MS Windows 7 Transparency OFF.

Grazie

I had odd problems with Vegas and other products a number of months ago when I built a new PC with W7. I was mostly working with DSA and thought it had problems with W7 as it worked OK with Vista.
After trying to find what the error / crash codes meant (they all seemed to point to memory - but my memory checked out OK) I found one person that said he had turned off Aero.
I did that and the problems stopped.
I don't have Aero turned on on the Vista PC and have never had the problems.
(I see no advantage in transparent windows as I usually run only one application at a time. I run all applications full screen even if more than one is active.)

One reason I think that that was it is because Total Media Theatere 3 caused the screen to flash when it started. I saw a quick message that the display was being changed to one that was compatible. After turning off Aero, that didn't happen.

I have seen a lot of posts about V11 and V12 crashes. I didn't think of this until I saw the one mentioning tuning off transparent. May be that's enough, If not, try turning off Aero.

To turn off Aero, change the display to a non Aero theme.

Hope this helps.

Paul Masters

I've been immediately turning off all Windows "enhancements" for so many years it never crossed my mind that this could be causing other users' problems. I hope this helps a lot of users.

So, what other extras could I be turning off?

G

Choosing a non-Aero theme will turn off a lot of stuff, and Win7 will/can go back to looking like Win2000.

I usually don't go that far because I'm supposed to know *something* about Win7 for work purposes. Not much, but a little. Anyway, I've always needed to take screen shots so I always turn off transparency to make the shots less visually busy. Plus, if I need multiple shots I don't want the thing bleeding through a titlebar changing.

As for memory usage and Aero...Windows 7 allocates a huge chunk of memory to decorative graphics purposes. Even if you have a discrete GFX card with insane amounts of RAM on it, Win7 can still allocate another gig of system memory to graphics purposes.

I think this is probably minimized if you turn off transparency or Aero altogether. I just can't see Win7 needing a lot of memory for graphics after you do this. Now, perhaps Vegas or some of its child windows are crashing while painting or moving a window. It seems like you couldn't go wrong with turning some of the decorations off.

Rob

I have Aero set to ON and enjoy the beautiful transparency (IMHO - flame at will) in all frames - on both monitors - and with GPU preview assist ON - and Ye Olde Faithful Vegas 11 32 bits is just working totally stable... editing and rendering for hours every day and often with 2-3 Vegas instances running in parallel...

It is not because of simple editing - the last project was design of an animated 5 seconds lower thirds built of so many layers and FX's that it took over 10 minutes to render it to Quicktime with alpha channel.

So: Aero/Transparency might be an issue - but obviously not always...

Here again, I think this must be a 32bit vs 64 bit thing. I use V11 32 bit on a 64 bit windows with Aero turned on and I have had only 2 crashes after working on several videos with multi layered effects.

Sounds like 64 bit is not utilizing video memory right.

Dave T2

Doesn't Windows 8 kill Aero?

I wonder if Aero becomes problematic, especially on systems with marginal resources -- such as tablets.

Who knows, Windows 8 may be a boon to Vegas.

Well all I can say is that I have a 64 bit machine that finally runs Vegas perfectly. It has not messed up once today since turning off the Transparency of the color used in Aero. I did not turn off Aero. Just the transparency button and gave it full color. So aside from that, Windows 7 is still pretty and like some others I use a two wide-screen monitor system so the time line is longer. This has absolutely solved the riddle of crashes I have had since V9.

I shouldn't say it fixed the problem, but for some of us, it certainly has remedied the problem until the problem is resolved.

Having major 64 bit issues with 12....basically unusable at this juncture...very erratic playback, even the cursor jumps when trying to relocate on the time line....transitions wont even begin to play back....and all this no matter the resolution of the preview window....Im stumped...

Im back to 11/32....again...

Jim

ScheffFrog - YOU are set up on Win764bit with videocard 9200 RADEON with what driver version?

Thanks for this insight. I just turned off Transparency and V12 is behaving well on my work computer - so far.

If this does turn out to be a major fix for V12 crashes I'll need to find something else to complain about. Any suggestions?

