AVC/XAVC-S issues in VP15/16? Try disabling so4compoundplug.dll!

NickHope wrote on 8/29/2017, 12:58 AM

VEGAS Pro 15 has a new decoder, so4compoundplug.dll that reads AVC and XAVC-S files. I think the intention is that it will also handle m2ts and perhaps other formats in the future.

The benefits of this new decoder include:

Decodes Panasonic GH5 10-bit 422 AVC footage
Decodes JVC YUV 4:2:2 AVC footage
Decodes iPhone/iPad AVC footage (without requiring Quicktime)
(I guess) Scope for improved performance

However some negative issues are attributed to this new decoder. In particular:

XAVC-S slow loading and high RAM usage
Stereo audio decodes as dual mono (e.g. Nvidia ShadowPlay)

If you experience any such issues, or any other issues with AVC behavior in VP15 that you did not experience in VP14, then first check which decoder plugin is being used by looking at the "Plug-In" section at the bottom of the VEGAS file Properties window (accessed by right-clicking on a file in the VEGAS Explorer window then choosing "Properties", or right-clicking on a video stream on the VEGAS timeline then choosing "Properties" then "General" tab):

If the troublesome files are getting decoded by so4compoundplug.dll then you can try disabling it as follows:

Hold down the SHIFT key while opening Options > Preferences
Click the Internal tab
In the field "Show only pref containing:" file type "So4" without the quotes
Set "Enable So4 Compound Reader for AVC/M2TS" to FALSE.
OK > Restart

With luck, VEGAS will now instead attempt to use an alternative decoder such as compoundplug.dll to decode your files, which may solve the issue.

Bear in mind:

This may break some of the new format support such as iPhone and 10-bit 422 GH5 files, and that the bugs with so4compoundplug will probably be fixed in future updates, so don't forget that you've set this because you'll probably want to un-set it in the future!
Your audio waveform previews (stored in .sfk files) will be rebuilt when the codec is disabled or re-enabled, which may make it appear that your projects are opening more slowly. But once the waveforms are re-built, projects will open more quickly.

Note that in VEGAS Pro 15 builds before 261, more formats were decoded by so4compoundplug, and this caused the following issues:

Much lower fps playback of some AVC files including some GoPro, DJI & Xiaomi Yi files
Slow rendering of video event thumbnails for those files
Garbled audio decoding (also here)
Slower opening of large projects containing many AVC files (Largely fixed in VP15 build 216)

Edit 1st December 2017: In VEGAS Pro 15 build 261, troublesome GoPro, DJI and Xiaomi Yi formats have been put on a new "blacklist" that makes them fall back by default to opening with the compoundplug decoder, which generally works very well with these formats. Read the thread for the full story...

Edit 6th June 2018: In VEGAS Pro 15 build 361, the blacklist was made into a separate, editable xml file. In this build the file needs to be moved in order for it to work. Other formats such as XAVC-S can also be added to the blacklist if necessary by editing the file (with great care). Full details in this post.

Edit 3rd September 2018: From VEGAS Pro 15 build 384, so4_blacklist_vp15.xml is placed by default in C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 1X.0\ where it can be read, so there is no longer any need to move it.

Edit April 2024: The default reader for AVC files in VEGAS Pro 21 build 300 onwards is the new mxcompoundplug, and the So4 blacklist feature was removed. The feature is available in versions 15 to 20. The so4compoundplug reader can still be disabled by renaming the C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 21.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\so4compoundplug folder.

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Comments

AVsupport wrote on 6/2/2018, 5:38 PM

@GJeffrey, would you consider adding your complete system configuration into your profile please?

GJeffrey wrote on 6/2/2018, 6:54 PM

@AVsupport

CPU i7 3930K

GPU - GTX1070ti - driver 397.93

Do you have real time preview with previously blacklisted video file with so4 enable?

AVsupport wrote on 6/2/2018, 8:06 PM

I only deal with XAVC-S; But I thought your system info might be relevant to others perhaps experiencing your issues

set wrote on 6/2/2018, 8:13 PM

How about Preview (Half) quality playback? what fps do you able to catch?

GJeffrey wrote on 6/2/2018, 9:14 PM

@set.

