Thanks for the reply. Are you able to get Waves audio plugins to work?

I would have no problem buying specific hardware if Vegas had specific recommendations, but I'm forced to guess. I do know that Vegas 16 won't work at all with a Radeon VII. The 1080ti seems to work well.

I have used Vegas since the early days as well, and now use it to produce concert and festival videos for many of the biggest names and events in the music industry, including multiple grammy award winning artists and many of the world's biggest music festivals (my profile pic was taken at Bonnaroo, one of the US's biggest festivals).

It isn't perfect, I get annoying crashes from time to time, but it's far from unusable.

If you read the "information required for us to help you" sticky thread, post the things it asks you to post in a new thread about your issues, you'll be surprised at the success rate we have around these forums with solving problems like what you are experiencing. Vegas' audio engine hasn't seen much love in years, so that end of it will probably need to wait on a new version to bring it up to speed, but as you said, even with that limitation, its audio/DAW features are still far beyond the majority of its competition. However, we should be able to help you with your stability and rendering issues on the video end.

One reason why Vegas can be buggy is it allows users to edit a very wide variety of source media types on a very wide variety of hardware configurations without transcoding (you'll quickly get annoyed at how often FCPX will not take in various types of media, or the limited amount of output formats it comes with stock, etc), far more than the majority of the competition. With that versatility comes some headaches, but most of the time they can be solved or worked around.

@JayM If the iPhone video is variable frame rate, try converting to constant frame rate and see if that helps.

VP 16 works fine for me, though occasionally it would freeze when using some third-party render encoders, but that was usually due to incompatible settings. I have Wave plug-ins that usually run w/o issue, though I always had trouble with Wave's authorization using all different DAWs and NLEs. Plug-in Alliance, iZ, and most other plug-in are trouble free aside for some sizing annoyances (DPI) here and there.
FWIW, I have been a Vegas user since the Sonic Foundry audio-only beta version as well.

I've been running Vegas since version 3 for the most part with minimal problems and on only two occasions didn't upgrade, the latest being v.16 . What are the common denominators over the years? First, I stay generic on my hardware. For the most part Dell XPS series and have used both nVidia and Radeon after market mid level cards at any given point, which means they're usually tested and proved. I don't install a lot of extra crap. I keep my Windows installation as simple as possible and always up to date. I ONLY run Windows Defender for protection and have never had a problem. I practice smart browsing and stay away from odd ball websites and click bait. Of great importance, have plenty of RAM (I'm running 24 gig) and go through device manager once in a while and make sure all drivers are up to date. When I have had issues it's usually an outdated driver issue, video, sound or networking in that order.

I stay off the cutting edge but like to experiment. Most all of my output is HD although I source nearly all video I shoot at 4k anymore. Depending on the project I will at times use proxy files when using lots of FX and layers. My plugins are basically BorisFX and Magix. I stick with Izotope, Sony and Magix for audio plugins. Right now I'm running an Intel Core i7 4790 @ 3.60GHz and a Radeon RX590. I just upgraded to SSD system and a separate SSD video source drive. Otherwise have many WD USB passport drives for archiving, etc.

-- tom

With only 2 posts and 2 comments in three years, you may not be working enough with the program, nor availing yourself of the many forum resources to help you understand and work effectively using shared knowledge, best practices, and technical acumen. More often, it's a matter of expectations getting in the way of physical-world reality and limitations. Keep working, strengthen your skills and knowledge, and you'll get there. Using tools productively is a two-way partnership.

Variable frame rate cellphone video is problematic. You can use Handbrake to convert it to constant frame rate. Handbrake is free and you can get it here: https://handbrake.fr/

Handbrake will do batch processing too. Try it and see if it solves your problems.

