Canon 1dx Mark iii - H265 4:2:2 C-Log - Vegas Pro 17 Crashes

Vallartica wrote on 4/16/2020, 3:42 PM

Recently purchased a Canon 1dx Mark iii. I'm unable to get Vegas Pro 17 to work with any C-Log videos. The file will import, but Vegas Pro 17 becomes unstable and will crash and/or stop responding after a brief period of time (it's inconsistent whether Vegas just crashes or hangs and I have to force quit).

Any help would be appreciated. Here are more details...

When C-Log is enabled, the files are formatted in HEVC, 10-bit, with 4:2:2 Chroma Subsampling. I've tried both 1920x1080 and 3840x2160. After importing, the preview of the video has several green blocks. I've tried turning off the hardware decoder, but no difference in behavior. MPC-HC will play the file without issue.

I have been able to successfully work with non C-Log files which the 1dx mark iii creates as AVC1, 8-bit, and are 4:2:0.

My PC has a NVIDIA RTX 2060, i7-9700 @ 3.0 GHz, and 16 GB RAM.

Here is the Mediainfo for a file that fails:

General
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                                 : mp42 (mp42/hvc1/CAEP)
File size                                : 153 MiB
Duration                                 : 7 s 374 ms
Overall bit rate                         : 174 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Format Range@L5.1@High
Codec ID                                 : hvc1
Codec ID/Info                            : High Efficiency Video Coding
Duration                                 : 7 s 374 ms
Bit rate                                 : 173 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.697
Stream size                              : 152 MiB (100%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07
Color range                              : Full
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Codec configuration box                  : hvcC

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 7 s 360 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 256 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 228 KiB (0%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07

Other
ID                                       : 3
Type                                     : Time code
Format                                   : QuickTime TC
Duration                                 : 7 s 374 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Time code of first frame                 : 00:04:43;03
Time code, striped                       : Yes
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-04-16 18:08:07

And here is what Vegas Pro reports in the Explorer Properties for that file:

General
  Name: AQ9I0026.MP4
  Type: Intel HEVC
  Size: 156.33 MB (160,085,468 bytes)
  Created: Thursday, April 16, 2020, 1:08:14 PM
  Modified: Thursday, April 16, 2020, 1:08:14 PM
  Accessed: Thursday, April 16, 2020, 3:14:23 PM
  Attributes: Archive

Streams
  Video: 00:00:07.374, 29.970 fps progressive, 3840x2160x32, HEVC
  Audio: 00:00:07.316, 48,000 Hz, Stereo, AAC

ACID information
  ACID chunk: no
  Stretch chunk: no
  Stretch list: no
  Stretch info2: no
  Beat markers: no
  Detected beats: no

Other metadata
  Regions/markers: no
  Command markers: no

Media manager
  Media tags: no

Plug-In
  Name: mxhevcplug.dll
  Folder: C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 17.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\mxhevcplug
  Format: Intel HEVC
  Version: Version 1.0 (Build 8532)
  Company: MAGIX Computer Products Intl. Co.

Comments

j-v wrote on 4/16/2020, 3:53 PM

Any help would be appreciated.

Not all members here trying to help should have that type of files.

Maybe it is possible for you to share here a short problemfile on a website so we can download it unharmed to try out on our installations.

Vallartica wrote on 4/16/2020, 3:54 PM

Sure thing, let me find a way to host it somewhere.

j-v wrote on 4/16/2020, 4:06 PM

If you have dropbox installed , put it in there and show here the link.

Vallartica wrote on 4/16/2020, 4:08 PM

Here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/f96vze99ry9rxvj/AQ9I0026.MP4?dl=0

BruceUSA wrote on 4/16/2020, 4:26 PM

Vegas is a no go. Your option wanting to edit the footage in C Log is to use davinci Resolve Studio 16.2 . I just test your sample and is running great.

j-v wrote on 4/16/2020, 4:58 PM

I only got Vegas 17 to play that file good was to first convert it with Handbrake to a HEVC 8 bit file with only the NVENC option, so VPro 17 could use the So4 compoundplug.dll in stead of the default mxhevxplug.dll.

john_dennis wrote on 4/16/2020, 7:40 PM

I was able to convert the sample file to lossless Magic YUV RGB using Happy Otter Scripts Import Assist. Make sure you have lots of disk space as the resulting files are quite large.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 4/16/2020, 8:49 PM

I was able to play it on a Dell laptop w/Vegas v16 but the color is messed up. On my Intel Nuc with v17 the display had a bar down the middle and it locked up playing it. I/o decoding settings made no difference. In addition to the display corruption, there seems to be a hangup creating the proxy file under v17. It skipped doing it automatically even though I have it set to do so. When I tried to create the proxy manually from the project media screen under v17, it failed at about 35%. v16 on the same machine ran ok, but display almost mono, but it made the proxy fine. Went back to v17 to see if having the proxy already made might help... it didn't. Go figure. Looks like this on v16:

and this on v17:

Fwiw, I was able to load the original clip in DaVinci Resolve v16.2.0.054 but only the audio stream showed up... no video.

