Crashing Problems - Media off line

jdier wrote on 3/6/2010, 3:05 PM
I am working on a project that has a great deal of mp4 video files and I am running into terrible crashing problems.

After a crash Vegas has trouble finding my video files. It asks me if I want to choose a new file or find the lost one.

The files are all there...

Is there a limit to the number of files that can be in a project?

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 3/6/2010, 7:15 PM
As I mentioned many times here and elsewhere, Vegas has major problems with MOV and MP4 h.264 or MPEG4-SP files (using either the Quicktime or the MainConcept decoder). Crashes are to be expected in such situations.

So, for your current project, simply direct Vegas via the file explorer window that loads when it tells you that it can't find the files, to tell it where the files are.

For future projects, you have four options:

1. Buy Cineform NeoSCENE and transcode that MP4 footage to AVI, losslessly. Costs $100. Free alternative is AVID's DNxHD codec, but it's slower than Cineform to both encode and decode. I personally use Cineform for my Canon 5D's MOV h.264 format for that reason exactly.

2. Get a camera that shoots better supported footage: e.g. an AVCHD camera. Vegas is more optimized around AVIs and camcorder formats, rather than digirecorder and digicam formats. Samsung's MP4 falls under the digirecorder format btw, even if their cameras are shaped like camcorders (their format is not an industry standard as far as camcorders go, even if the format itself is popular).

3. Get another editor that's more likely to withstand the brutality of MOV/MP4 h.264 decoding.

4. Send a polite email to Sony asking for better h.264 MOV/MP4 support and don't use your editor until you get it.
jdier wrote on 3/6/2010, 7:51 PM
Thanks for the reply.

On my current project, once it goes south, I cannot redirect to the lost file. It shoots back and error on that and eventually crashes.

I will contact sony. Seems like this is something that should work.
jdier wrote on 3/9/2010, 6:54 AM
No responses from Sony. Wound up going back and starting project from scratch... Maxed project length at approx 10 minutes... rendered parts down...

started new projects and brought renders in and created big movie.

Work around, but it did work for me.