Five PD17 issues with timeline volume display and keyframes

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Solved by

May 03, 2019 17:13

I know that the 2823 beta patch has just been released, so I guess I'm starting the queue for the next patch...

Few problems have been more frustrating in the long term for me as the seemingly random action of keyframes at times. Many times they work exactly as expected, but occasionally, I'll see things like this (usually in the timeline's Keyframe tool):

Placing a new keyframe and then clicking Undo may bring back more than 1 keyframe or even move a different keyframe;
Splitting a clip with keyframes in only one section sometimes shows motion tracks in the newly-split clip that has no placed keyframes;
When manually creating complex motion/crop paths, sometimes a smooth motion or zoom suddenly jumps for no apparent reason.

Now, I hope the phantom/zombie keyframe issue can be solved like the vexxing pre-2015 audio/video split glitch and the pre-2018 timeline audio waveform display issue.

I did not document every kind of keyframe issue, but as far as I can tell, these problems are caused when keyframes somehow get added or shifted off of the frame boundary and into the "middle" of a frame. That was very much the cause of the A/V split, when clips would get corrupted by just editing or moving them on the timeline, and here keyframe misalignment also seems to wreak all kinds of havoc.

During my testing I also uncovered a couple of other issues, so I put them all in this video:

I would really appreciate it if other forum members can do these simple tests on their machines. I believe that the 3 keyframe issues happen on several earlier versions of PD, but I only tested the volume display and "atomic level" keyframe zoom crash on PD17 v2721 (in the video, these are tests 1 and 5).

The sample project is available for download here, and it's tiny since it only uses the Skateboard clip. I will report these if other people can confirm that the issues are present outside of my system.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

May 03, 2019 23:28

1) I Don't have the issue, regardless of track height, the dB is 0. Adjusting dB level at clip begin has effect as one would expect and no issues with track height.
2-5) It looks like you have "Enlarge timeline scale for audio track" ticked. My experience is you can't do that reliable when adjusting video keyframe positions. You get in lots of trouble and simply turning it off does not resolve. One needs to reset (stopwatch type icon) and redefine keypoints. Because of issues with that feature, I rarely have it ticked as default.

Jeff

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

May 05, 2019 01:17

Thanks for taking a look at these. The first one is very strange but 100% present over here, so I'll have to keep looking to understand why it doesn't show up on at least one other system.

The expanded audio timeline idea is interesting, but that box is unchecked on my system. It's unlikely that it was checked when I was working on the original project that led me to the discovery, but I can't be 100% certain of that. Maybe some more work on my end to figure out if that plays a role.

For Test 5, I just rechecked and found that PD would always set an appropriate maximum zoom level of 3 frames, even though it crashed consistently when I was recording the screen capture. I couldn't duplicate the crash today until I dragged the content using the blue circle from the main timeline with the Keyframe tool open.

I didn't have to do anything else but that, and somehow that action in combination with the off-kilter keyframes will cause PD to become non-responsive if you release the mouse key after you've zoomed in beyond the original limit. PD crashes even if you drag the cursor left to zoom out if you've passed the point of no return at any point during the zoom drag.

It would be helpful if you or another member could confirm this specific test. Basically just drag the clip as shown in this step, then see if the zoom function is broken as described. No need to check any keyframe positions like the video shows.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

May 05, 2019 02:14

Quote
The expanded audio timeline idea is interesting, but that box is unchecked on my system. It's unlikely that it was checked when I was working on the original project that led me to the discovery, but I can't be 100% certain of that. Maybe some more work on my end to figure out if that plays a role.

It's I believe 100% obvious that during your screen capture it was checked as that's the only means I've seen that your can get these intermediate tick marks between frames 15 and 16 as shown in this screen grab from your post. Can you get the some other way on your system? Secondly, when your pds file is loaded on my system it checks that pref item as it's now stored in the pds file.

Jeff


Filename	PD17_optodata_aud.png	Download
Description
Filesize	1207 Kbytes
Downloaded:	27 time(s)

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

May 06, 2019 15:33

I do see some discrepancies in this project on my pc. The first two test are just fine whether the Expand audio timeline was checked or not. Volume numbers do not change. The keyframes does not always move like in the video for test 3. Lost the left height keyframe. In Test 4 the keyframe is on the boundary. The test 5 only crash when I continuously expand the timeline ruler. The Skakeboard.mp4 text does not appear on the top blue line of the keyframe window at all like in the video.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

May 06, 2019 18:53

Thanks for the feedback. I see the incorrect volume dB when hovering the cursor on my Surface Pro 3 when the keyboard + trackpad are attached, so I'm 2/2 on affected machines here.

No idea why it's specific to me, unless it's a subscription vs. standalone issue. Both of mine are 365, and I believe you and Jeff are using perpetual licenses. If more people ran the test we might see a pattern.

UPDATE: During a remote support session with Cyberlink for a different issue, I demonstrated the incorrect volume level issue and they confirmed that it is present on their machines as well, so it has now been reported.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at May 07. 2019 00:10