You guys are killing me here!

Glenn Thomas wrote on 9/30/2009, 6:18 PM
Firstly, apologies for posting a negative message like this, but I am extremely frustrated with Vegas right now. I've been a user since Vegas 2. I upgraded from that to Vegas 3, then 4, 5, 7, and now 9. Vegas 7 was a nightmare. One project took me 4 days to render because of the number of times it crashed whilst rendering. The client wasn't happy as he'd already invited a group of people to watch the video. I was hoping with Vegas 9, most of the bugs would be gone by now. Clearly not!

I have a music video project right now which I've cleaned up so much that I'm just left with the essential parts remaining. There are a few chromakeyed tracks and a track of still image backgrounds. Rendering the entire 5 minute project as a whole is impossible. It should be possible, but I can't get it to render without crashing. So what I'm doing is wasting more than twice as much time rendering smaller chunks to a new track. Rendering with just one track of video seems to work. But rendering those small chunks to new tracks so I'll have a single video track to render a master from is taking forever with even more crashes. Hence the small chunks, whatever I can get rendered without it crashing.

EDIT: The smaller chunks have all been rendered.

Error reports are not possible, because that particular computer is not connected to the net.

The plugins I'm using are the levels plugin, color corrector, chromakeyer, New Blue Vignette, New Blue Chromakey, and the free AAV 6 way color corrector. Nothing special. I use Neat Video also which I know can cause problems if there's not enough memory, but I'm not using it on this project.

It's Vegas 9b I'm running right now. Same problems happened with 9a.

Also, the same issues occur on 3 different computers here. It shouldn't be something that users should need to tweak their computers to get working.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/30/2009, 6:22 PM
well, two things: did you try 9 when it was a demo first? From what I know all the issues were in the demo. Second, why not go back to 7 or 5 (8 works great for me, so did 6)? makes more sense then switching programs...
kairosmatt wrote on 9/30/2009, 7:03 PM
I also have late night sessions trying to get vegas to render, and I feel your pain. There are definitely things that cause glitches in long and/or complicated projects.

All I can say is your on the right track. Taking twice as long isn't too bad in my experience!

The other alternative to rendering to a new track are nesting or breaking the project up into different project to render the small chunks.

And try rendering the chromokayed stuff first, and bring that back into the main project.

How big is your background still? Maybe you can prerender that too a smaller resolution?

Sometimes I can figure out exactly where the first render attempt crashes, and there is something right there that I can change to make it continue.

And if you "end process tree" on Vegas in the middle of a render, it keeps the partially rendered AVI (or any other format) and you can stitch it back together sometimes.

good luck
kairosmatt
musicvid10 wrote on 9/30/2009, 7:32 PM
Glenn,
I always get a bit confused when a brand new poster drops in out of the blue with a raft of complaints, and yet has been a user since Vegas 2, which was released in 2001 by another company. Also, you are the very first person I've ever heard say that V7 was a "nightmare" (save for one guy who got banned for quite different reasons).

Just curious -- what has your user name been here for the previous eight years? It is incomprehensible to me that someone would own that many upgrades and never have made a single post . . .
Glenn Thomas wrote on 9/30/2009, 8:47 PM
Many thanks for the replies and tips.

No, not a new user here, just a different email account my software is registered to now. I used to post here ages ago, when the forum was still on the Sonic Foundry website. Not a regular forum poster though.

I take back what I said about switching. I just tried the Premiere CS4 trial, and it's a clear reminder why I use Vegas! Just as useless as I remember it being 10 years ago :)

In which case I guess I just better get used to rendering in small chunks and all the crashes.

My background images are 8mp in size. That's one of the reasons I went for V9, support for larger images.

One of the error messages I received was that my machine was low on memory. Can that be fixed? I'm just running a 3gb XP machine with no other programs running. Ideally I'd make the switch to Vista 64, but Cineform Neo HDV that I use to capture won't work with that.

fldave wrote on 9/30/2009, 8:48 PM
First, I've never had a Pinnacle product NOT crash my system.

V7 worked great for me, even after many, many 60 hour renders of large complexity. I delayed moving to V8 for 8 months to get a big project completed in V7. As with any business/venture, you need to know your products and capabilities before promising deliverables. And you do not introduce unknowns or upgrades in the middle of projects without personally taking on huge risk.

If V7 was such a nightmare, why did you upgrade to V9?
farss wrote on 9/30/2009, 9:30 PM
By any chance are you trying to do this in 32bit mode?

The last release of V7 had issues, I recall rolling back to V7.0d. In fact V7.0e seems to have been when all the problems started.