Also took a shot at transcoding with ffmpeg using the prores_ks codec which went very smoothly. Used this command line:

ffmpeg -i AQ9I0026.mp4 -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 0 AQ9I0026v0.mov

Output file was about 175mb not too big a jump from 156mb. You could change the profile from 0 to 1 but that would bump you up to 300mb and a much higher bitrate than your source file. Here's a video grab of me doing it...

wwaag wrote on 4/16/2020, 10:48 PM

If you want to maintain 10bit 422, another option using HappyOtterScripts is to transcode to Cineform using VirtualDub2 which plays very nicely on the timeline.

Or, you can just use VirtualDub2 without HOS. In any case, stay away from Handbrake for transcoding which was never designed for producing intermediates.

Vallartica wrote on 4/17/2020, 9:51 AM

Thanks for the information. I will give the HappyOtterScripts that were mentioned a couple of times a try.

Is this considered a "bug" in Vegas Pro that might be fixed at some point? Or is this a limitation of Vegas Pro and beyond the intended use case?

I'd rather not have to learn new software in davinci Resolve Studio or Premiere, but seems that both these other products can handle these sort of files without having to transcode to another format first.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 4/17/2020, 2:18 PM

I was comparing this Canon clip to one from a E2 Z-Cam, which works just fine, and I think I see what the problem is. Both clips are 10-bit H.265 but the Canon is 4:2:2 while the Z-Cam is 4:2:0. Played around with various encodes using ffmpeg and VirtualDub and Vegas always barfs on h.265 in 4:2:2. Convert the Canon clip to 4:2:0 and its golden. Setting crf=7 yields almost the same file size and bitrate as the source.

ffmpeg command line:

ffmpeg -i AQ9I0026.mp4 -c:v libx265 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420p -x265-params crf=7 AQ9I0026(h.265crf=7;p420).mov

or via VirtualDub2 / HOS:

Don't know if your camera lets you choose 10-bit 4:2:0 sub-sampling but if so, that may be a work around.

Musicvid wrote on 4/17/2020, 2:26 PM

Vegas is a no go. Your option wanting to edit the footage in C Log is to use davinci Resolve Studio 16.2 . I just test your sample and is running great.

Vegas does not have a Canon C-Log LUT afaik. 10-bit comparisons are futile without it.

Has nothing to do with chroma subsampling -- one would never see a difference.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 4/17/2020, 3:02 PM

Just checked and the current Canon firmware seems to be strictly 4:2:2 at 10-bit h.265 and only does 4:2:0 in 8-bit h.264. Which is part of the reason I'm going with Z-Cam because they do 10-bit 4:2:0 in h.265 with their Zlog2 (which I can confirm works absolutely perfectly in Vegas along with all their LUTs) and only uses 4:2:2 for their ProRes recording option.

adis-a3097 wrote on 4/17/2020, 3:02 PM

Vegas is a no go. Your option wanting to edit the footage in C Log is to use davinci Resolve Studio 16.2 . I just test your sample and is running great.

Vegas does not have a Canon C-Log LUT afaik. 10-bit comparisons are futile without it.

Has nothing to do with chroma subsampling -- one would never see a difference.

😘

Musicvid wrote on 4/17/2020, 4:13 PM

I stand corrected. Thanks.

Why do you think people are spending energy talking about conversions and subsampling?

adis-a3097 wrote on 4/17/2020, 5:15 PM

No problem, Musicvid!

Well, what do I know. Corona? Gotta talk about something... 😂

Vallartica wrote on 4/17/2020, 6:29 PM

I think the 4:2:2 chroma subsamping in H.265 is the problem. As Howard noted, the camera will record in 4:2:0 H.264 if I turn-off C-Log and no issues in Vegas in this format.

The reason I was trying C-Log was to learn about color grading. Canon provides several LUTs. I played around a bit in Premier (trial) with color grading just to get an idea of what is possible.

It seems that Nvidia doesn't hardware decode H.265 4:2:2 files; it can handle 4:4:4 and 4:2:0, but not 4:2:2 (if I've understood the documentation correctly). Not sure if that's the problem here? Although as mentioned before I turned-off hardware decoding in Vegas but it didn't make a difference. Maybe there is a software solution to decode this? It must be possible because MPC-HC can play the file, although I don't really know how to check how it is able to do so or what codec it used.

JN- wrote on 4/18/2020, 4:25 PM

@Vallartica

“It seems that Nvidia doesn't hardware decode H.265 4:2:2 files”

Unless I’m misreading the table, it appears to me that Nvidia nvdec supports up to 12 bit 444? ...

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix

fr0sty wrote on 4/20/2020, 1:00 AM

The VCS team has this sample file and they have been made aware of the crash issue.