@Grazie, not being at my Win7 machine now, I may slip into XP world, but basically anything available in "Visual Effects" customization I disable (I think there's an overall option tick for "best performance" that automatically turns all the visual enhancements off) I also tweak the OS services running in the background (disabling some and setting others to manual rather than automatic). You can Google "Black Viper's Service Configurations" for a starting point of services you can disable or change. This takes some experimentation depending on what you have installed, but I figure the less chance I have for conflicts with "invisible" programs running in the background, the better. And it also frees up a bit more RAM for applications Or perhaps I'm just superstitious and spend too much time diddling inside my computer. ;-)
Larry

I also recently upgraded to V12 and had constant crashes, while navigating the timeline or attempting to save the project. I'm using an Nvidia GeForce 560 and official 306.97 drivers, which worked perfectly with Vegas 11. So, I went ahead and installed the latest beta drivers 310.33 and the crashes stopped.
Well, except for one issue that when I close Vegas, it usually crashes. My guess is that it's the NewBlueFX plugn.

Thanks Larry.

G

If you're getting a crash on exiting Vegas and you suspect it's a NewBlue plugin, please make sure you update to the most current version. Any issues of that sort have been fixed.

...but I first have to uninstall the existing NVidia drivers, correct? When I go into Control Panel and view the various NVidia drivers currently installed (under Programs and Features) I see a number of NVidia drivers, including audio ones. So, do I remove all of them? Do I need to reboot, then install the new drivers? Do I need to install them in Safe Mode, as someone had suggested elsewhere on this Forum? Would you kindly detail a step-by-step on how to do this correctly please, as I want to do this correctly the first time? Thank you in advance.

@Video Impressions:

If you are trying to go back to a previous NVIDIA driver DO NOT use the driver rollback feature inside of Windows Device Manager. NVIDIA has determined that this may cause issues.

The correct way is to go into Add/Remove Programs and remove everything NVIDIA. Restart your computer and then install the driver. Don't let Windows do it.

If you are updating just run the driver and it will take care of the removal of the old and installation of the new.

Unfortunately this didn't do anything for me. I’ve removed transparency, turned off Aero, I’ve given up on GPU rendering long time ago, yet I cannot get a simple project to load. Only 3 minutes long, one video track containing 40-odd AVCHD clips 50p, a few soundtracks, nothing too taxing.

Problem Description
Application Name: Vegas Pro
Application Version: Version 12.0 (Build 367) 64-bit
Problem: Unmanaged Exception (0xc0000005)
Fault Module: C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 12.0\vegas120k.dll
Fault Address: 0x000000018012BC81
Fault Offset: 0x000000000012BC81

Fault Process Details
Process Path: C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 12.0\vegas120.exe
Process Version: Version 12.0 (Build 367) 64-bit
Process Description: Vegas Pro
Process Image Date: 2012-09-14 (Fri Sep 14) 12:31:36

I’ve tried this on two different setups AMD and Intel. I have lots of processing power on my main PC (i7-3770)and memory 32GB, no overclocking. Same kind of project works with no problems in Vegas 11 (I exported it as an EDL text file and then loaded it successfully in Vegas 11). OK, the effects and panning were lost, but I have previously used the same effects/panning in V11 with no problems.

I noticed a tendency to blame crashes on NewBlue and maybe this is indeed the primordial cause for the frequent crashes, but I don’t entirely buy that. As the hosting application, Vegas should be robust enough to survive misbehaving plug-ins. The analogous situation is that you don’t expect Windows to fall apart every time you run some dodgy application. There are of course exceptions, many of us have seen the blue screen of death in Windows, but how often does that happen?

Maybe I am part of a minority that cannot get things to work in V12, but I am worried that Sony are so relaxed about this sizeable minority of users (if it is a minority) not to have released a patch with the necessary fixes one month after the first release.

If you feel smug and safe that things are working for you, bear in mind that I’ve also been a happy user for 4 versions so far and I too felt like being above this kind of thing when I saw similar reports from other users who were having trouble with earlier versions, but when everything was working well for me.

I disabled aero from the start and like JasperD, was having lots of crashes with the simplest of projects. In another thread, I believe it was Laurence that suggested setting Preview Ram to 0. Tried it, and No More Crashes! Spent a couple hours this morning doing initial cuts editing on over 200 AVCHD clips without a single problem unlike before when a crash would occur every few minutes. Might be worth a try.

wwaag