Can you try unplugging one monitor and see if Vegas can figure out which is the external one?

You did set which monitor is for external preview under preferences/preview device?

I have tried that. Whatever monitor I have it set to goes completely black when I try to view it externally, then if I am playing in the timeline it slows to about 1 frame every 5 seconds for a bit then completely crashes or "whites out" then crashes.

If others don't chime in with ideas I'd suggest filing a tech support ticket with Magix detailing your exact set up and what you've tried to remedy it.

(I have 2 monitors and haven't had issues. I'm on NVIDIA, though.)

This is very interesting, because your system is nearly identical to mine (though your CPU is newer, I have a Ryzen 7 1800x), and I don't have this issue.

I do know some Radeon VII cards are unstable due to overheating (apparently it's difficult to get the heat sync to lay flat against the HBM2 RAM, from what I gather), but I highly doubt this is the cause of your issue. Mine has been solid, even in 32 bit HDR projects being sent to my LG OLED TV.

Just out of curiosity, do you have the monitor connected to the display ports, or the HDMI out? I'm using HDMI for the secondary.

One more thing to check... are you using the latest enterprise driver from AMD? They have separate drivers now for media production, that are supposed to be more stable than the game drivers that they give you by default.

I have exactly the same thing thing with a laptop w a rtx2070 maxq gpu. goes black / crashed the second i switch to full screen preview

fr0sty - I saw both options on AMDs site, I thought it was odd, I have never seen that before. I did try it. I wasn't even sure they were the correct drivers at first because it seemed to only have an option to install the entire Adrenalin software set they had. It should not be heat - even cold card on cold start up will do this immediately. I have never had a problem with at least VP 17, and VP14 I either had to have the main window on a certain monitor, or set my display scaling to 100% instead of 150% which made everything nearly impossible to read. If I did not do that I was only seeing half the preview on the other monitors I chose (I think I had a post about that last year, but shortly after VP17 came out and it was a non issue). Either way, I was at least getting some kind of display on the other monitors and it never did crash.

I am using 3 display ports on the back, no HDMI. All monitors are identical, and PC is in the other room (LARGE utility/storage room) so all wiring run to there for sound control.

UPDATE: I still do not have this fully figured out - but seem to have made a bit of progress, though I do not even know why or how.

I used Acronis to go back to the fresh windows install I had yesterday (I have used this software and similar software for more than 20 years without issue).

Oddly enough this time my secondary displays were working. The ONLY thing I did between this install over yesterday was physically add a 2nd Radeon VII, and then remove it - and both were on my "Full/Old" installation, so I never did it on the fresh Windows install. It only ever had 1 GPU installed.

While I was not thrilled about the new possibility of reinstalling every part of my system piece by piece - at least I was on the right track.

I ran into new issues though, and hope to get them answered here if possible without starting a new post.

So, I started installing all the parts of the suite. Realizing in the middle of this how many licenses I had on the other installation that needed deactivation - the headaches began again. At least Vegas itself you can deactivate other installations from anywhere, I wish other vendors would take note... I have since gone between both installations using the imaging software about a half dozen times this morning. I really need to take note on what I have in an organized fashion I guess, I kept forgetting about some plugins.

I think I have everything I need - or at least use on a regular basis on the new windows installation - with the exception of Spectral Layers 6. When I go back to the old windows installation and use the elicenser for it I see no way I can remove or deactivate the license. Am I missing something?

I would love to just have one installation of Vegas Pro these days instead of up to 6 versions like I have had in the past just to use specific plugins/features.

I WAS pleasantly surprised that I was able to get my Mercalli Plug-ins from VP14 to install and activate within VP18 - as I was never able to do so in VP17 - so I kept VP14 on my system and it was pain whenever I wanted to use them for cmos fixing or stabilization pulling clips from VP17 just to do it. I was never happy with the stabilization included with VP17.

The other plugin (not included with any of the VP releases) I have that I cannot use is my old Pluraleyes 3.5 - and have not been able to install that in anything newer than VP13 so that remains on my system as well, but I gave up hope on that years ago. I just sync up my projects in VP13 then open them in newer versions.