Thanks for all of your helpful comments and feedback. I'm sorry I didn't replay right away. I have been very busy during this crazy Covid era. A little bit about me... I am not a real professional. I do get paid for what I do, but I'm primarily an audio engineer. I don't do video every day. That might be why I haven't worked out the bugs and found workarounds yet. One of my recent projects was a pretty simple 3 cam shoot of what was essentially a podcast. I needed to have quick turnaround because it was on the subject of Coroanvirus. I used Vegas to edit the audio and video. That video has about 300,000 views now. Using proxy files, I was able to edit in 4k at full frame rate. (well, technically, it was preview quality in multi-cam mode).

I want to be clear that I'm not here to dump on Vegas, but I was a bit frustrated with the crashes.

The project that spawned this thread ended up being a recurring job. I think it was indeed that iPhone video that was most troublesome. On the second project I was able to use 3 GH4 cameras.

Rather than just start editing, I decided to go ahead and make proxy files. I opened Cubase and mixed the audio while those file were being created. My 16-core CPU handled it well.

Some good news... It was rock solid. No crashes for the entire edit process. Render times were pretty fast with the 1080ti.

I tried to edit in Vegas while Cubase was rendering... bad idea... Cubase doesn't like to share CPU cycles. I let Cubase finish and then added the resulting stereo file to Vegas and I was good to go.

On subsequent projects, I didn't have access to the borrowed GH4 cameras. I needed to mix my single GH4 with two sony cameras using AVCHD. The GH4 was 4k and the Sony's were 1080i. I made proxies again, and had no problem.

I still can't trust that what I see in the preview will be the same color as the rendered video. I just took my best guess and the result was good enough.

I decided to dabble in Apple with FCPX and there were some things I liked and some I hated. Apple has very good taste. Any built in effects and titles all are very tasteful. In Vegas, it's up to you to create tasteful stuff. I like the built in syncing feature. Vegas really needs that and time code. What I don't like in FCPX is file management... it's a mystery to me! A simple project can suddenly turn into terabytes of data. I still can't wrap my head around the difference between a library, project and event. And what really surprised me was how poorly it handles AVCHD files.

I still want to learn FCPX, but I won't toss out Vegas.

Thanks again for all the help!

~Jay

@JayM I identify with your frustrations perfectly.

I also do not want to dump Vegas, there are many tings I love about it.

But also for me, it has been unreliable in a number of key areas - GPU integration, stabilization, preview/rendered, and it has several quirks about the interface, etc.

So basically for the very simple editing, I love it. Once I start throwing more stuff at it, it does become a little unstable. BTW, it seems it is unstable only when GPU is enabled. But anyway, the alternative it is not acceptable for me, so if I want to still use Vegas, I need to live with "expecting something bad to happen".

But I also expect something good to happen, so I hope version 18 or future v17 builds will improve on the stability and features.

In the meanwhile, I also use Davinci Resolve along Vegas, for some specific type of productions.

Yes, Vegas works for me ... but then I'm still using v10e and, while I'm slowly moving over to Resolve, Vegas remains my first love ... 😍

JayM, Waves plugins works very well for me in Vegas over the years, Always has.

Yes, as a Professional i use it everyday for all my Broadcast work, so i have no need to pre-render out anything.

Vegas like all other NLE's is not perfect, but the best workflow is working with what you are comfortable with.

Steve,

How well do your Waves plugins work? My problems are that they make Vegas very sluggish, and sometimes the levels get too loud... like every time a section loops, it get 10db louder until it's nothing but noise.

What version of Windows, Waves and Vegas are you using now? Do you use the ASIO driver, or the windows driver?

Thanks,

~Jay

Have many Waves plugs in Vegas. Favorites are RBass and RVox, and sometimes use the Loudness meter Plus for accurate loudness output for broadcast. Along with a slew of Izotope plugins also installed..... and no, no sluggishness nor noise.

I am using Windows 7, the latest versions of Waves plugins and Vegas Pro 17, and using the Windows driver, on a basic built system, no heavily GPU stacking.

But make sure the audios you are importing into Vegas are not on an external Drive.....That sometimes causes an issue!