musicvid, it happens when I bring the rendered movie into a fresh project, or any project for that matter. (I got the filesize wrong, it's really 100+GB). Have you done renders in DNxHD longer than, say, an hour? I'm scratching my head here...

I have experienced this problem myself with both DNX HD and ProRes Quicktimes and have never found a solution. Most recently, a 90-minute feature, turned over to me from a New York post house (Deluxe), dropped on the timeline, has this exact problem. My workaround was to drop the file into Premiere Pro 5.5, and do a separate render of the sound, and replaced the sound on the Vegas timeline. Works - but not ideal, obviously.

I would love to know what causes this and how to stop it from happening. Has anyone had any communications with SCS on this?

Oh, I think splitting your DNxHD renders into separate chunks and / or nesting may be your answer here. You're asking quite a bit of your system memory and pagefile with files that size. TBH, I use DNxHD for 15-minute projects headed for Handbrake and Youtube.

A more compressed intermediate (Sony MXF is good) may work better as well. Experiment before committing to a 3-day render!

I've just asked a post house to send me the master from an online as DNxHD for a 104 min feature. I'm certain I'll be able to work around this problem somehow but can someone who has experienced this problem already please report it so it gets fixed, sometime.

Bob.

Bob,
I think you and the OP may be wading into uncharted waters here, so you may be the right ones to report it, and perhaps lead to a solution!
;?)

Trust me once I get the file if I do strike this problem I shall be reporting it. Only reason I'm asking others to report it is I'm at least 1 week away from getting the file and the quicker we get the ball rolling the better.

as a small time software developer there's not much worse than getting a new release out and then next day hearing about a new bug from the support team.

Bob.

I'll give it a shot, since I'm currently suffering with this problem. Haven't done this before: is the "Ask A Question" from custcenter.com/app/ask the way to create a ticket?

Customer support won't have a clue. You need to go through Technical Support, and create another account with them.

1) Use the delivery format's time format whenever possible.

2) Make sure Quantize to Frames is on.

3) Make a change in the "Internal" preferences so you can view non-quantized video frames.

Ctrl + Shift + Options / Prefs. Under "Internal", in the Search box, type in "quant" set both to TRUE, restart Vegas.
Open your project and there will be bright red edges on the non-quantized events. The edit point shows red at the cut. See if you can locate the starting point for the event where the problem occurs. It will probably be an "odd" frame.
With quantize on, trim the right edge of event 1 to the left and the left edge of event 2 1 frame to the right, then but (had to change the spelling so it wouldn't be flagged) the clips together.

4. Disable all running audio processes and interfaces instituted by the sound card software.

See if that helps.

John

Thanks for the suggestions.

musicvid, hopefully I did this correctly. Under Sony's Technical Support tab, when I click on the "send us your technical support question" it goes to the form at custcenter.com/app/ask. FWIW, I do have a reference # for this under my account's "My Support" tab.

John, I tried changing the Internal Preferences as per your suggestion. It showed that my timeline has no non-quantized video edits, but many non-quantized audio edits. Some audio edits were of necessity at the sub-frame level---do you recommend against this? As for disabling all running audio processes, etc, I'm not sure how to do that, but I can say that this problem occurs on both of my workstations, with different sound cards, processors, etc.

I used the "Match Media Settings" Properties setting to create a new project file with just the Quicktime movie in it, problem still existed. Again, the movie plays fine in both Quicktime and VLC.

One last strange aspect of this problem that I didn't grasp until just now is what the non-synched audio is beyond the 55 minute point. Each time I click on the timeline and place the playhead to play, the audio that plays is actually the audio from the very head of the clip (some 55 minutes earlier). And this same audio plays no matter where I click beyond 55 minutes (at 70 minutes, say, or 62 minutes, etc). The audio that plays is always the same: from the very head of the clip.

One other observation: if I play the movie continuously from just before the 55 minute point, the audio will play and remain synched well past the 55 minute point. If I stop playing the movie, and then click anywhere down the timeline to play, the audio will again revert to the unsynched, head of the clip stuff. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm guessing I wouldn't have had a problem if I had played the movie continuously.

Is there a notch in the audio event where it starts to repeat?
If so, you've lengthened the event, and the audio is looping, as it is set to do.

No, I wish, that's something I could understand.

It really seems like something in Vegas can't access the audio in the movie beyond a certain point. It's strange to me that I can play the movie continuously and all is well, but if I stop and start it (past the magic 55 minute mark) the audio reverts to the head of the clip while the playhead is an hour down the road. Also oddly, the waveform image in the audio clip matches the correct, synched audio, meanwhile the unsynched audio plays.

Fortunately for me, this program has 33 regions, so I've exported them as individual Quicktime movies. Each of those (much shorter) movies plays fine.

Assuming you've got a backup, open the original project, and delete the offending audio file from the Project Media pane. Save, close, and re-open the project. Then import the original media back into Project Media. Anything change?