Some possible workarounds instead of doing it chunk by chunk seeing as how this only a 5 minute project.

Solo each track and render each one to uncompressed AVI and then composite them all in a new project. I've run over 20 tracks of HD in V9 and it didn't fall over.

Depending what your source material is try rendering it to MXF and Replace the media from the Project Media window. Vegas seems much happier with MXF or Cineform than HDV or AHVHD.

Bob.
rmack350 wrote on 9/30/2009, 10:14 PM
Another possibility I've wondered about is to Selectively Prerender the video. The thing about doing this is that Vegas creates lots of small rendered files. Even if Vegas crashes you might be able to copy all those prerenders to a new folder and then put them directly onto the timeline.

Rob Mack
Glenn Thomas wrote on 10/1/2009, 5:02 AM
Hi guys, thanks for all the suggestions. I've managed render it out, but it's full of glitches. Backgrounds disappearing, fx not doing what they supposed to. Hopefully they can be fixed.


Fldave, I upgraded to 9 like I mentioned in my previous post for larger image file support, because of the crashes I was getting in Vegas 7, and just to be up to date. I bought the upgrade when it came out and didn't have any jobs on at the time.

By the way, Commotion wasn't originally a Pinnacle product. It was originally by a guy from ILM, Scott Squires. He'd used it for the light sabers in The Phantom Menace. Puffin Designs was the company, but Pinnacle bought them out. So maybe the rest of the Pinnacle stuff is unreliable?


Bob, yes, 32 bit Vegas with 3gb ram. I'm considering upgrading to Cineform HD which does work in Vista 64bit. But paying $250 to upgrade a codec doesn't sound too appealing! Essentially I need Cineform because I shoot with a 35mm adapter, and it will flip the image when capturing. Although, the First Light app they include with HD would come in handy.

About soloing each track and rendering uncompressed. I would then still need to composite them just the same, right? Would the difference be in just having full length files to work with instead of tiny segments? And yes, already using Cineform. Although I have a little Canon SX200 now too, and the AVCHD files from that run very smoothly.


Rob, selectively rendering parts sounds like a good idea. I guess it would be done by setting up regions, batch rendering them and then loading the rendered files back into those regions? Unless there was a way to render them to a new track? I might even try that to fix up the broken parts in this video I'm having problems with.
UlfLaursen wrote on 10/1/2009, 5:03 AM
I still use ver 7d on one PC - still good for many things :-)

/Ulf
farss wrote on 10/1/2009, 5:18 AM
"I would then still need to composite them just the same, right?"

Yes you would however this is a task I've yet to have Vegas ever baulk at.

"Would the difference be in just having full length files to work with instead of tiny segments?"

Yes. It's no more than another way to try to see how it sits with your workflow. I'd see it as a plus because it involves little thought. Also as tracks get rendered you could even try replacing the original track in the project, maybe just one of the tracks and its FX was what was causing Vegas to spin out.

When I asked about 32bit mode I was referring to the project compositing mode. 32bit uses a lot more CPU and RAM than 8bit.

The other obvious suggestion is to give your hardware a good shakeout but I think you said you get the same problem with this project on several PCs. Also check that your drivers for everything are the latest. I cured a few issues with After Effects by upgrading my video card drivers. This quite surprised me as the card design is quite old and I figured after 18 months the drivers should be stable, hah! I've read of users curing odd Vegas video problems by upgrading their audio device drivers.

rmack350 wrote on 10/1/2009, 8:11 AM
I like Bob's idea about rendering out isolated tracks or groups of tracks because it gets you to think in a more structured way about a project. One of the problems with Vegas is that it'll let you do everything in one project without a render step. (That's also a feature, but it gives you plenty of rope to hang yourself).

What I'm getting at with the prerender is that this naturally and automatically renders a string of small files, so if Vegas crashes you still have a bunch of prerenders you could use, even if you had to pull them out of the prerender folder (to keep Vegas from deleting them) and put them on a new track on the timeline. Setting region marks would be a good idea so you know just where those prerenders would need to go on the timeline.

I've not had a problem project to try this on but I'm assuming it'd work. You can definitely save the prerenders and put them on the timeline, I just don't know if this solves a problem.

Rob Mack
Jeff9329 wrote on 10/2/2009, 10:43 AM
Glenn:

What is the type of native video file you are working with?

Some AVCHD files can get a minor corruption which chokes Vegas during the render although they otherwise playback correctly.

Are the crashes at a certain point every time, or random?

