I successfully rendered to DVD NTSC last night - 14 minute clip in 26 minutes - pagefiles stayed under 2.3 and processor utilization ran from 75-100% averaging around 90. I turned off the 32 bit floating point color though

I did a 32bit float color AVCHD project to Cineform 1080i last night.

I had several crashed renders all day Friday. Even with preview RAM set at 128, 256, 750 and 1 gig. I had threads set to 1

What finaly worked was this:

750 preview RAM
AVI multithreading disabled
1 CPU thread set
Quad core sut OFF in the PC BIOS!

That's it! The only difference between sucess and failure for this weekend's project was going into the BIOS of my PC and turning off multithreading. (makes my quad look like a dual-core in Windows)

It's a "biter-sweet" victory,.... but a victory non the less.

CT

I changed my Pagefile management in windows to let windows manage it instead of leaving it set to the 2000/4000 min / max settings and succeeded in burning a 14 min video in DVD Architect Video stream for NTSC 720x480 - not with 32 bit color. Seemed to run smooth and even had a couple other apps open at the time.

that being said - I wasn't impressed with the image quality on SD bigscreen TV - it did sound nice though with 5.1 sound. Whats a good setting to use to play on a progressive scan player to a SD TV for high quality video? I did have video set on the best setting not good.

On my QUAD QX9650 rendering out BLurat 1920x1080i (PAL) crashed Vegas 8.0c very frequenlty.

I turnde finally the number of render threads to 1 ( in Vega's own control palel) - AND VOILA !!! - every render is a success, albeit a very slow one...

The combination of a Quad, Vegas 8.0c and at least AVCHD rendered to Bluray is not a very happy one, you cannot use the full potential of all 4 cores you paid for!!!

This is bad, there MUST be soon a 8.0d release to fix this...

8.1 works fine...

Christian

Are you running 8.1 on Vista 64-bit, or XP 64-bit?

I have an extra 80GB hard-drive in my new quad core machine, and was thinking about maybe getting XP 64-bit and installing it. But then I read where SCS is saying that they are not supporting the XP version. But then I have seen folks say that they were actually running it on XP, so I wonder...

Thanks.

TB

Hi,

I'm running Vista x64. Before I run Vegas 8.0b on XP x64 with no problems whatsover. Neither was VP 8 supported on XP x64, but it worked fine, with the only expception - media manager that I had to disable.

If you have the spare drive and a free licence hanging around for XP x64, why not try and see ??? I liked XP x64 very much, it was rock solid and I found all necessary drivers I needed... RIP. I would probably still be on XP x64 if it would not have been because my LG Bluray/HD internal burner, that was NOT natively supported in XP x64. No bluray burners are. So if you have plans to burn blu-ray discs, stay away from XP x64...

I don't have either version of a 64-bit OS right now, so I would have to buy one or the other. It looks as though I will probably just have to resign myself to buying Vista 64-bit...sigh. I run Vista 32-bit OS on my laptop, and it's a resource hog with serious "issues" now and again. But someone on this forum had commented once on how much less problematic Vista 64-bit was compared to the 32-bit version--so maybe that's an encouraging sign. But I also have two DIMM slots open on my machine, so I can increase my RAM from 4GB to 8GB available with the 64-bit system.

Now to only figure out which version of Vista 64-bit OS to buy, if I don't want to take a $100+ chance that XP 64-bit will indeed work. But if I buy a new version of Vista now, it should have all the SP1 fixes applied and thus it shouldn't have the issues I've had with my 32-bit (pre-SP1) version. Shoot--I've tried on two occasions to apply SP1 to my laptop, and both times it totally failed. This last time it almost hosed my whole system! I won't be trying *that* again anyway.

TB

I asked this question to sony technical support and got the following answer below. Their answer doesn't exactly give me confidence that they are taking this bug seriously since they make it sound like it doesn't affect enough people. Maybe if more people write in and complain about the avchd/quad/8c problem, they may fix this bug soon. For now, I'm just using 8b which is very stable and seems to produce high quality hd footage (despite being 1440x1080 at 15 mbs). Since the 1920x1080 is only 16 mbs I'm not sure it is that much better. Howver, to go forward, it would be nice to update with each new version that comes along and not end up with an unworkable avchd editor.


Thank you for contacting Sony Creative Software.

We do have an issue logged into the knowledge base where the software is not able to render 1920 x 1080 files. A small number of customers have been reporting this issue and the engineering team has reproduced it in house. Typically this type of an issue will be fixed in a later update of the software. We do not have a scheduled release timetable for updates, as they are produced on an as needed basis.

