HELP! Vegas crashing!

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David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
I have a friend who is working on a wedding video project using Vegas Pro 8.0c.

When she started this project, she was using a laptop with an Intel i3 processor. She was having extreme problems with Vegas crashing constantly -- at first when she tried to render and then it got to where she couldn't even add a clip to the timeline.

At my suggestion, she bought a HP desktop PC. Windows 8, AMD 6-core processor, 10GB RAM, 2TB hard drive. It's essentially the same PC I use for editing, except mine runs Windows 7, (I also use Vegas Pro 8.0c.)

She had the new PC shipped to me, and brought me her external USB hard drive with the project files on it. I setup the PC, got Vegas installed, and had no problem at all rendering her project. So I figured she was good to go.

She took the PC home, and within a day Vegas was freezing when rendering. She's about to pull her hair out!

Now, some more info. The project has clips from 3 different cameras -- a mix of .MOV (HDV) and .M2TS. I know, that's not ideal. But keep in mind that it worked for me. And I often do similar projects with a mix of formats like that. FYI, I did install the older version of QuickTime -- version 7.6.

One concern I have is that the files are on a USB drive, not an internal SATA drive. But again, I had no problems rendering them when the computer was at my house.

Two other things. She uses the Neat Video plugin, which I've read can cause Vegas crashes. She also turned on the Norton antivirus software, which I had intentionally not done. But she has now uninstalled Neat and disabled Norton, and it still freezes on rendering.

The only other difference that occurs to me is she is using a wireless keyboard and mouse, where I had used a USB keyboard and mouse.

Any thoughts? HELP!!!!!
 
David W. Richardson said:
She was having extreme problems with Vegas crashing constantly -- [..] She uses the Neat Video plugin, which I've read can cause Vegas crashes.
Click to expand...
What's the output format? I had similar issues when exporting to .mp4 using the Sony AVC presets. I had similar problems with QuickTime as well.
One thing that works fine for me, is the FrameServe DebugMode (here's a tutorial):

1. Select Render As

2. Under "Save as type" I then select "Debug Framserver (*.avi)"

3. Click "Save" and a box will appear that says "Frameserver - (Setup)

You have a choice here to save as RGB24, RGB32, or YUY2 (I usually choose RGB32). I also click on the "Write audio as PCM samples in signpost AVI" checkbox. I leave the "Enable Network Frameserving" box unchecked.

4. Click "Next"

What this does is save a fake AVI to your desktop. It's not real...just a streaming AVI being fed by Sony Vegas. At this point you can open that fake AVI in most programs that plays AVI's. I would render a finished file through Debug Frameserver and open that fake AVI with MeGui/Handbrake/VidCoder or any other software that will open that "fake" AVI. The one that works best is VidCoder in my experience.

5. Open your encoding software and choose the format you would like to save your file in.

6. Once you mark all your settings for that file hit render and you are done.

It's not very user friendly, but it get the job's done. It's also free apps and VidCoder encode videos way better than the Sony AVC or the MainConcept presets.
 
David W. Richardson said:
Wow! Thanks man! We'll give that a try.
Click to expand...

No problems. I went through this myself, so I know the situation.
VidCoder works very well for h.264 videos. For anything that needs to be DVD based (mpeg2 @ 720*480), HCencoder works well too. Just like MeGui, it uses Avisynth scripts to load the videos. Once you got how it works, you can write down your own scripts and compress to any resolution/fps as needed.
If you want to play around with something that requires Avisynth scripts, let me know. I can post some examples.

For HCencoder, if you work with cropped videos, this one works fine (simply copy/paste into notepad, then save as ".avs" and you're done):

filename="X"
b = directshowsource(filename, fps=23.976, audio=false, convertfps=true)
Spline64Resize(720,480) # Spline64 (sharp)
b=last
b=b.ConvertToYV12()
return b

Just replace the "X" by the Path of your filename and the video will load. Then it will encode using the settings in the script.
Hope it helps!
 
I appreciate all the great information, drapeama! I won't be sitting at her computer to try any of it until Sunday, but I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks so much!
 
I was editing a project shot by madmen. They gave me an external hard drive full of PAL MPEG2 files and huge stills. I had to convert all the video files and resize the stills, or Vegas 8 would lock up and crash on me. It's the only time I've ever had any stability problems with Vegas.
 
It may not be possible, but you might consider downgrading Windows to version 7. Win 7 has been flawless for me, but Win 8 has been a nightmare. I know that there is a free Win 8.1 fix coming, but if you can't wait to see if 8.1 fixes things, then find a way to downgrade ( really an upgrade from Win 8 ) to Win 7.
 