It's difficult for me to do this. The original project file consists of nested project files, all of which are multicam edits, and each of which contains several audio tracks.

The original project file plays these nested files perfectly. It's only when I render a Quicktime movie (and only when playing this rendered movie past 55 minutes and then only in Vegas) that the audio follies begin.

Don't know if this test makes sense, but I'm exporting the original project file audio as a single wav file. I'll create a new project with only color bars and this wav file, and export it as a Quicktime movie. There shouldn't be any non-quantized events, only bars+audio. Curious to see what happens...

John, I tried changing the Internal Preferences as per your suggestion. It showed that my timeline has no non-quantized video edits, but many non-quantized audio edits. Some audio edits were of necessity at the sub-frame level---do you recommend against this? As for disabling all running audio processes, etc, I'm not sure how to do that, but I can say that this problem occurs on both of my workstations, with different sound cards, processors, etc.
=====================
If it is happening on different machines it probably isn't a sound card vs Vegas issue.

In terms of the first question, since only the audio has non-quantized frames try this:

Go to Options – Preferences – Editing tab and turn off "Do not quantize to frames for audio- only edits. "

Might help. I don't have that option. I am using Vegas 8.

John

John, this one keeps getting stranger---I think this problem is being caused by some issue with my nested files. I'm unable to render a simple wav file from my original project file, it hangs at 3%. If I delete the video track of the nested file, I can render it in a few minutes. Why the project file should care about video during an audio export, I don't know...

I made a new copy of the main nested file (the culprit, I think), and replaced the old nested file with the new one in my original project file. This forced the creation of a new sfap0 file. Suddenly, my original file can export a wav in 30 seconds. So it looks as if there was a curveball, that somehow my nested sfap0 file had become corrupt. I'll render a Quicktime file tonight, to see if this cures the playback issue.

FWIW, I checked the old nested file and there were no quantization errors in it (I routinely use Vegasaur Project Auditor to find and repair these).

"One last strange aspect of this problem that I didn't grasp until just now is what the non-synched audio is beyond the 55 minute point. Each time I click on the timeline and place the playhead to play, the audio that plays is actually the audio from the very head of the clip (some 55 minutes earlier). And this same audio plays no matter where I click beyond 55 minutes (at 70 minutes, say, or 62 minutes, etc). The audio that plays is always the same: from the very head of the clip.Okay, after rendering a 90+ minute project to DNxHD last night (9 hr render, 90GB file - phew!!), I can duplicate this behavior exactly. My original project does not include any nested vegs.

One thing that may-or-may-not be a clue is that the audio that plays when moving the timeline cursor is on a different audio track in the original project. Sounds far fetched that this would cause the problem, but it's an observation.

Here's a workaround that appears to work. Render the audio (only) to a new track and mute the DNxHD audio track. Now, I can move the cursor anywhere on the timeline and the audio syncs.

...Jerry

Jerry, thanks, your workaround will get me through this pesky problem. Previously, on top of all this Quicktime nonsense, I had a corrupted nested file that hung Vegas when I tried to export a wav---at least that's been corrected.

I will bump this thread if & when SCS responds to my query regarding this. I can't say whether this is an Avid-specific problem, or is common to Quicktime (I haven't tried it, because I don't use Quicktime for anything else). It's going to be a continuing problem for me because I often export a final Quicktime movie as a master, and use it via Vegas to export portions of it for web, PowerPoint, DVD, etc. (this is a practical matter: because I have nested HD multicam files within it, often with color correction, chromakey, etc, to render from the original timeline can take an eternity. One chromakey-heavy project I'm working on takes about 35x real time to render out. Let's see, how long would a 90 minute project take?)...

Glass half full: Vegas plays back an Avid DNxHD movie audio in synch for 55 minutes, no problem.

If you've stayed with this thus far, any suggestions on another format I could use for a high quality HD backup? Thanks in advance!

I'm glad that Jerry was able to reproduce the problem. At least now we and Sony can begin to zero in on the cause, if not the cure.

Two suggestions -- the free GoPro Cineform codec or Sony MXF. The latter might be good because of its compression capabilities (MPEG-2).

Just to be clear - at least in my case - it is not just a render problem. The 90 minute file I had the problem with was generated from Final Cut on a Mac. It's the READING of the file on the timeline where Vegas seems to choke. But it did exactly what other people are reporting - perfect sound all the way to about two-thirds through, then a looping of the audio from the first few minutes of the file.

I've seen this multiple times, btw. Not an isolated instance, and it happens on both ProRes and DNXHD files.

MarkHolmes,

Does the workaround: "Render the audio (only) to a new track and mute the DNxHD audio track. Now, I can move the cursor anywhere on the timeline and the audio syncs." work for you?

...Jerry

Hey Jerry,

I actually haven't rendered anything to Quicktime for awhile. I don't have time to lock up the computer, rendering - my last 90-minute render took 35 hours.

I'm experiencing the problem as READING successfully on the Vegas timeline.