delete effect) works. But you have to know it is there first.

Tom

 Try this:

http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/permalink/135031/121191/ShowThread.aspx#121191

Good Luck

Ian

Mark, 

Oh yes I get the flickers. Typically in a 50-100 picture video( 4-8 minutes) I get 2-4. I really don't understand it at all I never had this issue in the previous versions and to me it is a fairly large issue.

 

When I have to do the "montage" thing, I use Studio's Create Smartmovie feature. I can find, so far, exactly what I need and tweak it accordingly. Never have had a flash frame yet! (keeping fingers, legs, toes and eyes crossed!).

Tony,

 

Much thanks. I've never used that feature so I just checked it out. Wow, that should actually manage to save me even a little more time. And if it's flicker free, even better!   

I hope so for you. Mind you, I have used it in Widescreen NTSC format. Let me know how things turn out.