Image goes black when animating element transparency - smooth rendering

Hello again, I'm trying to animate element transparency for an element and the image goes black when it starts to turn the element transparent.  The animation runs fine up until this point and the image returns to normal when the animation is finished turning the element back to 0% transparent. If I disable the transparency change the animation runs fine.  I've done this in another animation without any issues.  I've run verifydgn on the file and it appears to be clean. Any ideas as to what could be causing this?  MS 08.11.08.357 Win 7 pro

Thanks,

Kevin