Hi-
Me too-
I use two computers for editing, one at home and one at work... The Nvidia GTX 470's (I have two) crash 5 or more times over the course of a few hours work (latest version of Vegas 11 build 425, i7 2600K, 16g ram, Win 7 64 bit). Very poor stability.

I JUST bought a new AMD Radeon 6970 for my work computer to take advantage of better rendering speeds. It crashes often too, but the program continues to run, just showing a snowy pixelated preview screen- no picture. I had to turn off acceleration today at work to avoid this. Also Windows 7 64 bit, 8g ram, i7.

Sue, and Danharr, post your system specs. Use the link up there.

G

System for this issue -

HP Pavilion Elite e9280t PC
Windows 7 64 bit
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-950 processor [3.00GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache]
12GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM [6 DIMMs]
1TB RAID 0 (2 x 500GB SATA HDDs) - performance
1.8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260 [2 DVI, HDMI and VGA adapters

Post your specs in your profile - click on "Forum Settings" above.

...preferably including the graphics card driver info also :)

I posted what I could concerning system specs - hope that this will give you what you asked for. Appreciate any and all comments, help, advice . . . thank you.

nvidia beta drivers 285.79 caused BSODs on my system and I removed them. They did not cause any noticeable reduction in the crash frequency of Vegas 10 or 11 compared to the 270 drivers. No driver newer than 270 has been stable for me. The 280 drivers caused BSODs. I am using the 285 released drivers now. It's only been a couple of days but no BSOD so far.

Vegas 10 and 11 still crash just as often which is all of the time. 10 less often than 11 so that is what I am using. The last stable version of vegas was 7D. 8, 9, 10 have never stopped crashing frequently.

rocky

I turned of GPU rendering also after having many unsuccessful renders and crashes, with simple text effects causing the video to flash, see the text effect fullscreen, white frames, and even wrong frames in sequences. Even simple test renders of these seemingly problem areas seem to tick thru frames very slowly. So i turned OFF gpu rendering (the default btw) after having turned it on myself sometime back and not rendered anything in a while. My quad core intel does much better by itself than involving my nvidia 8600gt card (running 285.62 drivers for vista 64) - which is allegedly compatible.

I have same problem (PRO 11 64 bit - buil 425), stability is very poor. Vegas crah many times on editing in work day. I bought a new graphics card (old Nvidia GT 9800, New GTX 560 Ti) card, thinking that going to vegas editing faster, but performance is not improved much. Version 8 was much better than 11.

I get constant crashing with the video FX dialog open, and not just with BCC7 fx, but Sony's too. I'll try turning off GPU acceleration.

This offensive idiocy of asking for system specs has got to stop. It is blatantly obvious that the people who ask -- over and over and over again in countless different threads -- have no intention of helping the person. Note that they never responded after the OP posted her "system specs."

Please, EVERYONE, lets try to help, and only ask specific questions that are actually pertinent. As I've posted before the "system specs" represent such a minor piece of information about a person's computer that they are almost never pertinent.

In this case, the only pertinent issue is what display card and driver level are being used. As far as helping the person, the first piece of advice that should be given is to suggest turning off GPU acceleration for BOTH rendering and for timeline acceleration. I don't have Vegas 11, so I cannot give you the exact location for each setting, but I'm sure that some other helpful soul can do so. From what others have said in other posts, it is pretty clear that this has helped some people decrease, or avoid entirely, the crashing that is happening to so many people.

John, asking a person to turn off the GPU - Preferences>Video Tab - how does that help finding a solution? What it does is remove the card from the equation, sure. But how does that help finding a solution?

Cheers

G

@ Grazie 'John, asking a person to turn off the GPU - Preferences>Video Tab - how does that help finding a solution? What it does is remove the card from the equation, sure. But how does that help finding a solution?'

It helps a lot more than the system specs police who lacking any other meaningful contribution focus on the trivial and unimportant.
It is a step in the process that potentially defines or eliminates a factor.

I am absolutely with John on this. It is seems to be a common practice for people who don't have an answer to put it back on the one asking the question.
It somehow alleviates their feelings of inadequacy.

