9e 64 bit Win7Ultimate locks up constantly

ritsmer wrote on 8/30/2010, 12:48 AM

After 3 hours it fouls up? could it be something with your machine? heat or some unstability?

Here I run the same combination - Vegas 9.0e 64 bit under Windows 7 Ultimate and with 1920 x 1080i AVCHD high at 17 and 25 Mbps - and it just works and works for many hours every day and since May 14 - and it's smooth and flawless - and of course I also do a lot of delete and undo too.

I run up to 3-4 parallel instances of Vegas on an 8 core machine (2 x quad Xeons).

Sidecar wrote on 8/30/2010, 1:04 AM

Now it locks up every time I try to delete or cut or Undo. It's crashed about 25 times.

The CPU is hardly working. The CPU is water cooled. Cool air is coming out of the Antec 183 case.

After it locks up and I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to the Task Manager, it indicates that Vegas is using 8% of the CPU while it is "Not Responding."

Vegas is having a devil of a time drawing the thumbnails on the timeline. So I turned them off. No help. Rebooted. Shut it down for ten minutes. Crashed on the first edit after restart.

There's nothing else installed on the machine except Firefox, Quicktime (non-pro) and DVD Architect 5.

This is not good. Looking at that little blue circle turn is a new kind of Microsoftian hell. I can't get through two edits.

Pilgrim wrote on 8/30/2010, 1:40 AM

I am having the same problem. Brand new machine with 12gb RAM, windows 7 64 bit. While using Vegas, every edit I do, no matter what, everything locks up and Vegas stops to think for a minute or so before I can move on. It is taking me hours to do something that would have taken 20 minutes with windows XP and Vegas 9.0e 32 bit. I tried installing the 32-bit version of 9.0e running with windows 7 64 bit, and to no avail. It does the same thing. This is not good and extremely time consuming and frustrating. Sony... help!

Sidecar wrote on 8/30/2010, 1:49 AM

Now even if I simply roll the mouse wheel to expand the time line it locks up. This is in no way professional editing. What I don't get it why it worked well Friday and earlier today but just decided to stop working.

Also, every time it comes back it has activated the auto-ripple button and changes the window layout.

Are there prefs that can be reset somewhere?

With how much I put into this computer to make Vegas sing, Final Cut Pro is looking better by the hour.

farss wrote on 8/30/2010, 4:35 AM

I suspect your project file has become corrupted. To check this theory try going back to a version of the project before you started having these issues.
One other way you might be able to recover is to try saving the project as something other than a Vegas project file e.g. AAF, look under Save As.

Bob.

rmack350 wrote on 8/30/2010, 9:40 AM

As far as the window and program settings go, open Vegas, change your settings, and close vegas. Vegas records window states when you close it (which makes sense because it's saving the window layout at that time.

As far as the crashing goes...it's hard to say. It's always worthwhile to review your RAM Preview settings. They should probably be set low, not high. When they're set high you can starve vegas for RAM (although with 12GB that shouldn't be a problem, I'd think). The problem with AVCHD in Vegas is it sucks down tremendous amounts of RAM. I recently read a post saying that Vegas was topping out at 6GB of memory usage. Add another 2 GB for general system use and room to play and that ought to leave you with 4GB you could give to RAM review...but I'd drop it down to 512 MB or failing that down to 16MB.

Aside from memory issues, it could either be a corrupt media file or a corrupt project file. AVC is always a problem. Sometimes tiffs are a problem. What you could do is find the veg file in windows explorer, copy it to a new file name, and move it elsewhere on the hard drive. Then open that and start relinking media...something along those lines. Either move a copy of the veg file or move the media files. If you opt to move the media files try just the stills and any additional audio files.

You don't want to spend a lot of time on this, obviously. The AAF option might get you to a working timeline but it might not save every detail of the project.

