As expected, Vegas 12 is not stable...

VanLazarus wrote on 10/2/2012, 9:24 PM

Although excited about the new features, I've been tentative about using Vegas 12. Vegas has been on a downward spiral towards unreliability and all efforts to get SCS to change their 'quality assurance' methods has fallen on deaf ears.

Regardless, I decided to give Vegas 12 a spin... and I crashed it within 15 seconds! All I had to do was load a simple project and try to preview it. Within 15 seconds the preview window went all red, the mouse icon went 'busy', and eventually Vegas went that light gray I know so well these days... signifying death.

I recorded the 2nd attempt to do the same thing and got exactly the same result. Watch the attached video.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/651378/Using%20Vegas%2012%20for%20the%20first%20time.mp4

I feel like an idiot, doing the same thing over and over again (paying for a new version of Vegas) and expecting a different result.

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Comments

VanLazarus wrote on 10/23/2012, 3:05 PM

Terje.... Amen. Thanks for detailing this for everyone. Vegas crashes because it has errors in it's code, not because one runs other applications. Regarding sharing GPU use... I suspect Vegas doesn't share a GPU properly with another instance of itself.

Terje wrote on 10/24/2012, 2:47 AM

I have seen a few reports of stability problems where the crash occurs in nvidia.dll. Are the crashes still a problem with GPU acceleration turned off? SCS should have GPU accel turned off by default.

Guy S. wrote on 10/24/2012, 6:56 PM

As requested, I'm posting in order to help this thread gain 150 or more posts. So...

O' Vegas 12 how do I crash thee
Let me count the ways!
I crash thee in the morning
I crash thee in the evening
And I crash thee in all the times between
I crash the when opening
I crash thee when closing
And I crash thee when rendering my work
I crash thee when saving
I crash thee when...

I've always purchased the latest and greatest Vegas soon after its launch and I've always had decent luck with stability. But this time is different; on my work system Vegas 12 is simply unusable (haven't edited anything on my home system yet). And I'm using it on a Very Simple timeline consisting of a few .mfx files.

I may try disabling GPU support, but then again I may not. And I'm definitely not moving my nVidia drivers from 306 to 290 when Vegas 11 is perfectly happy with 306. No, what I'm probably going to do is let history take its course...

Initial release buggy, many complaints about insufficient testing. Release A will be released within 40 days of product launch and will fix a couple of major problems - and break a feature that's currently working. Release B will improve things further. Ditto C, except it will be worse than B for a few and they will roll back to B. Revs D & E will both be solid... and then V13Pro will be released and we'll start all over again.

Bottom line, yeah it's pretty grim so far but it should be usable soon.

Ryadia wrote on 10/24/2012, 7:22 PM

Looking at your other posts about VP11 it looks like you've had no success whatsoever with this rather excellent program. I've had quite the opposite experience to you. Sure, my hardware proved not to be ideal and maybe Sony could be a little more forceful in informing their customers about some graphic card issues but overall, this software is far and away better than the last edition of an industry Pioneer recently acquired by a Canadian company.

I'd look very closely at the Shuttle motherboard if I had your problems. They are not what I'd consider to be a professional level board. The 3 examples I've had experience with all got replaced early in their life... Before ever I installed Vegas software.

I'm pretty sure anyone interested in buying software should use the 30 evaluation offered by most responsible developers. Did you do that? And did these problems happen with the evaluation version?

If they didn't, I'd suggest you contact Sony Support promptly. I'm sure you'll find them helpful if you don't insult them or their products. I've never discovered any quality assurance issues with any of the Sony application I own. Even the manuals (where you'd expect a few typos) are easy to read and well written.

retama11 wrote on 10/24/2012, 7:36 PM

install 12 > crash.....same old story

ushere wrote on 10/24/2012, 9:17 PM

refer to my thread 'nvidia driver /card'.

no more cutting edge drivers for me. i'll wait from now on till people report success with the newest driver NOT disasters ;-)

entilza72 wrote on 10/24/2012, 9:40 PM

Since people are posting bugs here, thought I'd add mine:

Vegas 12 (Win 7, 12 Gb ram) crashes with Apple ProRes 4444 MOV files but only when rendering. The crash is almost instant upon commencing render. They work fine on the timeline.