I do have other issues with playback and scrubbing in VP18 vs VP17 but I will make a separate post for that.

Thanks for keeping system images. You have brought me much joy.

Thanks for keeping system images. You have brought me much joy.

HA! I will say I have never used it so much EVER as I have this morning. Going back and forth and back and forth back and forth all morning. I am sure my main m.2 SSD Loves me with all the rewriting on it today. But hey - each installation I keep going to was just as solid (or apparently not) as the last time I visited it!

I usually restore back to my main setup every 1-3 months just to keep it fresh.

I am having the same issue. Just upgraded to 18 Pro from 17 Pro today. No issues in 17 Pro. Now I have my usual crashing while editing issues AND this new issue. Can someone please help!

A VERY FRUSTRATED VEGAS USER!!!

VP18 Build 373

------------------
System Information
------------------
      Time of this report: 11/30/2020, 12:13:07
         Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 18363) (18362.19h1_release.190318-1202)
                 Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
      System Manufacturer: Alienware
             System Model: Alienware Aurora R9
                     BIOS: 1.0.8 (type: UEFI)
                Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900 CPU @ 3.10GHz (16 CPUs), ~3.1GHz
                   Memory: 32768MB RAM
      Available OS Memory: 32594MB RAM
                Page File: 27503MB used, 9953MB available
              Windows Dir: C:\Windows
          DirectX Version: DirectX 12
      DX Setup Parameters: Not found
         User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
       System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
          DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
                 Miracast: Available, with HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported
 DirectX Database Version: Unknown

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
           Card name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
        Manufacturer: NVIDIA
           Chip type: GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
            DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

FWIW, I was crashing VP18 multiple times per hour. With the following one change to my Preferences I now edit for days without a single crash: Under File I/O I enabled Legacy AVC Decoding. That's it, easy to try and maybe it will help.

What that does is disable GPU acceleration of the timeline by using compoundplug rather than So4compoung plug. Just so that you are aware.

@andyrpsmith, thanks for that insight. I just tested my PC GPU utilization with and without Legacy AVC Decoding enabled. In Task Manager with a test project I get 13-15% GPU utilization when playing the timeline on Best Full. In other words, on my PC I'm not seeing that setting changing GPU utilization. Is that what you would expect?

@Teetime

Are you using h.264 footage that can be accelerated? I think you can see the decoder used by looking at the event properties. If so you should see activity under "decoding" in task manager. Overall GPU % may not be so meaningful as the GPU also does other things. I assume you're on a studio or enterprise driver.

Yes RogerS is right in that in the video decoding box in GPU task manager you should see 0% when compoundplug is the decoder under the properties tab. If GPU is active typically you would see 50% - 17% (with my GPU) in the decoding box and So4compoundplug as the decoder in clip properties.

@andyrpsmith, yes, the decoding goes to zero when compoundplug is the decoder. Of course, the real question here is why does enabling So4compound plug cause frequent crashes in my Vegas? None of the other five or so apps on my computer that see frequent use of the GPU cause crashes. Adobe PS and LR have been used to decode this same footage I'm using in Vegas without problem. This seems to suggest there is a problem with So4compund plug.

V18 is running very stable for me at the moment, i5 (3rd Gen), 32GB RAM, Nvidia 1080Ti GPU. I only have XAVC-S 4K media from my Sony AX100 & AX700 camcorders. I have dynamic Ram Preview set at 0 and max rendering threads set to 4 as the i5 4-core has no hyper-threading. The version of So4compoundplug is the best so far (for me) V18 renders 35% faster than V17 and is more snappy all round.

Do you have CPU on board graphics running as well as the Nvidia 1660 Super?

What's the footage? That makes the difference in my experience. Perhaps start a new thread and share full media details.

no problem here with nVidia and latest studio drivers. mixed bag, main is 4K @175% the ext monitor is 1080@100%. all good. Mind you both are running of my GPU as I have internal disabled.

Do you have CPU on board graphics running as well as the Nvidia 1660 Super?

The 3700X has no integrated GPU.