Bug? Playback flickers/flashes muted clips - even in new projects!

W-Music wrote on 12/14/2020, 9:39 AM

Hi,
let me first describe what I am facing: I am cutting A Cappella Multi-Track Videos, so there is a lot of Tracks going on in my projects. Most of those are recorded with DSLR/Mirrorless cameras but recently I am having to work with cell phone footage. My workflow with such videos is to create a lot of Tracks that are spread across the screen and then move the videos around from track to track. You might know that also as "video wall". The problem is much more simple though: different such video walls will be grouped and muted together. When synchronising all tracks I will add them, sync them, remove the audio and put them into a muted group. Recently when trying to sync the latest video the playback has been bugging out and flickering. It shows the other videos that I have synced before. Not only that it also intercuts/flickers with the same video, but from different timings. It looks like the program is having a seizure.

What's even worse: When trying to isolate the issue I saved and created a new project. I pulled the same video into the new session. The behavior still continued with clips that where NOT in the current project!

Video example:

https://streamable.com/c5si7g

Essential Information:
Vegas Pro 18 (373), Windows 10 Pro build 19041.685 version 2004
Footage affected has been by iPhones, Android devices and a Nikon D7500
All clips have been mp4 or mov on 264 or 265 codecs.
GPU acceleration is on, though the GPU was inactive (so4 disabled). I tried enabling so4, no change.

Project Settings:
HD progressive, (has happened on multiple different frame rate settings)
8-bit full range
Blend fields, Smart Resample/Disable Resample (has happened on both)

Render Settings and Source info seem irrelevant since it has happened regardless.

Interesting information:
I played around with the playback settings. It was on "Good (Full)" and changing it to "Preview (Half)" seemed to get rid of the behavior. But the flickering remains on the frame counter and the text below the preview.

In all cases I have had used the Color Grading feature. It once happened with only one clip in the timeline.

To add to all that, while editing this video (which is a Streamlabs OBS capture) and trying to add the blur this has happened again, in some flickers applying the blur to the entire image, in some instances not at all. Something is seriously messing up in the background and I have never experienced this before in Vegas 15 through 17.

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 12/14/2020, 9:52 AM

General troubleshooting steps here; we know nothing about your system and little about your sources.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/important-information-required-to-help-you--110457/

Seeing what little you have said about your source, creating Proxies upon import will help you a great deal.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=proxies+vegas+pro+18

W-Music wrote on 12/14/2020, 9:54 AM

It appears to happen with any video. Playback at Good(Full) is going well for 5 seconds, then a black screen, then completely screwed up playback intercutting whatever was in the program before, whatever position of the timeline. Changes when you move the clip so it is not something that is burned into the proxy or anything like that.

I did disable hardware acceleration completely. It seems to not happen there, but I can't tell, since it is unable to render any smooth playback.

Just checked in Vegas 17 and it doesnt happen there. Looking throught the settings now to check if there are differences that explain the behaviour..

W-Music wrote on 12/14/2020, 10:11 AM

I did literally go through that post and included all information as specifically as I could.

As my Signature says I am running an amd machine, Ryzen 2700X 8 core processor, 32 GB DDR4 Ram, RX 580 8GB VRAM GPU. I am also running the latest drivers on those (Radeon 20.11.2).

I cannot create Proxies in my testing, as I have already created proxies earlier when adding them to the main project and when inserting the clip into a new project the proxy is being used by Vegas (as I can't delete it).

I can recreate it (just pulling a clip into a new project and playing back) with AVC and HEVC (though HEVC just crashes more and glitches less after the initial black screen) and with mp4 and mov. If really wanted I could just dump the "mediainfo" stuff from 30 different sources but I doubt that will help.

I have not been able to see any differences in settings between my versions of Vegas pro 17 and Vegas pro 18. Any differences I found I tried changing but to no avail. (That includes the "internal" tab).

W-Music wrote on 12/14/2020, 10:41 AM

I seem to have found the culprit.

A setting that differed was the RAM usage. I had the dynamic ram preview ("DRP") set at 6000 (in hopes that it helped vs crashes in large projects). At the standard setting it did not show the behaviour. I tried the following settings and checked in Resource Monitor:

DRP at 200 - no issues
1.9GB committed, 1.7GB working set, 11.5GB system usage, 8GB "free" Ram

DRP at 1000 - seemingly no issues
1.9 committed, 2.4GB working set, 12.1GB system usage, 7.2GB "free" Ram

DRP at 2000 - crashed once, could not reproduce. Only few glitches when coming from a higher DRP
1.9GB committed, 3.2GB working set, 12.8GB System usage, 6.4 GB "free" Ram

DRP at 6000 - Flickering within 5 sec
1.9GB commit, 6.3 working set, 15.9GB system usage, 3.3GB "free" Ram

So my theory is that Vegas has a problem with using the allotted ram. It seems to allocate more than necessary and when the "working set" (see windows resource manager) crosses about 3GB (could be coincidence) it starts to miscalculate or mismatch or misread or take wrong timings resulting in incorrect playback information.

This is about as good as my technical skills allow me to investigate. Would you kindly point me toward the Bug Report system of Magix'? Do you have any additional information or ideas?

j-v wrote on 12/14/2020, 11:30 AM

@W-Music

So my theory is that Vegas has a problem with using the allotted ram. It seems to allocate more than necessary and when the "working set" (see windows resource manager) crosses about 3GB (could be coincidence) it starts to miscalculate or mismatch or misread or take wrong timings resulting in incorrect playback information.

After a default installation Vegas does it exactly right.
The possibilities to change that setting you only need if you use the DRP option in Options after selecting a region for a short time to preview at full
( A better option here is to prerender that part ).
But when you not change it back to the default from installation Vegas cannot use the amount you reserved with that option.
So it is logical, also within Vegas, that not changing back gives you problems, but it was your own choice.

RogerS wrote on 12/14/2020, 7:38 PM

Dynamic ram preview is the scourge of Vegas. I would set it to as low as you get away with to not invite crashes and glitches. It can be helpful to view a few seconds transitions, etc. that otherwise slow down when they play.

My vote is proxy files or prerendering.

Do give support feedback on dynamic ram preview and where it fails. You can file a support request to Magix- the steps are outlined here:
https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/struggling-to-activate-vegas-effects--119919/#ca748066
The developers also watch this forum and may chime in.