Grazie your system specs don't even identify which video driver you are using and neither does Steve's.
That is probably the most useful piece of information that could be there in the current circumstances.
You show 2 systems. How would one know which system you are using unless you told us and how would one know whether you are using 32 or 64 bit Vegas on the 64 bit system unless you tell us. I have 5 systems with Vegas all different.
How would anyone know which one I was using unless I put it in the question?
The OP put the card model in the question and when asked provided more information than fits in your treasured system specs.

As John said neither you nor Steve, the other policeman, contributed anything after getting the specs. In my experience the policemen rarely answer the question.

The only good reason I can think of for posting system specs is to rob the system specs police and Sony support of an excuse to avoid answering the question.

I have been here every day for years and rarely contribute because of the sniping that is so prevalent. I think sometimes I am attracted here more to see who is having a go at who today. It is obvious that many of us are over 60 (including me) and have become intolerant grumpy old men who don't like anyone criticizing or complaining about our NLE of choice.

John Meyer is a beacon of sanity, reason and helpfulness in this forum although I sometimes suspect he wonders why he bothers. Sniping at him will not advance the cause of this forum one iota. He has left before in disgust and it would be a huge loss if he did so again.

So to all of you. If you can't say anything nice of genuinely helpful don't say it.

Malcolm

Thanks for that Malcolm. I'll adjust my specs to reflect that which you point out and is needed. You make much sense. Thank you.

My asking as to how turning off the GPU would help, I'd still like to know. The issue would still be underlying. I'm sure John wouldn't mind me asking. As step in the process that's great, what happens next?

The specification thing is really a starting point. Nothing more, nothing less. The whole complexity of CPU<>GPU, drivers and then there is the spectre of mixing GPU enabled against non enabled GPU FXs is too complex for me to fathom. I just want it to work.

Malcolm, I'll get on the case and update my sys specs accordingly. Maybe there should be additional fields to allow us to add more detail? What do you think?

Cheers

G

Malcolm D said
"The only good reason I can think of for posting system specs is to rob the system specs police and Sony support of an excuse to avoid answering the question."

I have to agree that the constant asking for the proper forms to be filled out is annoying. The implication of the request usually seems to be "I won't help you until you fill out your system specs in your profile". It's not helpful.

However, my issue isn't with filling out the specs, it's with the way people ask. I actually think that people should go ahead and fill out the specs precisely because it short circuits the request. If you don't fill in the information people will/might ask you for the specs over and over and over again, which will be annoying to you.

So, my take on this is that people who ask for those system specs should just ask a little more nicely and then move on to offer some help. And otherwise, if you're here on the forum, go ahead and fill out those specs in your user profile. 99% of the time they won't matter but once in a while they will, and they'll save you some effort down the road.

Rob Mack

John, asking a person to turn off the GPU - Preferences>Video Tab - how does that help finding a solution?Your statement is both unhelpful and borderline silly. A quick skimming of the dozens and dozens of threads in the forum over the past two months will reveal that quite a few people have been able to reduce or eliminate render crashes by bypassing the GPU. What is more, they found that ALL interactions with the GPU, including those which supposedly affect only the timeline playback, must be defeated in order to improve the stability.

As I pointed out in another thread, "system specs" are almost NEVER going to provide anything useful, and if you are really trying to help someone, then you should ask a specific question about their setup that relates to the specific problem.

Just for the record, these are the things asked for on the system specification page:

Windows Version
RAM
Processor Speed
Video Card
Sound Card
Video Capture
CD Burner
DVD Burner
Camera

Windows version is almost never relevant. Specific patches ARE relevant (OCHI capture requires a specific patch; so does the ability to read >2GB SDHC cards)

RAM has nothing to do with most problems. The "RAM Preview" setting in Vegas is VERY relevant, but total amount of RAM only affects a person if the system gets into a thrashing situation.

Processor Speed has nothing to do with anything, except that things go slower if you have a slower processor (duh!). The number of cores, and the specific chipset might be important, but that isn't asked for, and therefore you won't get that information by asking for "system specifications."

Video Card has now become very relevant, but if you need to know that, then just ask that question. However, to really get any useful information, you also need to know the driver, which most people don't know how to find. Again, "system specifications" doesn't ask for driver level, so if you ask for "system specifications" you won't actually have enough information to offer an answer.

CD/DVD Burner. Firmware versions make a BIG difference with some burners, and this information is not part of the "system specifications." For 99% of the questions asked in this forum, the answer to this question is irrelevant, yet it is something that some person will have to answer in order to comply with the "system specification" brigade.

