I had something like that just this afternoon. Four .vob files from a DVD on the timeline. After doing maybe 15 things (mouse clicks, drags, menu choices, etc.) the audio from the 2nd file wouldn't play anymore, nor would it be included in a render. The only way to hear it again was to quit Vegas or File / New, then load the project again. After that it would be fine for another 15 things, and then silent again. It didn't affect the other 3 files.

Very weird.

Hi there! Thanks to both of you who took time to respond. It sounds definitely like another BUG. I'd like to thank Sony for fixing the problem with Targa Files as it was discussed here in this forum at the end of last year. Unfortunately, as I have put it before, now there's a BUG that affects the audio tracks. Too sad!

This remark goes to Chienworks: you are absolutely right, friend! Same thing happens here. You know, I am a little disapointed because when I think I am about to finish a project, I discover another BUG - like this one.

About the questions asked by musicvid (thanks for asking them):

My project is a small one (a 3 minute clip), but a little complex. I am trying to make a Star Wars short fan film - not for commercial purposes (home use only). The project shows only the openning titles (like the ones shown in the original movie) and some other takes showing some spaceships flying to Earth. That's all.
There are 8 video tracks, no pan/crop effects at all, and most of the files are targa sequences rendered in Newtek's Lightwave at 24 fps (project is set at 23,976 NTSC Film). There are also 7 audio tracks, so all of them make 15 tracks.

In the beginning I suspected the problem could be the one described by musicvid, but the audio tracks in Vegas 8.0a were OK (so Vegas *8.0a. was working well and good with audio tracks on my OS). There are no fx effects, no plug-ins are turned on, neither backgorund applications are running (3rd party applications).

Processor speed, RAM and video card:
My processor is a QuadCore 2,4 6600 + 2 GB RAM + GForce 8600 GT 256 MB. Isn't that enough? If I were using an Atlhon 1,7 or any old Pentium processor, yes, the problem COULD be the one you mentioned, but not in this particular case :P lol
One more thing: I'm not running full size video preview. Thank you very much for your help. Any more thoughts? Any help? Anyway, the software is OK but if you try to make large projects and/or very complex ones, the BUG will show up.
Thanks again and please, I hope Sony fixes this weird problem releasing Vegas 8.0c. Please, it's about time!
Cheers,
Mark

Could you perhaps render just the audio to a wav file and bring that into a project or do the same with the vision?
In other words have a video project and a different video project and ismply combine the two for the final output.

Bob.

Hi farss, how've you been? Thanks for the suggestion but I guess it doesn't work. The problem is not only playing the audio file (preview). Although the same thing happens when you render the file as WAV, I haven't tested your idea yet (but I'm almost sure it won't work since the render is not working properly.
Anyway, I don't want to crticize anyobody, nor being rude, but don't you think this is counterproductive? Not for me of course, I'm only testing the software, but think about real video producers who have certain deadlines. What can they do?
Cheers,
Mark

My workaround was to close and open the project again just before rendering. It worked fine. Since i very rarely work with .vob files i didn't bother searching for a better solution ... yet.

Here is happening with both .vob and .wav files.

A couple of points.

Why work with .vob files. If I need to do any serious editing with stuff ripped from DVD I render it to avi. No loss involved really and things play so much nicer.

It's pretty common to lock vision or even lock audio and then work on the other. This makes sense when different departments do their own specialties. Same goes for colour correction, that's done by a specialist in a purpose built suite. Clearly most of us aren't in that environment but I'm finding more and more that even when I do all those roles it makes life more productive in some situations.

I'm getting started on something like a 100 title series for the one client. I started on the first set of 10 titles and got to #4. Started thinking, hm, maybe I could tweak the sound a bit and hm, maybe a little CC would help too. Next thing I'm going back to #1 and futzing with that as well and then I realised I'm not being very productive at all. The client hasn't seen any of the cuts yet, he might want to change all of it, he might decide to reshoot it. Just getting one part of the process locked down and then if the client is happy with that then moving onto the next part makes a lot of sense. Not always of course but sometimes having the ability to tweak everything on the one timeline in front of you is too tempting.

Bob.

You are rigth Bob. I must admit I have done that myself too sometimes, and found to be more in love with the process than getting the job done.

I think it is good once i a while to stop up and think of that without being sloppy at all, juts a litle balance. That's what I want to tell myself anyway. :)

Btw. Bob - what do you use to convert vob's to avi?

/Ulf

"Btw. Bob - what do you use to convert vob's to avi?"

Vegas. Two things to be careful of:

1) If you're working in NTSC the changing from one chroma sampling scheme and back again might cause a significant qulaity hit. I don't know how bad it might be as I've never had to edit a NTSC DVD. If you do get a hit using the Sony YUV codec as the intermediate should avoid the problem. It's a bigger file but not like you have to edit a DVD that often.

2) If you have to edit a whole DVD, which for me is vary rarely you'll hit a problem. When you butt the VOBs together on the T/L there'll be a glitch. I get around this be using DVDShrink to join all the VOBs into one big VOB and then put that onto the Vegas T/L.

