Vegas Video locks up when hitting playback

timoheil wrote on 5/13/2001, 12:13 PM
I already sent an email to SF's support, but as it's
weekend and the USA are 6 (or more) hours "behind", maybe
someone in this forum can help me.

Here's what I sent to SF:

"Yesterday VV suddenly locked up when I tried to playback a
(Video)-project I'm currently working on. Whenever I hit
the playback button, VV freezes, I cannot even playback
Audiofiles opened in the trimmer. Sometimes it gives me the
message that "an error occured". When I click on details it
tells me that V caused an error in "vidpcore.dll" (I
already deleted that dll and "repaired" the setup using
vegas.msi, but it didn't help, removing VV completely and
re-installing it also didn't cure the problem).

AND This: I cannot open SoundForge or any other application
=> "not enough memory"!!!! I have 512MB, and all the
ressources (GUI etc.) are way over 50% all the time). When
I close the song, everything is fine again.

It only happens with that single song! An older version of
the project, with about the same number of files (it's
_one_ 8 minute DV-AVI plus many audio-files) works fine.
I didn't make any changes to my system. I upgraded from
256MB to 512MB memory recently, but I could work with
that "new" RAM without any problems so far. I removed the
new RAM-chip to see if that solves the problem, but it
didn't help. So I suppose it's not the RAM (BTW: it's high-
quality Infineon-RAM).

How can it be that only that single song suddenly causes
problems??? Is the song corrupt? About 1 out 50 times that
I open the song, playback works fine, and there's enough
memory to work on it and open other applications. Then
suddenly the song would lock up again. And when I restart
VV, I'm having the same problem again.

Your help is highly appreciated! I really have to finish
that project.

regards
-timo-"

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 5/14/2001, 8:40 AM
It is possible that there is a corrupt file, but it could
also be a system problem- maybe too many fx or a problem
with the new ram?

timoheil wrote on 5/14/2001, 9:34 AM
>It is possible that there is a corrupt file

Do you mean that one of the files in the project is
corrupt, or that the whole *.veg-file is corrupt?

>but it could also be a system problem

I have an Athlon 700Mhz, it should be powerful enough to
handle the amount of effects applied. It's really weird,
because older versions of the project run without any
problems.

>maybe too many fx

what is an/one "fx"? I only have audio-effects in the
tracks...the number of effects has not increased since
several "versions" of the project. There are no video-
transitions, just some fade-ins/outs. I have some generated
text here and there, but removing it doesn't solve the
problem.

>or a problem with the new ram?

I don't think so. I removed the new ram, but the problem
remains.

Unfortunately opening an empty project an copying the
objects isn't a solution either, because it's not possible
to open a second instance of VV: "not enough RAM....."
SonyEPM wrote on 5/14/2001, 12:03 PM
At this point I would open the project, save a copy, and
then start selectively deleting things until I found the
culprit. Quite possibly there are too many audio fx and/or
too many busses for the system to handle (any system can at
some point be overloaded, no matter how powerful).

I don't know if this is the case, but if you are running
files off a network, I'd bring those over to a local drive.
timoheil wrote on 5/14/2001, 1:39 PM
Fortunately I finally found the cause for the problem:
it was a track with subtitles (about 30 objects using the
VideoFactory Text-PlugIn). I deleted the track and (!!!)
cleaned the media pool and everything was fine again!!!

If I run the the project with all tracks except for the
subtitles deleted, this "subtitles"-only film runs fine,
too (but only after I cleaned the Media Pool).
But if I open a second VV instance with the whole "without-
subtitles"-project. VV immediately crashes => "an exception
was caused in vidcore.dll...". The combination still seems
to cause problems...

Could it be that the VideoFactory Text-PlugIn is somehow
buggy causing somekind of memory-leak in combination with
the other tracks/files?

I prefered the Video-Factory-PugIn over the conventional
Text-Generator because of it's shadow-effects. I'm using
the normal text-plugin on other tracks in the film without
any problems. I will now rewrite all the subtitles using
the normal text-plugin.
SonyEPM wrote on 5/14/2001, 2:27 PM
Depending on the system, the number of separate generated
media instances, as well as project complexity, you may see
reach a point of system overload.

If you do indeed have many different credit events,
consider adding them in a second pass (over top of a
rendered video file, in a new project).

We'll be improving generated media performance (and general
media handling efficiency)in Vegas 3.