Rob

Pilgrim wrote on 8/30/2010, 9:53 AM

I am having the same problem with ALL Vegas files. In addition, my scrolling zoom also locks up, it will start to zoom in or out and just stops. Memory is not a problem as I checked and I have plenty of Ram available while running Vegas. CPU usage is low. What do you mean by saving the project as an AAF. That is only audio, what good does that do?

rmack350 wrote on 8/30/2010, 10:08 AM

It's not only audio. Follow Bob's instructions a few steps and you'll see what he means.

Rob

rmack350 wrote on 8/30/2010, 11:12 AM

The things that I can think of that typically screw with Vegas are:

-RAM preview set too high
-Heat
-Audio card driver conflicts
-Bad DIMMs
-firewire conflicts, bad firewire hardware
-failing hard drives not running in DMA mode
-Corrupt media files (Video files, still images, audio files)
-Media files that rely on Quicktime
-Quicktime
-Corrupt veg files
-Vegas' poor memory management when using h.264/AVC media

Rob

musicvid10 wrote on 8/30/2010, 11:26 AM

Try reloading your graphics drivers as well.

Is the footage by chance from 5D/7D?

Byron K wrote on 8/30/2010, 12:10 PM

Really bummed to hear about your workstation problems.

You may also want to re-download 9e, remove and reinstall Vegas. I've had re-download 2-3 times before my Vegas worked right.

Also, is your machine overclocked? If it is, you may want to "normal up" the clocking.
You may also want to do a memory test to make sure your RAM is good.

Since you mentioned that this is a new machine you may also want to open the box, inspect it and re-seat the memory modules, cards, power plugs, HD connections and if you can get to it the CPU. I've had countless Compaq, HP and IBM workstations come in from the vendor w/ loose parts.

farss wrote on 8/30/2010, 2:37 PM

"The things that I can think of that typically screw with Vegas are:

Number one on my list with 9.0e and probably 9.1e would be previewing over firewire. I believe Grazie has mentioned this a couple of times and recently I was taken to task for saying it was broken.
I can confirm that yes, it does work. Problem is whilst it works turning it on can turn a smooth running project into a mash of hangs and crashes. One suggested cure is to set Sync Offset to 0 frames.

Bob.

rmack350 wrote on 8/30/2010, 2:47 PM

I'm not running Win7 nor 64-bit but your description of firewire problems sounds like what I went through with Vegas3-4. Back then the problem was a lot of bad firewire hardware, mostly non-TI controller chips. By this time I'd have to think it's crappy drivers.

Rob

farss wrote on 8/30/2010, 2:55 PM

No, this is not related to drivers or hardware or any such.
Based on input from other users this is a reported and acknowledged bug. I believe it was fixed in "d" and somehow crept back into "e".

Bob.

Sidecar2 wrote on 8/30/2010, 3:10 PM

Shot the project with Canon HFS100 AVCHD 24mbps.
Downloaded via USB using Device Explorer. Took forever.
Strung everything out before editing. Rendered to 1080i HDV for editing on a slower machine, but never used the file.
Friday I played with previewing to one of my two monitors (24" Dell via DisplayPort and 18" Viewsonic via DVI). It was wonderful to play AVCHD at full rez at full frame rate on a 24" 1920x1200 monitor!! Awesome.
Sunday I tried to edit for real and added one 5mb JPEG still shot with my Nikon D300. Spun it and pushed in with Crop/Pan.
Slowed down and sped up other AVCHD clips with CTRL-Drag. Pushed in on others with Crop/Pan.
Strangely, the Preview on Secondary Monitor button quit working. Could not get the video to show on either monitor as Secondary without messing with the sizing options. Finally gave up and just worked with the normal preview in Vegas. That was the beginning of troubles.

I did boost the Build Dynamic RAM Preview amount from 512 to 1000, then 2000 so I could hit Shift-B and see how my spins and zooms were working. I did this a lot, really enjoying how fast the new machine was rendering the preview. Later I reset the RAM limit to 1000. I figured with 12GB of RAM, I had some to spare. Maybe not....