Whatever preview resolution I choose, I can't keep consistent real time preview. With so4 dll disable, I get real time @ best full even with several effects added. So4 dll needs further development.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 6/3/2018, 2:26 AM

I only have gopro4 2.7K 30fps footage available herevand get 1fps @best full. Gpu acceleration on or off, same result.

i definitely agree with you Nick, the blacklist shouldn't have been deleted or stripped out or should at least be editable.

While GoPro Footage is still an issue, I have here the finding that it is possible to Playback two GH5 UHD 50p streams with preview Quality best/full on my 8-core System. AMD R9 390X. So that findings are also dependend from the type of footage. And GoPro Footage has never been great in Terms of editing, that is well-known.

NickHope wrote on 6/3/2018, 10:26 AM

How about Preview (Half) quality playback? what fps do you able to catch?

About the same as Best (Full). It starts a bit faster then slows down.

NickHope wrote on 6/3/2018, 11:11 PM

I only have gopro4 2.7K 30fps footage available herevand get 1fps @best full. Gpu acceleration on or off, same result.

i definitely agree with you Nick, the blacklist shouldn't have been deleted or stripped out or should at least be editable.

While GoPro Footage is still an issue, I have here the finding that it is possible to Playback two GH5 UHD 50p streams with preview Quality best/full on my 8-core System. AMD R9 390X. So that findings are also dependend from the type of footage. And GoPro Footage has never been great in Terms of editing, that is well-known.

In my experience, GoPro AVC footage has always edited beautifully in Vegas with compoundplug.dll, except for Vegas Pro 12.

NickHope wrote on 6/6/2018, 10:23 AM

In VEGAS Pro 15 Update 5 (Build 361), the blacklist for the So4compoundplug decoder has now been made into a separate, editable xml file.

Unfortunately in build 361 it is not being read by Vegas in its default location, so it needs to be moved in order for it to be read. Users who are experiencing sluggish playback of AVC files recorded by GoPro, DJI & Xiaomi Yi cameras in VEGAS Pro 15 build 361 should move this file.

In addition, other formats such as XAVC-S can be added to the blacklist by editing the file (with great care).

Full details in this post: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/blacklist-for-so4-includes-fix-for-gopro-dji-xiaomi-yi-avc-lag--111716/

AVsupport wrote on 6/6/2018, 5:52 PM

Well here ya go! We only just had the discussion about the hidden Blacklist recently..Thanks for digging that one up @NickHope that should help a few out there!

EEVblog wrote on 6/21/2018, 8:13 PM

Build 361 is freezing every few minutes for me playing back 4K 60Mbps XAVC-S files from my new Sony HXR-NX80 camera. This has completely stopped all my videos editing (daily professional Youtuber).

Playback resolution doesn't matter.

I presume my problem is somehow related to this So4 decoder, and I have confirmed the So4 is being used on my files. So playing with these options now and will report back...

Dave.

EEVblog wrote on 6/21/2018, 8:31 PM

UPDATE: I disabled the hardware decoding for s04 and it seems to have made a huge difference.

Auto Preview sized dropped from 4K to 960x540, but I have upped this to 1080p Preview and no crashes yet...

Will report back after another hour of editing... CONFIRMED - Not a single freeze or crash in over and hour of editing. I deem it to be fixed. Also no more problem of "Out Of Memory" error message when editing the 4K footage directly on the Synology NAS. Also, I am using 4K Preview mode as well, no problems. All very nice now. It really did not like the Hardware Decoding option.

Note that I did NOT disable the S04 decoder, just disabled hardware decoding. I have a GTX-1050 card and am using an i7-8720X

Dave.

ThiccDaddy wrote on 6/23/2018, 3:49 AM

This actually fixed the preview lag I've been having ever since I upgraded to Vegas 15. Was completely pervasive to the point where I was about to ask for a refund, no file I brought in from OBS recording using NVENC would play smoothly; now they play effortlessly. Hopefully this gets fixed, this is a pretty glaring issue for a product at this price point, but at least there's something to be done, thanks so much Nick! I haven't tested yet but will check back as well to see if my transition previews are fixed as well as Kinvermark suggested. Please do update this thread when this workaround is no longer needed.

Edit: Transition previews seem to be fixed as well, though a side-effect appears to be that the .sfk audio proxy files now seem to be taking 2-3 times as long as they used to to build... but I'll take it.

WaifuWeeber wrote on 7/25/2018, 5:30 AM

Thank you everyone who contributed in finding the cause of vegas 15 crashing while rendering.