No such problem exists with Vegas 11 on the same rig.

My original post here: www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=832775

_Lenny_ wrote on 10/25/2012, 2:46 AM

I was editing last night, messing about with video and audio downloaded from YouTube (MP4 format).

I discovered I can crash VP12 if I attempt to delete the medium that is currently being played. Instant "Mist off Death", yet the audio portion continues to play. Only using Task Manager can terminate it.

Other than that all is well. Lowly graphics card with last-but-one Nvidia drivers. I am amazed by the overall stability I'm experiencing compared with VP11. But I am concerned that so many others are having problem. The instant crashes are puzzling.

FWIW, I installed the GPU rivers before installing VP12.

Dan Sherman wrote on 10/25/2012, 10:35 AM

Vegas 12 is stable for me.
And that is not because I'm some technical wizard.
There have been hiccups, but nothing serious.
I'm using SVP 12 for paying jobs, with some confidence.
It is my choice now over 11, which still has some stability issues IHO.
I was ready to move on to Final Cut X if SVP 12 didn't pan out, but so far so good.

Grazie wrote on 10/25/2012, 12:16 PM

Dan, have you got GPU acceleration of video processing engaged?

Cheers

Grazie

Guy S. wrote on 10/25/2012, 3:27 PM

After a horrible experience with V12 on my work system yesterday I went home and fired up V12 on my newly upgraded home system and, running the same rev nVidia drivers that I'm using on my work system, I had no crashes.

Interestingly, I tried it on a project full of Nikon D90 footage and the timeline was previewing on a 2nd monitor with zero dropped frames and the quality set to Good Full. I even applied CC and it didn't slow things down a bit. I was having so much fun that I forgot about the time - but who needs sleep anyway?

I did disable the GPU on my work system today and so far no crashes - but it's not nearly as fast as my home system.

VanLazarus wrote on 10/25/2012, 5:59 PM

Guy_S.... Your poem made me laugh. :) But I have a morbid sense of humour. :)

Guy S. wrote on 10/25/2012, 6:54 PM

Glad you enjoyed the poem, it was meant in good fun.

SamAt wrote on 10/26/2012, 10:25 AM

The logic here is suspect. If an application is unstable much higher than everything else running on an OS it's the application that is the suspect, not the OS. The fact that it works for some and not others reflects the huge range of hardware out there.

Crashing comes from drivers with low level OS access. That means Video drivers. Note that crashing reports seem to always revolve around GPU acceleration and add-ons. The best stability comparisons are between apps that use accelerations. And NVidia and AMD are certainly in the equation. Does Vegas have faulty code? Absolutely. So does AMD and NVidia and Microsoft. Every single piece of software has defects as nobody has ever figured out how to write bug-free code. The issue is how likely are you to encounter it based on your hardware/software and usage mix. I just took the latest AMD driver for Radeon HD series and the driver is dropping out (stutters) then recovers (as reported by Win 8) just during playback.

But I agree with one point many have articulated: don't blame the victims. If it's unstable on someone's system that is successfully running many other applications trying to finger their system as faulty is illogical and counter productive. I only wish Test team, which I really suspect monitors this forum but doesn't post, would weigh in once and awhile. I would like access to the bug database - wishful thinking.

It took Sony a long time to stabilize Vegas 11 - it was not until the last drop that it became fully reliable and not quirky for me. In their defense it's extremely difficult to try and test all combinations of hardware and OS and usage. But they should be move public about acknowledging known issues that they are working on I think.

I tried Adobe - invested in training, and despite some good things it drove me crazy - it stinks in comparison for many of my core features including simple pan/crop, cross fades and especially compositing.

I'm not going to jump into 12 yet because I've only had six months or so of stability with 11 and I don't desperately want the new features. But I'll stick with Vegas despite all the frustrations of the past.

I think if we all make an effort to report the problems clearly, the repro steps, and the hardware/software combinations at play we can best help dev team isolate and fix problems. If you don't repro the feature, say so and list your hardware, OS and usage patterns. Perhaps suggest tests (like disable GPU acceleration) but don't imply the crashing system is at fault (except perhaps driver updates).

My two cents.

Sam