Titles blocky but only upon rendering

[timothyn]

I'm using X5 with SP1 on WIn7 SP1 and, only since tonight, the titles on my projects are blocky and ragged not smooth like normal. If I play the projects, they look fine and the title letters are smooth. It's happening whether I do a batch conversion or singly. The projects are 29.97 fps NTSC 480 lines frame based - same as the source clips. Other projects like this have been fine and it's only tonight it's started. I've restarted the program and restarted my OS as well - no change. Any ideas on what might cause this? If you want more technical info, please ask away. Please note my Win7 is in a VMWare environment but the VS X5 program has been working just fine until now so I know it's not my 'non-standard' environment so please don't point any fingers at that. I've successfully rendered over 150 projects all with smooth edged titles on my set up... until now.

[Ken Berry]

Are you using the preset titles which come with the program (with Lorem Ipsum as the actual words which can then be replaced); or are you making your own? If the latter, are you using VS's inbuilt titling capacity or another program?

[timothyn]

Are you using the preset titles which come with the program (with Lorem Ipsum as the actual words which can then be replaced)

No I wanted a simple text fade in/fade out on two lines so typed my own.

or are you making your own? If the latter, are you using VS's inbuilt titling capacity or another program?

So yes, used the inbuilt facilities within VS. I've copied and pasted between projects with no problem so can't see why it's only now they fail.

[timothyn]

OK, so I've been doing a lot more testing and the news ain't good...

The issue with the titles isn't actually the titles - it's the whole rendered output. The source file for the initial 'problem' was pretty poor so at first I didn't notice it. The effect is best described as 'vertical blinds' through the clips when rendered. Playback in the project windows is perfectly smooth and what I'd expect from the rendered output. This is what I've tried so far - all with no changes:

* Source clips - used multiple different clips tried, NTSC, PAL, 4:3, 16:9, UFF, LFF, Frame Based
* New project file - I've tried creating whole new projects from scratch to eliminate the possibility of a corrupted VSP file (and matched the project settings to match my source clip of course)
* Rollback video driver - no change
* Enable/disable 2D/3D acceleration and all possible combinations thereof.
* Uninstalled VS X5 and reinstalled
* Uninstalled last few Windows updates installed immediately prior to issue - none were in any way relevant anyway (MS Security Essentials updates)
* Increased RAM, Video memory, number of cores etc - all no change

I rebooted the OS each time and reverted settings back to the way they were beforehand each time.

Sample source clip:
File format: NTSC DVD
File size: 303,226 KB
Duration: 255,789 seconds

Video type: MPEG-2 Video, Lower Field First
Total frames: 7,666 frame(s)
Attributes: 24 Bits, 720 x 480, 16:9
Frame rate: 29.970 frames/sec
Data rate: 8000kbps

Audio type: LPCM Audio
Total samples: 12,277,878 Samples
Attributes: 48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo

Render settings:
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Lower Field First
(DVD-NTSC), 16:9
Video data rate: 8264 kbps
LPCM Audio, 48000 Hz, Stereo

In essence, I cannot figure out what has caused this and cannot get rid of the problem. Any clip rendered as an MPEG displays the issue but an MP4 does not. However, this makes no sense when over 150 clips have been rendered just fine as MPEG - a strict requirement I have for what I'm doing.

I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out why this is happening and it's not giving me much faith in X5 after years of fighting with VS11+. Sorry to sound pessimistic, but I don't like unexplained issues like this that don't seem to have any logical cause/fix. Any experienced operators who have any suggestions would be very welcome about now.

[webpdq]

Solved
I had a similar problem with pro x 4. I had been using it for a year when all of the sudden the titles started getting vertical drop out lines through them. I did everything I could think of to fix it but could not. They would look fine as I scrolled the timeline but if I went back and forth in the timeline, the titles would corrupt. I tried using different fonts and simple titles and also sample titles. Nothing worked.

I thought it might have been either a windows update or some program that I installed. I tried going back to an old restore point but that did not fix it.

I did however SOLVE the problem by installing pro x5. Everything seems good now except that now I have to rebuild all my libraries. I know this is a different thread but isn't there some way to import my libraries from pro x4 to pro x5 or do we have to reinvent the wheel each time?

[Flashclicker]

In my opinion the problem isn´t "solved", cos solving a problem is NOT just using Videostudio pro X5 instead of Videostudio Pro X4. Also if you read the first post, the user has the problem, that the titles are blocky in Videostudio Pro X5

[timothyn]

Just in case anyone comes back to this thread, the root of the problem looks like it was the virtualisation platform (Virtual Box). VBox is notorious for constant updates and one in particular broke the VGA setup completely. I rolled back a few versions and the problem went away. In the end, tired of getting messed up by open source virtualisation, I went to VMware's platform and ain't looked back.