Unable to add film

[satilla751]

We use our Kron for recording local high school football. I got in from a game earlier this morning and did the editing. I selected Add Film and went to bed, woke up in a couple of hours and the Add Film progress bar and the Kron were locked up. I restarted, removed all of the transitions and tried it again. Same thing happened with the Add Film progress bar but the Kron did not lock up. I restarted and made one scene of the entire project with no transitions. Now the same thing happened. The progress bar shows progress to about 15% is all. I am recording straight to a DVD recorder as the game is to air later this morning. The game is playing just fine.

I used the Kron Wednesday on another 74 minute project and everything worked well.

Do you all have any suggestions as to what our problem is?

Thanks.

[satilla751]

While setting here typing my first post the playback stopped. I have one bad scene that I have redone. That may be the reason for the film stopping. I went to every place in the storyboard with this scene and it stops and returns to the Storyboard/Scene menu. I have no idea what is wrong with this scene, but will redo it when I have more time. It has worked well for the last 2 weeks.

[TimKennelly]

You could probably"fix" the one corrupt Scene by using the NOP with Audio process on it alone through the Special menu NOP, rather than using IP/NOP on the entire Storyboard.

NOP with Audio Process (step by step):

Find your longest original, single scene in the Scene bin and highlight it.

This is normally an original raw input scene, but not a section that includes the direct problem footage Scene.
You want to use a segment of source video that did NOT give you any problems.
IE: A segment you know does NOT have corrupted frames in it.

Go to Special, use Scene->Sample, Ok.

Switch to the Audio Mix menu, highlight (left click on) an empty audio channel, Add, Scroll to the newly created longest audio sample, Ok.

Slide the large Volume slider all the way to the left to Mute this track.

If this audio sample is not as large as your entire Storyboard use Add again, Mute that segment as well.

Do this until you have filled this track the entire length of your Storyboard with all these segments Muted.

Switch back to the main Edit Menu, Go to the beginning of the Storyboard.

Got to IP Effects menu, scroll to NOP, Add.
Left click on the duration window, Range, Ok, Make sure the Band button is in Trim, not Position mode, then choose OUT, scroll the bar all the way to the right(this should now be the duration of the entire Storyboard), left click to come out of the duration bar, Ok.

Left click the Scene button, Range, OUT, scroll the bar all the way to the right(this should now be the duration of the entire Storyboard), left click to come out of the duration bar, Ok.

It will now render the entire Storyboard and create a Scene of it.

This will take some time,but consideraby less than the out to tape and back in method and has been found to be more effective.

When the Scene in created switch to an empty Project.

Go into the Edit menu, Special, Clipboard, Scene from project->Clipboard, select the Project that the newly created Scene is in.

This should bring up that Project's Scene bin at the newly created Scene, select Ok, Clipboard->Project, scroll to the newly created Scene (if you have other stuff in Clipboard), Ok, Ok.

Now you should have the newly created Scene in the Project.

If you want Chapters go into Split and split the Scene at the desired Chapter points, selecting Use for all.

Then put all those Chapter Scenes onto the Storyboard in order.

Switch to Arabesk, Film and remove the problem Project.

Then Add Film selecting the Project where you have the newly created and Split Scene/Storyboard and proceed as normal.

This is far harder to describe than do.

Let me know how it goes.
PS - I believe Control Image could be successfully substituted for NOP if you had a Storyboard that you wanted to tweak in it's entirety, aka: change the brightness, contrast and/or saturation of the entire project.
This alternative does not take any longer (or less) than using NOP, but just remember it will effect the entire Storyboard and not just a few Scenes if done in this procedure to fix a failing Storyboard.
You could alternatively use this procedure on a specific Scene if you know which Scene is causing your problems

[satilla751]

Tim,

Thank you for your reply. Before you had sent it in, I was trying to figure out what had happened. Last week I deleted all of the photos out of our photo bin as well as the collages we had in there. Evidently by deleting these that caused the problem I mentioned. This scene would play and then return back to the storyboard interface. I deleted it and made a new collage and it worked. Added film as it should. Maybe there is something else wrong, but it works now. I am printing your suggestions for future use. Again, thanks for sharing.

