potomac, I have found similar results with the same setup as yours. I have also found that if I put an entire project's clips (typically 200 or so) on the timeline, and use batch render I can transcode the entire timeline without incident.

EDIT: I have also determined that with either 8.0c or 8.1 that if I use Media Manager to tag my mts clips I can only tag about 10 or so before Vegas crashes.

Jerry

"A bunch of clips with jump cuts are fine."

After a statement like that your editors licence should be revoked :)


I'm pretty certain as Vegas is now "Pro" there's a line of code in it that reads something like:

If TransitionCount > 10 then goto Crash.

Bob.

There's certainly a lot of grief around.
The sad thing is that, back in Sonic Foundry days, this thing was bullet proof; it was the other applications that were flaky...

I had no idea that Vista 64 was unsupported. Mind you I'm not surprised. Even notepad doesn't like it very much.

I'm sorry if my 'jump cuts' touched a raw nerve. But I do find that 90% of the time no transitions are better than all these rinky-dink swirls and swoops that we have to sit through during the average home movie.

Having said that, it would be nice even to have a movie to sit through at the moment.

Thanks for all your feedback.

-P

So let me get this straight.
You are saying that if you render the entire timeline (less a few seconds on either end) instead of a loop region the program does NOT crash?

I find that an interesting result.
I have been battling the program crash since the release of 8.0 in Sept of '07 and have many posts regarding this issue.

I will need to try this out and see if it works for me.

Ted

Sounds to me like a possible GUI bug. I have on occasion mentioned that I feel that the Vegas 8 GUI may be slightly buggy... i.e. sometimes almost unusable.

Now that Sony are such big buddies with AMD I would not be suprised if the whole Intel processor range becomes unsupported :)

"The sad thing is that, back in Sonic Foundry days, this thing was bullet proof; it was the other applications that were flaky..."

Apples and oranges.

Back in the Foundry days did you have No recompress rendering for HDV... could you even do HDV? Was there such a thing as the protitler. Need I mention avchd which wasn't even around?

This is a vastly different program and very much more complicated.

But surely everyone else's [NLE] application is equally more complex?

I've been with Vegas a long time. I was an early beta tester, particularly for the MPEG encoder. I'm just as depressed about it as everyone else. But, the fact remains that for a sizeable number of people, especially those rendering HD, the product is currently unfit for purpose.

Another curiosity: you can preview to your heart's content - along with colour adjustments, transitions, soundtracks and a partridge in a pear tree, and nothing falls off. But set it rendering...mostly you don't even have time to look at your watch.
It makes me wonder if the path to the culprit winds up at MainConcept's door.

-P

Regardless of any bugs and issues that Vegas currently has, it is still more stable than any other NLE in its class. Premiere CS4 is a disaster, it isn't a matter of IF it crashes, its only a matter of when. Adobe has changed a lot of the internals of this version of Premiere which has a lot of third-party plug-in manufacturers scrambling. It's not a pretty situation right now.

"you can preview to your heart's content - along with colour adjustments, transitions, soundtracks and a partridge in a pear tree, and nothing falls"

Believe me when I say that better preview is at the top of my wish list.... however it is presently manageable. I use Shift-B an awful lot.

John brings up a good and valid point.... is the grass really greener on the other side of the fence? Certainly not from my perspective. I'm producing HD on Blu Ray without issue at all (and that's with mainconcept).

Now avchd is a different ballgame. I get the traditional "Vegas is here one second and gone the next" type of crash just about every time I try and render avc@1920 with 8c.... but then on the other hand.... if it hurts when you hit yourself with a hammer then for heaven's sake stop swinging it.

""The sad thing is that, back in Sonic Foundry days, this thing was bullet proof; it was the other applications that were flaky..."

Apples and oranges.

Back in the Foundry days did you have No recompress rendering for HDV... could you even do HDV? Was there such a thing as the protitler. Need I mention avchd which wasn't even around?

This is a vastly different program and very much more complicated."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Mwaaaaaah ha ha ha ha ha ha hah. Hooooo hah ha haa!

I am sorry, that is soooo completely and utterly daft a statement Blink. What on Earth are you talking about? If a developer sets out to develop something, and it does not work properly, and it is "complicated" then it is ok if it does not work? You have completely lost me there. I mean, what is complicated? There are plenty of things in code that are not very visible that are incredibly complicated (copy protection being a very good example, and actually, increasing likely in my opinion perhaps the source of many people's problems).

You can not seriously be saying that a company develops something, advertises it, sells it, and then we can not expect it to work? You mean it is ok for it not to work if someone arbitrarily says that it is "complicated"? Do you really, honestly believe that?

Should we say "Oh poor SCS with their complicated features that they are trying to introduce before they sort out the bugs in the last features that never worked. Don't be hard on them, they mean well. It is not fair to direct you frustration at them, even when you are working out ridiculous workaround for completely nonsensical bugs that should have been fixed years ago. Don't be angry that 32bit mode is useless with HDV just because they got they got the Studio and Computer RGB modes round the wrong way. Don't feel sore about the two days of system time you lost this week because of broken renders, and by the way you still do not have the render you set out for. Don't be tough on poor little Sony who with all their financial clout can not match the performance of a tiny independent as Sonic Foundary was!" That is utter garbage.

I mean, there were a whole range of things in the Sonic Foundry releases of Vegas that were equally new, but solidly coded and well tested.