I've read that once you're on Windows 8, you can never go back. Don't know if that's true. But we're hesitant to spend money for Windows 7 at this point.

Okay, there's a new wrinkle.

She created a new project. Added files from the wedding to the Project Media -- not all of them, but a lot, and some from each camera.

She added a number of clips to the timeline, some from each camera -- making a total of about 4 minutes of video.

It rendered fine.

Then she added more clips to the timeline. When the timeline got to be longer than 5 minutes, it started freezing during render -- again.

So now I'm really perplexed!
 
David W. Richardson said:
When the timeline got to be longer than 5 minutes, it started freezing during render -- again.

So now I'm really perplexed!
Click to expand...

I must admit that I am as well. Last time I got problems with Vegas, I started a new project from scratch and the issue was gone. But depending where you are into the editing process, it might be PITA.
 
drapeama said:
I must admit that I am as well. Last time I got problems with Vegas, I started a new project from scratch and the issue was gone. But depending where you are into the editing process, it might be PITA.
Click to expand...

Well when I get the computer, I'll be able to do some exhaustive testing. I'm thinking the HDV footage might need to be re-captured. What I may do is open a new HDV project, add all the HDV clips, then render them one by one to .MOV files. Then replace the .M2T files in the original project with the .MOV renders. See if that changes anything.
 
Well I've done a number of things and am now able to get successful renders.

I did manage to find where to adjust what I assume is GPU acceleration in Windows 8 -- it's in the "Gaming" options.

I also uninstalled Norton, just on general principle, and installed a different antivirus app.

I deleted all .sfk and .sfl files.

But the biggest problem seems to be the fact that 3 of the 4 cameras used were shooting interlaced (upper field first), while the 4th camera was shooting progressive. Most of the clips used on the timeline thus far were from the progressive camera, and the project properties are set to progressive. But the renders appeared to be freezing at a transition between a progressive clip and an interlaced clip.

At the points where those hangs were occurring, I made a progressive version of the original clip and did a 'replace' in the project media. That seems to have resolved those freezes.

However, the video still has a long way to go to be completed, and I'm sure many more of the interlaced shots will be used. So progressive versions of the clips used will have to be created and substituted. Hopefully that will prevent any further problems.
 
Interesting. Vegas is usually so relaxed about mixing wildly different clip formats.

In this case, would it be practical to do some sort of batch re-render of all the interlaced shots to create progressive versions?

Hmm, I also wonder if this problem could be codec-related, i.e. Vegas is using an almost-but-not-quite-ideal codec (because of what codecs happen to be on the PC) to process some of the clips. Diagnosing codec problems is a nightmare - I'm guessing it's no better on Windows 8. But again, re-rendering may be a workaround solution.
 
clang said:
Interesting. Vegas is usually so relaxed about mixing wildly different clip formats.

In this case, would it be practical to do some sort of batch re-render of all the interlaced shots to create progressive versions?

Hmm, I also wonder if this problem could be codec-related, i.e. Vegas is using an almost-but-not-quite-ideal codec (because of what codecs happen to be on the PC) to process some of the clips. Diagnosing codec problems is a nightmare - I'm guessing it's no better on Windows 8. But again, re-rendering may be a workaround solution.
Click to expand...

That's actually what I'm doing right now -- using batch rendering to re-render the clips into progressive format. I should also mention that 2 of the cameras shot MPEG-2 and the other 2 shot H.264. Of the 2 that were MPEG-2, one of them was HDV (1440x1080, PAR 1.333) and the other was 1920x1080 PAR 1.0.

And if that weren't bad enough, one of the DSLR's -- the ONLY cam that shot progressive -- was shooting 24fps. All the other cams were shooting 30fps.

So I'm basically having to re-render over 350 clips to conform them for this project.

Fun fun fun...
 
Ha! I'm surprised you're not having problems with the 4 sets of footage not matching due to white balance and other camera settings - that's the more common problem I've had with multi-cam shoots.
 
clang said:
Ha! I'm surprised you're not having problems with the 4 sets of footage not matching due to white balance and other camera settings - that's the more common problem I've had with multi-cam shoots.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Bad prep on our part. Hard lesson learned. Got another wedding coming up, and believe me -- ALL cameras will be set the same. 30fps interlaced. Or 24fps progressive. It seems the Canon T3i and T4i only shoot progressive at 24fps.
 
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