Advice needed: veg file unreliable in VP 11

entilza72 wrote on 11/24/2012, 7:18 AM

Hi gang,

Seeking some advice.

Editing a film and the project has grown to a reasonable complexity. Everything has been mostly smooth in the most recent version of 11....

... until I copy and pasted a luma key and compositing title effect that I had developed in another Veg file. I didn't know it at the time, but after adding those components would crash VP 11 upon opening that Veg file after that point.

But all was not lost: turns out VP11 doesn't crash if it is already running and I choose File -> Open. It only crashes when I launch VP11 by opening the Veg file.

The whole situation is repeatable - I can take a clean file, copy/paste the title effects in, and VP11 will crash when I open VP11 by clicking on the "newly corrupted" Veg file.

I'd like to move on and continue with the work by running VP11 first, then opening the file from within VP - but common sense tells me that this might be only the beginning of problems, and perhaps I should sacrifice today's work, go back to yesterday's known clean Veg file, and leave the Title out until the very end.

Thoughts? I hate losing a day by choice - but I'd hate losing days/weeks more.

Ent.

Comments

mudsmith wrote on 11/24/2012, 9:00 AM

I assume from your post that you are saying you are opening two versions of V11 at once, since this is really the only way to copy and paste changeable elements and sequences without pre-rendering, etc.

What version are you using? The last couple of updates did seem to undo some odd crashes.

Are you running V11 in Win7 compatibilty mode? This has also helped me with other odd crashes, and has no downsides that I know of (not talking about running in XP mode, but Win7 mode).

I have only used this dual-iteration/copy and paste function a couple of times, but am getting ready to use it again on a very long and complex project, so would like to understand what is going on with you before preceeding.

entilza72 wrote on 11/24/2012, 5:25 PM

Hi mudsmith,

I'm running VP11 build 701 - the last update to 11. Win 7.

Yes, I was opening a second copy of VP11 to copy the assets from, then pasting them into the first copy that had my open Veg file. After the assets were pasted in, I closed the second copy.

I didn't open a nested Veg file because I wanted complete/normal access to the assets to change them as needed.

I am not sure if the copy/paste from a 2nd copy of VP 11 is the actual cause of the corrupted Veg file - but it seems likely. The assets were a complex series of composits and lumakeys, with a lot of track movement, reversing and misc tweaks - so it is also possible it is being caused by a specific sequence of effects.

There's been a development - even though I limped the Veg file home by opening it from within Vegas (avoiding the crash), the render also crashes VP11 - so the project file is useless.

I'm not running compatibility mode - I'll have a look, but I think the writing is on the wall for this Veg file - it has become unreliable and I would be a fool to persist with spending more time on it. If it doesn't "get me" now, it'll get me later.

I've tested the file in VP 12 Build 394 (most recent at time of writing) and it opens without a problem. However, VP 12 has never been able to render the Apple Pro Res 4.4.4.4 files the project uses as source - it always gets stuck on frame 0 and stays there with an infinitely increasing project completion time.

Ent.

mudsmith wrote on 11/24/2012, 9:42 PM

I have experienced some oddities when I had 11 and 12 both installed on the same computer......wonder if that is the source of the issues for you?

rs170a wrote on 11/24/2012, 10:43 PM

However, VP 12 has never been able to render the Apple Pro Res 4.4.4.4 files the project uses as source

Vegas has never been able to render ProRes files.

Mike

entilza72 wrote on 11/25/2012, 7:05 AM

Hi Mike - I think you may have missed the key word "source" in my statement there.

To be clear, I am saying VP12 hangs when rendering a project that uses Apple Pro Res 4.4.4.4 assets as source files. That is, the original assets are 4.4.4.4 and the rendered output from VP12 can be anything. There's no such problem in VP11.

I'm guessing you thought I was saying I was rendering out Pro Res 4.4.4.4. This is not the case.

But this is off topic to the thread and was only offered for insight as to why I can't use VP12.

End

videoITguy wrote on 11/25/2012, 8:12 PM

Pull your project apart - and definitely cut-off the first 3 minutes of the front of the timeline. Try to render the middle 1/3 of the ProRes embedded sources in your timeline.

Entilza wrote on 11/27/2012, 4:27 AM

Hi videoITguy,

Thanks for your response. Just a question: is there some arcane Vegas magic (aka, known workaround) in your suggestion there with the suggestion of pulling out the first 3 mins? Or are you just generally referring to reducing the number of assets in the project?

I've been rendering the project in 3 parts - it's rarely crashing now that I'm doing that, but it's continuing to give occasional glitches in the output file, like black frames and sometimes blue images (red and green removed).

I have no doubt that if I physically remove assets the issue will improve, but I'm going to use that as a "final solution" because splitting the master EDL into 3 files is going to be a monster workflow killer.

For what it's worth - I've noticed the project is getting glitchier now that I've started to use "power windows". OK, everyone stop laughing. What I'm doing is duplicating a video clip into 2 channels, and using the top one to provide the mask (power window), allowing me to have two different grades in the same image. May be a coincidence, but after I started doing that, things started popping and flashing in the renders (as a distinctly different problem to the corrupt file).

Ent.