The fact is that as one of the most vocal complainers, I have on numerous occasions explicitly offered to provide any information I can, and give my own time to join the beta team, and I have received absolutely no response. If they were really bothered about resolving these issues, I am the exact type of person they need on that team.

Stop making excuses and start making it work.

Robert I am with you.

"complicated" is relative.
It's complicity is proportional to the skill & knowledge of the programmer(s)

It may very well be extremely complicated for Blink as he has perhaps limited programming skills, but it should be relatively easy for a well skilled software engineer which is what I asume SCS has on staff............ do they?


Ted

"I am the exact type of person they need on that team."

"Oh, yes! Let's get the angry, arrogant guy on our team, he'll fix it."

""Oh, yes! Let's get the angry, arrogant guy on our team, he'll fix it.""
LOL

Well first Robert you have to prove it's a "bug". You haven't done that yet. In fact with all the problems you seem to be having on your machine I would think something like this to be the least of your worries.

The point of the "foundry issue" is merely to say that you are comparing apples and oranges when you compare it to what Vegas is now. What words, ideas, views...etc you decided to invent and throw in on top of that is not my doing. This is a perfect example of why your credibility is so low in my eyes... you take a simple and factual statement... and add your blown out opinion along with a tremendous amount of misplaced anger and what we now have is.... well.... "Robert facts".... which I have come to learn are quite different from the real thing.

"I have on numerous occasions explicitly offered to provide any information I can, and give my own time to join the beta team, and I have received absolutely no response."
Gee.... I can't possibly imagine why. What a complete disservice to one and all [he says with tongue in cheek]

>> Stop making excuses and start making it work.

In the software industry, when a large company acquires a small successful company, the successful product of the small company goes into a serious tailspin either in quality or in the feature competition with alternative software. There are books, shelves full, written about the subject. Lots of magazine articles too.

One of the most referenced examples is IBM's purchase of Lotus, and their Notes application. Notes was, by a very significant margin the most advanced mail and document management system out there. Notes is still heads and shoulders above Microsoft Exchange, even though Notes hasn't really evolved in any significant way since it was acquired by IBM in 1995. That deserves repeating. Lotus Notes in 1995 was heads and shoulders above what Exchange is today. Still, it was bungled by IBM. Seriously. How many people use notes today? 145 million licenses sold according to IBM, but that is not the number of users for sure.

If standard mechanics for software acquisitions are at work at SCS, that is worrisome. Let's hope they are not. There aren't better alternatives out there at the moment. Not better in general. Better in many places, but I for one would like not to have to change.

"A bunch of clips with jump cuts are fine."
After a statement like that your editors licence should be revoked :)
I'm pretty certain as Vegas is now "Pro" there's a line of code in it that reads something like:
If TransitionCount > 10 then goto Crash.

almost wet myself bob!!!

I do not see what is arrogant about anything I say or do. And actually, out of most people yes, I should be listened to because I am one of the exact people they target the product at and actually has put together a critically acclaimed film with fantastic press coverage and worldwide sales. I also have incredibly enthusiasm to help. I believe a workman should take pride in his tools, and I do not have pride in Vegas at present.

I am constantly amazed at how much effort some people will put into dismissing legitimate concerns about this software.

"I do not see what is arrogant about anything I say or do"

And here lies the problem.

So because I point out flaws in the software, and *you* do not believe they exist because *you* have not seen them, then *you* call me arrogant and *you* try and shout me down because *you* think I have no right to complain about them on the public Sony forum? Who really does that make arrogant?

What is your line here?

>> What is your line here?

Blink thinks that everyone who knows more than he does, which is probably 80% of the population in the industrialized world, is arrogant enough to be dismissed.

"Blink thinks that everyone who knows more than he does, which is probably 80% of the population in the industrialized world, is arrogant enough to be dismissed."

I know how much memory you can pile into vista. ;)

"If anyone from Sony can explain this I'd be very pleased to know, just out of personal curiosity."

Well I ain't from Sony and no I can't really explain this, at best I can hazard a guess but I'm certain you're tired of reading guesses and the general hubris from the peanut gallery and you'd just like to get on with your project.

I suspect your problem relates to those MTS files, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them, just that they're provoking something in Vegas leading to your problem in combination with all the other stuff happening on the T/L. So you could try getting rid of them by converting them to something else.

You have three choice:

1) Uncompressed HD. Huge files but it does not get any easier than this codec to decode. Without a fast disk array forget realtime playback but if anything is going to work these will.

2) Sony YUV 8 bit HD. Smaller file sizes, pretty rock solid in my experience.

3) Cineform. If you want more than 1440x1080 you gotta buy the better version and I don't work in a 64bit OS.

So my vote goes for 2).

It's pretty simple to render each clip to a new codec in a new folder. Give each new clip the same name and then rename folders so Vegas is can easily find the new clips. As they'll probably have a new file extension Vegas will complain about missing media but once you point it one of the clips it'll find the rest.

Now try rendering your project. My experience has been your problems might be solved by this approach.


Having said all of this I'm not so certain that V8.0c is officially supported under Vista 64. I could be wrong but it could also be your problem.

Hope this helps and please let us know how you go.

Bob.

>> I know how much memory you can pile into vista

Yes, you know what marketing departments do. You have no idea about anything that relates to engineering.