Finally, I could not render a final of any sort. It hung about five images in. So I prerendered sections that had pushes and spins to a new track using YUV, then muted the original AVCHD clips and the JPEG.

That allowed renders to proceed.

I'll have to explore the above suggestions about corrupted programs and how to fix them.

Thanks for the input.

I was pretty upset at 2:00 AM that my beloved Vegas on the machine of my dreams was failing me.

I did order a copy of Cineform NeoScene. Perhaps you simply need to string out the clips and render to a new format, then begin editing. At first I thought it wasn't necessary because Vegas was handling AVCHD so well, but it didn't take long to see that I may have been wrong....

Guy S. wrote on 8/30/2010, 3:27 PM

<<I'm editing a 3-minute 1080i AVCHD native show on a brand new super duper i7 six core with 12 gigs of RAM and Vegas locks up when I delete something or try to undo something.>>

My issues with Vegas have two main causes: Bad AVCHD files ("bad" in the sense that they crash Vegas), and b) file permissions.

I suspect that your issue is one or more "bad" AVCHD files, but before doing anything else, try running Vegas as an Administrator (right click on the Vegas icon and select that option). If it helps, great, if not, you've only wasted a few seconds.

Others have suggested ways to figure out which file(s) are bad so I won't address that here. Once you've determine that a file is problematic, simply render it to a different format - MXF (Sony HDCAM EX preset) works extremely well.

At work I do this in Vegas 8.1 (it also has issues with certain AVCHD files, but seemingly not the same ones as 9.0e).

At home I'm only running 8.1 and have found that I can render a file to .mxf if I can get it onto the timeline without crashing Vegas. I've managed to do that by a) either turning Auto Preview off in Vegas' Explorer, or b) dragging them in from Windows Explorer. From there I simply render the timeline. FYI, I drag the files into a new instance of Vegas - not the project file I'm editing.

rmack350 wrote on 8/30/2010, 4:40 PM

If you go the cineform route it can transcode files in a big batch without opening Vegas. There's other ways to skin that cat but the batch feature of Cineform is very helpful.

Rob

Sidecar2 wrote on 8/30/2010, 5:02 PM

I was moving pretty fast, playing with all kinds of new freedom with the fast machine and 1080i HD files.

It's possible some of the AVCHD were "bad."

And as I said, by rendering in YUV to a different track and muting the orig files, at least I got through a render.

I'll try that batch render feature of Cineform when I get it.

I also sensed the auto-preview button was causing problems. It takes forever for Vegas to draw thumbs.

I don't think the problem is related to heat in this case. I shut the machine down from 2:00 AM to 6:30AM and the first edit I tried after startup locked it up.

i c e wrote on 8/30/2010, 6:08 PM

I am not going to pretend that I read the whole post line up.

but I will chime in with a quick comment..

no matter how fast or great the machine it can still over heat.. make sure that is not your problem.

peace

Sidecar wrote on 9/7/2010, 10:22 PM

Problem solved. It wasn't overheating because I turned the machine off overnight and it crashed first thing in the morning.

The actual problem was that there was indeed a "bad" piece of AVCHD footage early on.

I knew where it was because when I tried to render out a WMV or an MPEG2, the render locked up at the same point in the time line and stopped cold.

I removed the offending AVCHD file and it has not crashed or hung even once since.

What's really amazing is how the show looks when rendered out to HD AVCHD and played back on a Sony Blu-ray player into a 52" XBR TV. Absolutely. Stunning.

It's really great to burn a short show to a DVD and play it back in a Blu-ray. Got successful burns at 18mbps Sony AVC and another burn at 16mbps MPEG2. Didn't think a DVD could output data at that rate.

This from a little Canon Vixia HFS-100 camera.

Most important: keep the camera stable. Tripods or steadicam required. Hand held really suffered. These little cameras are simply too small to hold still.