Video Output Screen Flashes Green With Certain Videos

20fifteen 8:11 AM - 10 October, 2010

Product: video-sl
Computer: mac
OS Version: 10.5.8
---

When playing some videos with Video SL, the entire screen will turn green for a couple tenths of a second. The files play normally when opened directly with quicktime. The files that have the green-screen issue always show the green screen in the same place (in other words, if a particular video flashes green at 16 seconds, it will always do it at 16 seconds... it doesn't vary).

Running VSL 2.1.1
Latest version of Video SL

Mac Specs:

2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics Card:
GeForce 8600M GT:

Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0407
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3212
Displays:
Color LCD:
Resolution: 1440 x 900
Depth: 32-Bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Built-In: Yes
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected

Video Encoding Settings:

Description: .h264 mp4 with settings optimized for use with Serato
File Extension: mp4
Estimated file size: 1.69 GB/hour of source
DVD type: HD DVD
Partial sync: 0.5 seconds
Frame sync rate: 2 seconds
Field dominance: Progressive
Video Encoder
Format: QT
Width: 720
Height: 480
Pixel aspect ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: 29.97
Frame Controls Automatically selected:
Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Best (Motion Compensated)
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Progressive
Codec Type: H.264
Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 50
Min. Spatial quality: 50
Temporal quality: 50
Min. temporal quality: 50
Average data rate: 2.5 (Mbps)
Maximum data rate: 3 (Mbps)
Audio Encoder
16-bit Integer (Big Endian), Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz

Michael R 11:21 PM - 11 October, 2010

Hi 20fifteen,

Can I get you to try this:

1) Ensure Scratch Live and Video-SL are closed.
2) Download and install MovieInfoBatch from here -> www.serato.com.
3) Open MovieInfoBatch and check the "Video-SL Debug Panel Enabled" option.
4) Open Scratch Live and Video-SL. In the Video-SL panel you'll see the Debug panel on the right hand side.
5) Click the yuv422 dropdown and select "one". Try playing these videos again - do you still get these green flashes?
6) If you do, click the yuv422 dropdown again and select "off" - now are you still getting the green flashes?

Please let me know how you get on.

20fifteen 11:37 PM - 11 October, 2010

I did everything you suggested but it didn't change the outcome.

Michael R 11:47 PM - 11 October, 2010

Ok, that's no good. Was there any difference at all when you changed to "one" or "off"?

Can you please confirm that you are running OS X 10.5.8.

Do you have the latest version of QuickTime installed?

Do you have Perian installed?

Thanks.

20fifteen 12:04 AM - 12 October, 2010

The only difference was that the green was slightly darker when I turned it off.

I am running 10.5.8
Perian is installed
Running QT Pro 7.6.6

Michael R 2:53 AM - 12 October, 2010

If you uninstall Perian does it make a difference? You can do this by going to System Prefernces -> Perian and clicking the "Remove Perian" button.

20fifteen 3:18 AM - 12 October, 2010

It made no difference.

20fifteen 3:20 AM - 12 October, 2010

What does a green screen mean, anyway? I've seen it in the past where a file has issues after being compressed where there's green interference, like blocks, that flash on the screen, but never the whole screen. It's not just the video, either. The entire screen turns green (in other words if a 16:9 letterboxed video does it, it fills the whole screen, not just the part inside the letter box)

Michael R 3:47 AM - 12 October, 2010

Ok, thanks for trying that out. You can re-install Perian now if you like ;)

Quote:

What does a green screen mean, anyway?

It's usually one of two things:

1) An outdated graphics card driver. This is why I double checked with you before to confirm that you were using 10.5.8, as Apple include driver updates in their OS X updates.

2) A decoding problem, depending on which decoding method is used. The same number used to represent black in one method is the same number used to represent green in another. Usually turning off the yuv422 decoding solves this, hence why I had you try that before.

Are you able to attach one of these files to this thread so I can test it on my setup?

3:57 AM, 12 Oct 2010

20fifteen attached a file: \"Lopez, Jennifer f Pitbull-Fresh Out The Oven\".mp4

Download· Permalink

20fifteen 3:58 AM - 12 October, 2010

I see... Ok, I attached a video that consistently "went green". See what happens when you run it on yours.

Thanks,

Randy

Michael R 9:30 PM - 17 October, 2010

Hey Randy,

Thanks for the file. I'm not getting any green on my setup however I am getting "flashes" in certain points which I don't get when I play the file in QuickTime :-/ I'll have a talk with the Video-SL developers and get back to you when I have more info.

20fifteen 10:20 PM - 17 October, 2010

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

I had spoken with someone else who suggested it could be being caused by the files not having been encoded with enough keyframes... There does seem to be a correlation between the number of keyframes and the videos that blink green. Let me know what you find out. It would be great if I can aoid re-encoding all of those files.

Michael R 12:36 AM - 18 October, 2010

Ok, so they've taken a look at the video file and they reproduce your issue exactly :) There are some corrupt frames in the file which Video-SL can't handle. Did you encode these video files yourself? If so, which program did you use?

20fifteen 1:08 AM - 18 October, 2010

I did. I encoded them with Apple Compressor.

Michael R 3:58 AM - 19 October, 2010

Were they encoded from DVD or from converted from a different file type?

20fifteen 4:06 AM - 19 October, 2010

I ripped the DVDs into DV files (the entire dvd was one long dv file) encoded specially for Final Cut to eliminate the need to render the video. The individual videos were separated in Final Cut and exported as Pro Res 422 files. Those files were then converted to mp4

Michael R 3:31 AM - 20 October, 2010

Thanks for the info. We'll need to take more of a look into what is causing the problem.

As a workaround, have you tried converting one of these files using Handbrake? You can get Handbrake here -> handbrake.fr, and there's an article and a Handbrake preset here -> www.serato.com.

20fifteen 3:45 AM - 20 October, 2010

I opened the file in QT "saved-as" and changed the file extension to .mov and then tried converting it but the green flash frames persisted. It seems like the only solution is going to be for me to re-export all of those files from FCP and re-encode to mp4 with another program... Problem is, with Compressor I was able to encode the files with 4 machines acting as a render farm... I'm trying to find out how to specify keyframe frequency with Compressor, but so far no luck...

Niro 9:54 PM - 22 October, 2010

Compressor is awesome, but it has some quirks. If you're using the apple devices output, it will only allow you to manually add keyframes (If I remember right) every 60 or let compressor do it automatically. If you are exporting to mp4, you can control the keyframes, but for some reason the files will not support internal meta data. I started using sorenson because of that reason alone.

Michael R 3:26 AM - 29 October, 2010

Hey Randy,

Did you give Handbrake a try? I've re-encoded the video using Handbrake with our preset and the green/white flashes are gone, so this may be useful as a workaround. Also you can specify the keyframe rate in Handbrake.

As for the bug itself, this has been logged with the Video-SL development team.

20fifteen 3:34 AM - 29 October, 2010

Hey, thanks for the follow up. Yeah, it seems re-encoding was the only way to go. Since I'd only heard of, but hadn't used handbrake before, and because I noticed that I didn't have the flash frames with videos I encoded with Visual Hub, I used that to do my re-encodes. So far, everything's working perfectly. It's just a shame though because with Compressor I was able to use my 4 macs as a render farm and chew through huge batch encodes...

Michael R 4:56 AM - 29 October, 2010

Yeah that's a bummer, but at least there's a workaround for now :)

I'll close this thread for now as the bug has been logged.

Michael R 4:58 AM - 29 October, 2010

Bug report here -> www.serato.com

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