[ShadowVision]

I've had this come up too, as folks on the board well know. Tim's suggestions are right on. A couple other things I noticed about this problem: (1) you can tell that a scene may be corrupt if there is a yellowish green screen in the playback from the storyborad; and (2) running your project to miniDV tape can help identify the problem scene.

The first marker of corrupt scenes is very subtle. It is a momentary flash that I'm locked into noticing. When this happens, I rebuild that part of the storyboard until I no longer see it. This way, my feature length documentary did not have any corrupt scenes upon authoring (and adding film). If there were corrupt scenes they did not affect add film (it is possible. in my experience, that a corrupt scene may not prevent "add film" but will be noticeable upon playing the DVD).

I'm not sure how the corruption happens but I suspect it has to do with adding and removing scenes too quickly back and forth between the storyboard and the scene bin. I work very quickly at times and can create the yellowish green screen if I move too quickly. Also, it is possible that the problem happens during record (or capture, like a drop out or something). I'd like to know about the origins of this so that prophylactic measures can be taken.

Keep in mind that my feature has hundreds of inserts and animations as well as several audio tracks. It represents two years of material run into my AVIO DVD over that time. I cannot complain about the stability the system exhibited during that period. This is why I've upgraded to the S4000 Pro. I kept my AVIO as well. And I've got a MacBook Pro too, but my professional work will be done in a macrosystem.

[jimmeeker]

Hello everyone,

I have found that an audio track that is too hot will cause the "Add Film" process to stop. Any time you see any red line in your audio record line above the storyboard, it will not only distort the sound at that point because it is overloading, but it will usually stop the encoding of the signal to MPG-2 in the "Add Film" process.

Yes, a corrupted video frame or two can be the reason "Add Film" stops, but audio that is too high in volume will also cause the process to stop. So don't forget to check your audio record line to see if there are parts that should be blue but a still RED and need to have the volume lowered to turn that spot back to blue.

Remember also that the 6 audio tracks are accumulative in nature. When you have a song recorded and adjusted the way you like it, if you add something to the other tracks like narration, sound effects or the original camera natural sound, these additional track levels are added together.....and that new total must be low enough not to cause the record line to turn red. It's the accumulated value of all the tracks that count.

So if you have created a "SCENE" of several tracks and these contain material that is too "hot" using the NOP or silent audio track solution will not help you. You must have the levels correct in total before you create a "SCENE" of your work. Then the NOP and silent audio process will help you heal up a glitch or corrupted frame or two, but an overrecorded audio track will defeat all your efforts.

[TimKennelly]

Good point Jim,

I always go through my audio menu to make sure there is no overmodulated segments (red areas) and tweak any that arise from additional audio tracks prior to going any further and so thought that goes without saying, but I am sure there are many who were not even aware of the color coding for this so yes, always eliminate Red segments by lowering the various soundtracks until you get rid of the red.

[satilla751]

This questionable scene was scan of a political candidate's card. I scanned it close to 720 x 480 at 300 dpi and through Photo Studio 2 I imported it and made a scene of 15 seconds. I then made a collage and reduced the size so it would look good on the screen. One day last week I went through and deleted all of our scanned images and the created collages to make more room on the HD. Could this have caused the problem we had? I have used the same scene successfully the prior 2 weeks.

I find most of our problems are operator error on my part.

[TimKennelly]

I also in the past have deleted Scenes in the Scene bin and then run into corruption issues of the same Scene on the Storyboard later.

I do think there is an increased relationship here, but the fact that you can then not recover the Scene through Search as that will just give you a corrupt copy of it is reason enough not to delete Scenes in the Scene bin that are in the Storyboard.

Beyond that you don't even gain any drive space if it's still on the Storyboard as the Scene bin in that case acts more like a marker or shortcut.