If you still have a follow-up question on this particular incident, please feel free to update it. If you have a completely different question, please create a new incident.

Sincerely,

Eric D.
Customer Service & Technical Support
Sony Creative Software Inc
www.sonycreativesoftware.com

Hi,

I just filed my "ticket" about this problem. The automated immediate anwer was that ..hey, we noticed that you use Vista 64 that is not supported, don't blaim us since you are running on the ONLY possible and available 64 bit OS...

Ok - I could buy Vista 32 bit meanwhile (=total insanity!) before SCS gets the act together, but I'm not willing to pay for it and downgrade my system, and reinstall EVERYTHING...arrghh... It's NOT an option. And probably not the reason either. And I installed 64bit Vista just for the sake of 8.1 - it works, but there are practically no plugin support that I'm depending on very much...

Please SCS - take this seriously as any vendor should that sells a PRO product for other PROfessionals. We take this also seriously. Just release a simple patch or 8.0d. You don't loose your face, on the contrary, reacting to such glitches will earn you a better reputation for keeping what you promise. There are still many unused letters in the alphabet ;)

These words might sound harsh, I apologize for that, but you must also understand the frustration when people are forced to find workarounds to get just normal things done!!!

Please take this as a constructive critisism!!! :)

Christian

Just to confirm your speculation, I'm running vista 32 on a dell quad processor and 8c crashes if there is avchd footage in my project. It is fairly random so if the avchd footage is less than a few minutes, I might successfully render at 1920x1080 blu-ray or 1920x1080 avchd. However, anything longer than that will result in a crash. If I just have still images or standard definition dv video and render to 1920x1080, 8.0c works fine. So it does have to do with quad (with mulitple threads)/avchd/8.0c.. Looks like 8.1 gets around the problem, but I don't want to change my operating system to 64 bit just becuse vegas has a bug. This could mes up many of my other programs, peripherals, etc. So 8b it is for the time being. Hopefully with more complaints, sony will do something.
Hari

I'm a heavy user of Vegas. Long and short form, lots of layers and track motion, lots of graphics.

Other than render freeze ups if very hi res photos were involved, a problem easily cured for me at least by using low res versions, Vegas 8.0c has worked flawlessly with one exception.

With 8.0c, I now experience quirkiness with preview out through firewire and every once in a while during PTT. NEVER had that problem in any previous version since V3.

Mike

>> With 8.0c, I now experience quirkiness with preview out through firewire and every once in a while during PTT. NEVER had that problem in any previous version since V3.

i have this problem since... always...

Hari,

Have you tried to set the number of render threads to 1 (in the Vegas preferences panel)???

It would be nice to know if this solves your render problems with Bluray output. It helped me on my 64 bit system with Vegas Pro 8.0c.

Can you please try it? It would be valuable info.

Christian

Christian,
Yes, 8c works for me if I set the # of threads to just 1 with 8c. However, I've reverted to 8b since I can use all 4 threads and my cpu is 100% used during the render. Even though it is at 1440x1080 I still get widescreen hd output that looks good.
Hari

Thanks Hari, that is what I wanted to know. It means that there is NO guarantee Vegas Pro 8.0c would work with all 4 threads enabled on my PC rendering Bluray. That is - if I should go back from Vista 64 to XP 32 bit. And who actually would - such a mess it would be - and ONLY for the sake of VEGAS !!!!

That is what SCS suggested me to do, since 8.0c is not "officially supported" on Vista 64. Ok, they also suggested that I turn off all extra processes. I have done that already BEFORE they told me to do so. Nothing else helps - just going down to 1 or 2 cores - and then I can reder Blueray output without the application dying on me...

8.0C has serious problems on a quad running on all 4 cores, and rendering Bluray output. I can run on two cores, but hey, why did I pay for a quad core in the first place, if I cannot use them with Vegas, where tey are really needed ???!!!

SCS, get you act together and release a bug fix, it seems that this problem is recognized and more common that you think, but just a "few" of us have complained about it. One complaint should be too many if you can reproduce the problem.

So - I have to revert to 8.0b OR use 8.1 - but then without plugins that I need....Aaaarghhh...

Christian

"8.0C has serious problems on a quad running on all 4 cores, and rendering Bluray output. I can run on two cores, but hey, why did I pay for a quad core in the first place, if I cannot use them with Vegas, where tey are really needed ???!!!"

Again, and I'm sorry Christian, but I have to disagree with that. I think (for what ever reason) 8c is having problems running on YOUR quad core machine.... and maybe a few others. I'm having no problems at all.... and I'm rendering for Blu Ray as well.