I spent 4 days trying to render 6 videos with crashing and random freezing. The said videos were made from OBS and a Avermedia Live Gamer HD card which are very much compatible to Vegas. But yes disabling the so4 plugins cured the crashing also audio desyncing . Speaking of which upon the audio desyncing I noticed certain videos captured from Avermedia had frame rates 59.80, 59.79 or 59.97 they are generally 60fps, but for whatever reason if the frame rate was anything other than 59.94 and 60.00 it forced V15 to desync the audio while the so4 plugins are enabled. Takes a little longer to build imported hour videos, but that's a fine trade off from crashing

jojohuan wrote on 8/3/2018, 12:55 AM

thank you for this excellent tip! it's really nice.

bigrock wrote on 8/19/2018, 3:45 PM

If this mess is not fixed in 16, it will be very unlikely I will upgrade. Should NEVER have to be disabling Dll's in product to have it work correctly, that goes without saying. Or fooling with a XML black list, the product needs to work and work correctly without that kind of problem.

h-rtarat wrote on 8/27/2018, 3:33 AM

V15 AVC render is 35% slower than V12 AVC after disabling so4compoundplug.dll and does not read GH5 10 bit files. I hope Magix will fix this soon.

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NickHope wrote on 10/27/2018, 7:56 AM

Could anyone with a good number of XAVC-S files please give us an update on how performance is in VEGAS Pro 16 Update 2 (build 307) with so4compoundplug vs compoundplug? A direct comparison on how long they take to open, how much RAM is used, how is playback smoothness?

In older versions of VP15, XAVC-S files loaded more slowly with the default so4compoundplug than with compoundplug and used more RAM. I have been told that the performance and memory consumption has been improved since then, but some real-world results would be useful for the developers.

Peter_P wrote on 10/27/2018, 8:52 AM

Loading a real project with ~820 XAVC-X UHDp30 clips building ~1h05 in the TL is loaded from Vp16 B307 with So4 False in 4:11 (all thumbs build) from a SATA SSD. The RAM consumption grows from 2.8GB to a total of 7.7GB with CPU usage ~80%.

With So4 Reader TRUE it only takes 3:19 with low CPU usage of 17-20% but RAM consumption grows from ~2.7GB to 13.6GB.

So memory consumption and load-speed have improved on Vp16 B307. I could not yet test the stability.

Peter_P wrote on 10/27/2018, 10:07 AM

I have to correct the times slightly. They might have been influenced by the open Task-Manager window.

With So4 disabled it takes ~12s to the ‘first reaction’ (some thing shown in the TL) and in total 3:41. With So4 enabled the ‘first reaction’ is to be seen after 40s and it takes 3:32 in total.

Interesting is the CPU and GPU load on internal preview.

So4 disabled : CPU ~ 65 -74% , AMD GPU ~17-20%
So4 enabled : CPU ~ 50% , AMD GPU ~34%

Peter_P wrote on 10/27/2018, 10:55 AM

The larger used RAM with So4 ENABLED seems also to be used for regeneration of the thumbs in the TL. If you change the cursor position in a way that the thumbs need to be refreshed, no data are read from my SSD while the thumbs are regenerated. So I assume that the data in the allocated RAM are used for this process.

As far as I can see it today, this seems to be the first version, where I would not recommend to disable So4 Reader – as long as there is at least 32GB RAM available.

NickHope wrote on 10/28/2018, 12:59 AM

Thank you very much Peter. That sounds positive. How about playback smoothness? If you add FX etc., how do so4compoundplug and compoundlpug compare in terms of display-fps?

Peter_P wrote on 10/28/2018, 2:04 AM

Yes, I did test the preview in a real FHDp30 project with UHDp30 footage and the events did all have Mercalli V4 and some other FX and I had the impression, that they play a little better with So4 enabled. Also jumping with the cursor in the TL is very responsive.

Minderbinder wrote on 11/4/2018, 11:52 AM

Thank you for this post, it worked perfectly to eliminate both high RAM usage and high CPU usage while both editing and previewing video on Build 307.

Clips used were Shadowplay AVC1 VFR. Before this fix, the program was nigh unusable on a i7 3770k with 12GB RAM. Memory usage at worst was 3.1GB just for having a project open, and previewing video spiked every core. This should not be on by default.

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