Neo Scene skipping frames?

[EdMcLeodJones]

Hi there,

Was hoping people with other workflows could help me verify something.

Download the file: http://gh1footage.s3.amazonaws.com/00000.MTS (30MB - 720x50p PAL) and convert it using your choice of workflow.

Then examine it in After Effects or a NLE where you can frame by frame and compare the original and the converted file.

In After Effects, if I compare the two, I'm getting a duplicate frame of frame 40 at frame 41 on the Neo Scene converted file.

Can anyone else verify or disprove it please?

Cheers.

[Isaac_Brody]

Downloading, will run through both neoscene and voltaic. Wait, this clip is 1080P not 720. Did you upload the correct clip?

EDIT: I'm not seeing a duplicate frame. Got all three files in After Effects and they all match up. Are you on mac or pc?

[Martti Ekstrand]

I'm on OSX 10.5.7 and I converted your clip to Apple Intermediate Codec with Toast 10 Titanium. In QuickTime player I enabled the frame counter to make sure I view every frame and then stepped through the entire clip both forward and backward with the arrows keys.

Cannot find a single dropped frame.

As I still got a working trial license I'll try now to encode to Cineform in Toast and see what happens. Back in a bit.

[Martti Ekstrand]

Same process as above but to Cineform instead of AIC. Same result, not a single dropped frame.

[John Caballero]

Oh boy, from "mud" to "dropped frames" now? The "mysteries" never end.

[EdMcLeodJones]

Doh, that was indeed the wrong file!

I'm uploading the correct one now, 0000.MTS again, if you wouldn't mind having a go at that instead (renamed the other to Boat.MTS)

http://gh1footage.s3.amazonaws.com/0000.MTS (should be a Bee)

I'm on PC, so maybe it's just an issue with the PC version.

Interestingly, I was frame by framing the 0000.MTS file that I accidentally put up there in After Effects and thought that maybe there was a duplicate frame in the MTS file itself on that one, so good to hear that there's not. Hopefully I can track down the reason on my machine.

It's not so much dropped frames as it is two identical frames in a row that I'm seeing.

Thanks for your help everyone

[Martti Ekstrand]

Same process again with Toast 10, same result. No dropped or duplicated frames. This time I only used the Cineform codec, didn't bother testing with AIC. This is good news since that means it's the NeoScene app, not the codec and especially - not your GH1.


Oh boy, from "mud" to "dropped frames" now? The "mysteries" never end.

Encoders/decoders skipping/dropping frames ain't a mystery, it's common occurrence caused by software bugs. I frame-peep every file of the commercials that I online before delivering for transmission. Have to re-render about every 25th file due to this. Not so bad considering I re-render every 3rd - 4th file due to user error (user = me).

Given the costly cock-ups I see or hear about weekly in the post-production business in my town caused by bugs on huge work-stations with super expensive software I'd say that the GH1 and it's ilk like 5DmkII are little technological marvels, nearly flawless in comparison.

[DrBlaz]

nice video! I've checked the file with a h264 analizer and it seems to be all ok, no repeated frames like in the other 1080p25 video from other thread, the frames 40 and 41 are different.

did you experiment this repeated frames problem in another neoscene conversions?

[Isaac_Brody]

Tried your second clip in both voltaic and neo on Mac and no skipped frames. Might want to find another PC user using neoscene or PM David Newman to check if it's a bug on the PC side.

[EdMcLeodJones]

Thanks for your efforts everyone, glad to know it's a Cineform issue and not a problem with my camera.

I've opened a ticket with them, so will hopefully get it sorted soon. Will keep you updated.

[David Newman]

I just converted the footage with the latest Neo Scene (PC) version 1.3.2.117 and found no issues, no duplicate or skipped frames. Very pretty footage BTW.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm

[EdMcLeodJones]

Thanks David.

After further investigation, it looks like it's not Neo Scene duplicating frames at all, it was After Effects and Premiere Pro just displaying them that way.

After a lot of experimenting and finally uninstalling Neo Player and rebooting, I'm no longer getting the duplicate frames, so looks like it's some sort of weird issue with having both Neo Player and Neo Scene installed.

Hope that helps someone else in the same situation, and thanks so much to everyone who took the time to help me get it figured out!

[SoerenM]

It seems I've got the same problem! Although I don't have (and never had) Neo Player installed on this PC. I bought Neoscene for my Canon 5D Mk II files.. works great - besides random frame duplication occuring in After Effects (CS4, newest updates) ... Neoscene also newest version (now even the newest beta/update David just posted over at DVInfo) ... still the same :(

It does not occur with VirtualDub and other programs.. only in After Effects (I'm not using Premiere at all, only Vegas for cutting) .. and of course Vegas is fine as well... *sigh*

So I'm trying uninstall / reinstall of Neoscene and hope it just goes away....

[EdMcLeodJones]

So, after all that, it looks like it WAS a bug, and it's been fixed in the latest Cineform release, out today: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-software-showcase/238823-new-release-all-windows-cineform-tools.html

"Fixed: CS4 frame duplication/skip"

[David Newman]

Yes, our bug, but it didn't happen on all source, we got some customer footage that did it and fixed it soon after. Always good to submit the bug reports through support.