I have no problems on my Quad core 6600. 8.0c uses all 4 cores.
JJK

Well Blink,

You are a lucky one. Then, we not might have the SAME quads, or the same mobos... (I'm running on Asus P5E3Deluxe Wifi, and QX9650). NOTHING I have tested (including killing ALL other possible processes) fixes the problem - EXCEPT for the fact that if I got from 4 cores down to one or two, everything works fine. I have this problem ONLY with AVCDH (1920x1080 50i) on timeline rendering out as Bluray (1920x1080 50i). Mpeg2 rendering to DVD works fine. Maybe you don't use this combination at all???

However, 8.1 runs flawlessly with all 4 cores whining at 100%, with the same project, with NO plugins other than native Vegas ones!!! And with ALL processes running in the bakcground that just happens to run.

So, is there something wrong with my hardware - or something wrong in 8.0c? You don't have to be very educated to have the right guess....

What else can I say... It would of course be educational if you would bother to test those formats I'm using, and THEN make your conclusions... Please, don't bother to swap the CPU to an QX9650 for my sake ;)

Anyhow, I appreciate your input. Even if you are blunt sometimes, you quite often have a good point - or two :)

Christian

EDIT: Just a thought - are you still NOT using a page file? This MIGHT have to do with the page file, since I can see an increase in its size just before Vegas dies...

Christian,

Please list the specifics you are using in the render settings (saved file type, exact template used, video-only, etc...) so I can try it. Also, how long are the typical projects that you have problems with? I have never rendered for Blu-ray before, but I do have an Intel Q9450 quad core. My system is running XP 32-bit, with 4gb ram. The motherboard is an Abit IP35 Pro. I typically run all 4 cores with renders. My machine is an audio/video-only machine, with an OEM operating system, and minimal software besides Vegas/DVD Architect and SONAR.

As I type this I am rendering an AVCHD clip of about 3 minutes, and thus far it seems to be working normally. It hasn't quite finished yet, so if there's a problem I can edit the post. But I would like to try to duplicate the problems you are having, mainly because I am just trying to learn about the problems folks have been having.

But other than a (to be expected) drastic decrease in the frame fates of my clips, switching to AVCHD has been trouble-free thus far.

TB

Hi TB,

Thanks for your kind williness to help. To be able to duplicate this problem on other systems, would probably put SCS into a higher gear solving the problem.

Im' not in my office at this time, but will be back soon with the requested details.

To begin with, I have the QX 9650, you have the QX9450. Would that be a problem? Are these basically the same CPU - or what is the difference?

Christian

Well, there isn't much difference with the two processors, as far as I can tell. They are both LGA 775 with 12MB cache. My unit was rated for 2.66GHz clock speed, while yours is 3.0GHz. However mine is overclocked at 3.2GHz, and I presume that yours (even if you didn't overclock it) runs a little faster than the 3GHz rating. So my guess is that there is so little difference between our two processors, that it simply makes no difference. I am sure there is far more difference in the motherboard chipsets, than anything else. But I don't really know anything about ASUS chipsets though (I believe you said you had an ASUS mobo), so I cannot speak to that issue. But it cannot be so much as to entirely explain a problem you have, but that I cannot reproduce...unless it's an Intel quad core + ASUS mobo issue. I would be quite surprised if that's the case.

I'll check back for the details later, and have a go at it. It's too bad that I can't use the same AVCHD files you are using, although I think we could probably get a hold of the same ones, if we really wanted. In fact, I think I could post some of a recent volleyball match I taped if it will help.

TB

Just to add some information for what doesn't work for me on 8c. It is exporting 1920x1080 avchd ntsc 60i, 1920x1080 ntsc bluray, or 1440x1080 avchd ntsc 60i. The avchd video typically has to be more than 5 minutes long to crash. I have a Intel Core2 Processor Q6600 2.40 GHz. Since the 1440x1080 render works with 8b but not 8c (for me), I did some debugging. Version 8b uses 100% cpu on all 4 processors and requires less memory than 8c. It works fine always. 8c seems to keep using more and more memory as the render goes on until I get a crash. It also uses more memory than 8b but only 70% of the cpu. Seems like the type of thing a developer could debug very quickly. I have uploaded a test problem to the sony tech support but they haven't actually debugged it yet (not sure if they will).

Some people have written in saying 8c works fine on their quad. Do any of you render avchd video? Also, on another forum, someone suggested that canon avchd is what chokes for 8c. Has anyone sucessfully rendered canon avchd on a quad? Christian, what camera do you use? Thanks,
Hari