Although the large still image size bug is supposed to be corrected, I would resize in a photo program to the project size as a precaution. It will also make the output look better if Vegas does not do the resize.
winrockpost wrote on 10/2/2009, 7:46 PM
I have no answers, vegas 8 is runnin great for me , 9 was a disaster when I ran the trial on my computer , of course the trial ran out and I have no idea if the updates will run or not . nothing in 9 I'm needing anyway,, but if I needed the big pics stuff as promoted I'd want it .
I wish madison would spend some time and come up with a system spec sheet saying what system configuration and mfg parts will run vegas as promoted.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/2/2009, 8:35 PM
Based on these three statements:

> (1) One of the error messages I received was that my machine was low on memory.

> (2) I'm just running a 3gb XP machine with no other programs running.

> (3) My background images are 8mp in size. That's one of the reasons I went for V9, support for larger images.

I would say that while Vegas Pro 9 can handle very large images... your PC cannot! XP will only give 2GB to any program so XP is part of your problem. I would definitely upgrade to Vista 64 (although Windows 7 is being released this month on the 22nd so that is what I'd upgrade to). Then you'll need lots more memory. I have 8GB in my Vista 64 PC.

What I would do is resize those 8MP images to something more manageable. Do you really need all that resolution? Are you zooming in that far? Only use the resolution you need. If you are not zooming then resize them to 1920x1080.

Here's an idea if you really do need to do deep zooming... Delete everything in the project except the 8MP images and save it as a new name. Then render just the 8MP images out as video. Then add the video back to your original project. This will eliminate those large images from the equation. Like I said... large image support works great in on Vista 64 with 8GB of memory... not so good with XP32 and 2GB of memory limit.

~jr
busterkeaton wrote on 10/2/2009, 10:08 PM
building on what JR is saying

With no zooming, your images should only be 1920x1080. Only if you are zooming in or out 50% would you need your images at 8mp. And 50% is a pretty significant zoom.
TShaw wrote on 10/3/2009, 3:29 AM
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. God I love a great train wreck!
PeterWright wrote on 10/3/2009, 4:24 AM
I'm not sure what your agenda is TShaw, and whilst I feel really sorry for anyone having trouble getting their projects done, I would like to remind folks that Vegas 9 is not bad for everyone.

I have a modest PC system by modern standards, but since 9.0b I have not had a single problem producing and rendering any of my projects.
I mostly use EX1 HD, not AVCHD, and I know to avoid unecessarily huge stills, and lately, especially with the addition of Production Assistant, I have been as excited about Vegas's performance as I was when I first found Vegas 3.
JJKizak wrote on 10/3/2009, 4:59 AM
What JohnnyRoy said, take it to the bank.
JJK
farss wrote on 10/3/2009, 6:55 AM
Oh well, I guess I'll find out soon enough :(

The inevitable has happened, someone gave me a HDD with many hours of AVCHD from a multicam shoot of a looong concert to edit. So far so good. VeggieToolkit it working overtime rendering all the files to MXF 4:2:2.

Wish me luck. So far the images look shocking and the only audio is from the camera(s) and they were all at the back of the venue.

Bob.
Glenn Thomas wrote on 10/5/2009, 6:29 AM
Sorry about the late reply here, and thanks again for all the responses.

That particular video is finished, with all bugs sorted. One of the issues I had was glitches in some of the automation I was using on still image backgrounds. I figured out what I was doing wrong there. When I copied a part with automation, if the new location was a longer length I would timestretch the clip to that length by holding ctrl so that my end automation keyframe would stay the same. As it turns out, still images can't be timestretched. It just made a mess of the automation parameters. It didn't cause a crash though.

Bob, yes, I might see if my drivers need updating. Also, pre-rendering parts to a new track is definitely something I'll be doing from now on if it's a complex project. 32bit mode, sorry about the confusion. No, I've never used it, always 8 bit, because that's all Cineform Neo HDV is compatible with as far as I know. If I ever get banding issues, Neat Video will clean that up.

Jeff, like I mentioned, I'm just using Cineform Neo HDV which I need for it's flip mode when capturing footage shot using a 35mm adapter which is a permanent fixture on my camera.

Johnny, yes, I do need to keep the image sizes large. With chromakeyed shots I'll use one large background. This would normally cover a wide shot. But for close ups I'll zoom in to simulate how the shot would look with a real camera. I do use a bit of blur on the background though.

That said, I've never had problems with large background before, so I'm not sure if that would be the problem. They're only about 2.5mb in size, so wouldn't use much memery, and I've only used a few of them.

I might think about upgrading to Windows 7 64bit. That would be nice. But I would need to upgrade to Cineform HD, and I'm not sure if it works with Windows 7 yet.

Thanks again for all the replies. I was obviously having a bad day when I posted this. Two projects on and everything's running smoothly again.