Camera. This can be a useful piece of information, but only if you happen to know something about the camera. Quick, is a Sony TRV-11 a DV, HDV, or AVCHD camera? How about the FX-1? FX-7? Or, the SR-12? Which ones use CMOS and which ones use CCD sensors? The specs I describe in these examples are extremely relevant to many questions because each create different artifacts. Also, some of these cameras shoot in different modes (24p, 30p, 60i, 50i, etc.). None of this information is not contained in the revered "system specifications."

In short, "system specifications" is an almost completely useless set of information, and as I pointed out above, and has been proven in this thread, those who ask for it seldom actually come back and offer something useful, and even when they do, the information in the "system specifications" seldom if ever figures into the answer.

I apologize to the others on this forum for getting upset about this, but I hate to see people who really need and want help getting being asked to jump through irrelevant hoops.

Grazie,

I think we might have a couple of problems being described, one being that Vegas crashes during editing and the other that it crashes during renders. And there are two places to turn off GPU acceleration: in the general preferences and within specific render templates.

Turning acceleration off in a render template *might* help a render but it shouldn't have any effect on Effects.

Turning *both* of might help. Or not. For example, I have a home system running an Intel integrated graphics driver. There's no possibility of acceleration. I get very quick and easy crashes while adjusting OFX filters on events. (The crashes might happen more broadly but this is all I've tested.) The only workaround I've found is to only use DirectX effects. However, you can also set an OFX effect on one clip and then copy/paste attributes through the rest of your project. No crashes there but I can't vouch for rendering.

This crashing happens in both VP11 and VP10. Both versions use OFX effects. I didn't notice the problem in 10 before installing 11. Maybe it was there or maybe VP11 introduced a problem that affects both 10 and 11. This would suck, of course, because if VP11 has broken VP10 then most people won't be able to just revert to VP10.

Maybe this is related to a library that both VP11 and VP10 are using?

I don't see the same sort of crashing in VP9, which doesn't use OFX effects.

I also have a system at work that has an older ATI card. It doesn't crash with VP11. Go figure. I suspect that this is *somehow* related to graphics cards+OFX effects. All of the VP11 OFX effects are capable of GPU acceleration. I wonder if they attempt to do something with the GPU even if the acceleration is turned off?

I have no solution to any of this except possibly a very thorough uninstall of VP11 and 10 and any and all OFX-based products. then start over. And this is just a suggestion, I haven't tried it.

Rob Mack

"My asking as to how turning off the GPU would help, I'd still like to know. The issue would still be underlying. I'm sure John wouldn't mind me asking. As step in the process that's great, what happens next?"

If turning the GPU off prevents a problem such as crashing then the user can at least get work done and there's a clue as to where the problem lies.

Next step is more difficult, maybe it's a driver issue or maybe its one driver plus another driver and/or other hardware issue or maybe just maybe, heaven forbid, the problem is in Vegas itself. We might get lucky, we might nail the problem eventually but so far I am not convinced that there is not one or more bugs in the software itself and the only people who can fix that are SCS.

Looking at other people's systems specs in the hope of finding the road to editing Nirvana is fraught with pitfalls. Not to say you might not get lucky but the odds are not in your favour. Realistically it is SCS who need to be dealing with this.

I'm also at the point of wondering just how probable it is that the issue isn't even in their code, they are using OpenCL and anything with "Open" in its name makes me a smidge nervous On top of that I'm not aware of any other NLE using OpenCL, we could be in the process of finding new bugs in OpenCL itself. Only speculation of course but there's a lot of unknown unknowns involved so treading cautiously seems a good plan. I simply cannot see anyway you could reliably conclude that changing hardware is going to fix whatever issue you have.

Bob.

Ah, John, got it. Thanks.

So, as I asked, what is it that makes the GPU the wrinkle in this process? Well, more to the point, how can we, and I suppose that would be SCS, rather than us users, improve matters? Turning it off, takes it out of the equation, sure, but does that mean I should leave it turned off, and wait for SCS to get things going? Or, having read your other thread with Bob, just wait for more powerful CPUs?

Cheers

G

Bob, thank you too. (We cross posted. ) You make sense.

I was needing to hear that there is an inherent issue lurking that maybe/could be required to be addressed. And that that remedy might be beyond me fiddling with my settings or rummaging around my PC.

G