I'm not sure if I tried Neo Scene, but I did try a couple conversion tools - ones recommended on this forum. The catch was, I found it faster and easier to just work with the AVCHD files.

The files actually work pretty good on my duo processor notebook (XPS M1500 at about 2.3), but are slow on my older single processor desktop, so I'm forced to use draft viewing occasionally. But I'm okay with that.

But it's not really the ease of editing, and speed that's an issue. It's only trouble when I used Media Manager to organize files, and the lockup to "not responding". I have very little trouble with files otherwise. Rendering takes more time, but even that takes less time than conversion then rendering again.

So I use "save" a lot when using Media Manager now..

rbi, I have had similar problems with my hyperthreaded quad core i7 and media manager. I haven't done enough testing to say this absolutely fixed the problem, but I reduced my render cores from eight to two and it seems more stable.

Jerry

Hello rbi,

You can refer back to an earlier post of mine where I shared the settings for your system and in Vegas I found worked best to stop crashing when working with AVCHD video. I used to crash all the time but now going on a couple weeks without one... I almost miss it.

NOT!

Mike
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Subject: Rendering threads, page file size question
Posted by: MTuggy
Date: 3/31/2009 10:17:23 PM

As one of those with memory issues leading to crashes or lockup with HD video, I have uncovered another "solution" but I am curious about others experience. I am running 8.0c on Vista 64 Business system with 8 GB of RAM on an Intel 6600 Quad. Recently had to reinstall all Vegas software trying to fix a bug in 8.1 that still renders it useless but 8.0c is working fine.

Anyway, I discovered that if I setup Windows page file to 12 GB (1.5 x the RAM) that helped with rendering stability. BUT if I lower the rendering threads from 4 to 2 the rendering speed TRIPLED. Can anyone explain that to me? I am thrilled that I can again render 1920x1080 WMV files again (used to crash all the time), but I sure wish I understood the memory usage and how to tweak it better.

Mike

I just cleared up a media manager crash problem last week. Every time I scrolled far enough down into my media files I would get a crash.

It turned out to be a cineform avi. I had removed cineform NEO (over an unrelated issue) so the avi was still there but the codec to play it was not. Meanwhile I had automatic preview set ON. Every time my mouse pointer went over the avi file in media manager, it would attempt to play it.... but with the cineform codec missing..... CRASH.

Interesting to note... the crash type was the same as in the crashes experienced in rendering... one minute the program is there... the next it's completely gone.

I'm starting to think this may be related to frame rates. I'm concluding that 24p AVCHD files (possibly from my camera) are the culprits. That's the one common item I've been able to narrow this down to. I quit using 24p and haven't had the problem.

I'm not sure this is a Media Manager issue, I've also had issue with rendering files from 24p. It could be the 24p AVCHD files from my Panasonic HMC-150, could be Vegas 8, could be the particular shoot, or perhaps a combination of all. I did shoot in 24p once before with same issues, but it seemed like I could ESC out of it - not anymore.

I thought for a while lock up may have come from mixing frame rates, or having project settings mixed, but after more testing have had consistent lock ups when using 24p.

Fortunately I'm not hooked on 24p. I was just trying it out.

Thanks for replies. I'm still checking into other solutions for resolving this.

MTuggy wrote: BUT if I lower the rendering threads from 4 to 2 the rendering speed TRIPLED. Can anyone explain that to me?

That is a Windows issue. The more threads (program parts) you run on one machine, the more Windows is busy assigning cpu cycles and memory to them - and every time Windows has to do something it not only costs - some Windows processes must hold back other tasks because not everything is suited for real parallel processing.

On my machine I have about 50.000 (fifty thousand) Windows Page Faults per SECOND when rendering - and that does of course steal much time from the real tasks - from the rendering.

So it is a question of balancing the number of rendering threads to get the optimal result in the end.

BTW: if you have i.e. 4 threads rendering and start some other program on the machine you will see that the rendering - and everything else for that sake - simply suffocates in Windows struggling to try to assign the resources.
Therefore also - if you have, say, two instances of Vegas rendering at the same time - you might increase the total output by lowering the priority of one of the Vegas instances keeping that one from crying for resources and so decrease the number of page faults dramatically.

It is said, that Windows 7 should be better to do this distribution of resources - and therefore we can probably rise the number of processing threads to more than 2 - with success - there :-)

Generally also more RAM - much more RAM - may lower the number of page faults.

I was fiddling with my HMC150's native files in Vegas tonight, after I taped my first wedding with it.

I only have a Core 2 Duo system, so it's not anywhere near ideal. I tried simply rendering a few of the native files to DV AVI files. Some looked ok, but it was obvious that Vegas and my computer can't digest native AVCHD very well, at least at these bitrates. The resulting DV AVI's were a mixed bag. Some were ok, but others had blacks that were way too crushed, as well as other anomalies.

However, transcoding those same clips in Neo Scene was a whole other ballgame. They behaved fine in Vegas, and the resulting DV AVI's looked MUCH better.

So I think I can forgo a new i7 system just so I can more easily edit native AVCHD. I'll save a couple grand and just use Neo Scene.

=]

I installed trial version of Neo Scene and converted 24fps MTS files to same bit rate AVI.

No lock ups during editing this time, but Vegas did lock up at 87% rendered of a 1 min video. I had proj properties at 30fps, but video was 24. I changed project properties and output to 24fps and it rendered fine.

Hmm... could be multiple things to be aware of. In any case I'll probably purchase Neo Scene for cases where I run into trouble. Neo Scene seems to work better than 1st time I tested it (was 1.1.0.108a now 1.2.1.113b)