I very rarely have a situation where I need to edit a DVD or include material from a DVD. Mostly it's just been showreels. So there might be some hardcore DVD editors who've got a better approach but this works OK for me and for what Cunhambebe is doing would seem fine too as it's only a short piece.

Bob.

You mentioned the vision is TARGA based.

I assume that there isn't any audio sourced from synchronous video capture in your session.

Can I suggest, if this isn't already the case, that you try locating the audio source files on a different hard disk to the video/Targa files and thereby reduce the DATA overhead for your drive/s when replaying the files.

I'd also suggest that you make sure you have common sample rates and audio file types in the project. While Vegas is capable of playing mixed audio and video source files I've had occasions when just having .WAV and .MP3 files in the same project caused the MP3s to mute.

This was in Vegas 5, well before Vegas Pro 8b.

I have just update to V Pro 8b from 8a but haven't, and don't want to, experienced your problem as yet.

I have a 28 minute corporate training film with about 10 video and six audio tracks at the last stages of production. So I'll keep my fingers crossed until it has been finalised.

Steve

Hi Steve, thanks for taking time to write! My project is based on targa files + VOB's soundtracks and WAV files. There's really a BUG in Vebas 8.0b as described by me and Chienworks. You can notice the BUG just after some minutes working with the software... In my case, the 15th track - which is an audio track - does not play at all, it doesn't matter if it's a WAV, a VOB audio file (AC-3) or whatever. I have already sent a discussion thread to the Customer Service about this. The last time, I believe I was the responsible one to have found the BUG with the targa files in Vegas 8.0a, now fixed in this update 8.0b. Sony responded to my inquiry and now everything is OK with targa sequence files in a video compositing. Let's wait for the next update to let the engineers in Milwaukee fix the application.
Best regards,
Mark

I have the same problem, and it PREDATES Vegas 8.0b. I first noticed it two days ago in Vegas 7. I upgraded to Vegas 8b and the problem was still there.

I have a massive file I'm rendering and I first discovered the problem there. I then created a new 5 second project that did nothing but create moving text, embed one .gif graphic (set to move using tracking), and two .mp3 sound effects files. I noted consistent problems with one of the two sound effects files not playing in the preview and even when it does play in the preview, it does not render. Now neither sound file will render, even though both are played in the preview. Closing and reopening Vegas does not solve the problem. The only thing I've found that will solve it is to delete the audio tracks and then readd them. It then works for a few times and is right back to the non-rendering state.

This is quite frustrating...

i have a tendency to agree with bob - i try to make my t/l as vegas friendly as possible. graphic elements converted to png's, audio to wav, and video to whatever my project setting is.

on the rare ocassion i've had to work with vob's, i've simply converted them to avi's, haven't had to do anything with them in hd yet, though i suppose i'll simply convert to m2t.

any quality loss that i've incurred has been totally insignificant.

tga animations and the like i usually render out prior to importing - can't see any need to have the original tga's on the t/l for any reason at all.

leslie

We probably need to be a little bit careful though. In PAL we get away with a lot as our 4:2:0 DV sampling is very close to what's in mpeg-2. The same might not apply in NTSC.

Bob.

i have a tendency to agree with bob - i try to make my t/l as vegas friendly as possible. graphic elements converted to png's, audio to wav, and video to whatever my project setting is.

Me too. I know there is support for many different formats and that the should work together, but I don't like to 'stress' my system and myself ;-)

I use a lot of time to prepare all my assets / content for my project before I start to edit, but that's just the way I work :-)


/Ulf

Given my software engineering background (both development and management), my take is if Sony advertises that their software product works with a specific set of formats, it should just work, and work correctly. Requiring the users to work "around" such quirks would have never flied on the projects I was on. These kinds of issues point to a lack of rigor in testing. I sometimes think software vendors think people are so used to the Microsoft standard that they'll accept anything that is about that level of quality. :(

Generally speaking, I do think Vegas is a great product. I recommend it all the time. But I'm finding that as I do more and more intricate things with it, there are quirks... What drives me batty is the inconsistency or flakiness in behavior. That's what I'm seeing here. That kind of behavior usually means memory management problems.

While I agree about how things should just work and the lack of rigorous testing there's another side to getting all your ducks in a line.
It's generally quicker. If you've got all manner of video codecs and audio sample rates every time you hit play to preview all those calcs are done over and over again. Same goes for rendering. Get everything in line to start with and you take the hit only once.

Bob.

Yes, I agree. The "to market" factor pulls against quality and security, as does the cost factor. A saying we used to throw around was, "Fast, cheap, correct: pick any two." In the current climate where consumers are trained to accept poor quality on the cheap, we can see what has won out. Higher quality almost certainly means higher cost and longer time. Getting to market first and cheaply is everything. High quality and high cost that gets to market last puts one in a position of having an uphill battle to gain market share. From a commercial corporate perspective, you might as well not bother. So I don't necessarily blame the development teams... market and management drive the quality or lack thereof. I still don't have to like it. :(