Avid Behaving Badly #21: Matte Key GFX leave after images

I've upgraded to Avid 8.5.6 over the last few years, and you may have noticed that the number of posts I put in my blog has dropped dramatically. That's good. It means Avid is scared that they might start losing market share to Adobe Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve, or Sony Vegas (okay, definitely NOT Sony Vegas). They've started improving workflow, fixing bugs, and even - seriously - demystifying some of the many many error messages that appear while you work. It's great! It's almost enough to make you think that Avid doesn't truly hate your goddamn guts anymore.

And then shit like this happens:


That is not at all what my graphic is supposed to look like during playback. What it's supposed to look like is this:


Isn't that lovely?

So why the fuck isn't it playing back correctly?

Let's talk about how complicated this graphic is: It isn't. At all. Complicated. It's simple enough to ride the short bus and get a free candy and a pat on the head from the local grocer while he gives sympathetic looks to this graphic's parents.

This is an imported still image for the background, and an imported matte key for the text. That's it. There are no other effects involved in any way. 

The text's top and bottom lines fly on from the left, and the middle line flies on from the right. So what you're seeing in the broken graphic is every single frame of the text drawn on top of each other. That is NOT supposed to happen. These ghost images or after images ruin the graphics.

Compounding this issue is the fact that it does not happen when avid is in draft mode (green/yellow) mode. But it DOES happen in full (green) mode and it happens in any export. Fucking great, right? So the odds are you're editing in draft mode and don't see any problems, export, and discover your graphics are completely fucked, like the year 2020 run through a food processor, boiled, simmered for 2 hours, reduced down to a thick, vile tar, and then injected directly into your veins.

Fortunately, after much trial and error, I was able to fix this stupid fucking nonsense. The problem, as it turns out, is not the graphic at all. It's the background. I don't know why Avid has decided that media created from still images is bullshit that breaks everything, but apparently that's a new feature they added without documentation. So to fix this, you have to match into your background image, right click the source monitor, and create a freeze frame of it. 

Yes, you heard that correctly. I want you to create a freeze frame of your still image. I understand how insanely stupid that sounds. Welcome to Avid, where everything is stupid. Fucking. Everything.

Overcut your still image media with your new freeze frame of a still image media and viola, the ghosting graphics vanish.

On the off chance that any of you work at a BDSM sex dungeon, the next time one of your clients asks you to humiliate them, instead of pissing on them, slapping them, and calling them names, just dress them up like an Avid employee and show them this bug. You're going to have to call the Guiness people to tell them about the tip you get after that.

For crying out loud, Avid, I'm embarrassed for you on this one.

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