Error msg & hang VMS 6.0a

jimvette wrote on 3/9/2006, 7:36 PM
I use VMS ver 60a bld 85. It produces error msgs, a variety, and hangs. I upgraded from 6.0 where I never had msgs or hangs. I completed a still photo project with text, menus, and music track OK and it will preview perfect on the new ver 60a. Sony tech sent me advice and directions how to uninstall and reinstall the program which I've done twice but still get same msgs and hangs. I constantly update virus defs, have Norton Inet Security with AV. Cleaned files, defragged the hard drive. Done a complete hardware diagnosis with no failures. 1. I've ordered a new internal hard drive with intent of using it only for VMS and project files in hopes I can prevent conflicts with any other software on the computer. The OS is
XP Media Center Ed . Possible that Media Center is interfering? (I don't use any of its features) Problems started with the upgrade to 6.0a Any suggestions?

Comments

Paul Mead wrote on 3/9/2006, 8:22 PM
I am currently battling hang problems as well (see my other posts in this forum and the Vegas Video forum). I get hangs during render, or if I preview the whole project from beginning to end (no problem if I preview segments at a time). I finally managed to trim a copy of the project down enough that I could fit it on a data DVD and still demonstrate the problem (about 10 minutes). I will be sending it to Sony tomorrow. The reproducer is a pile of stills (lots of pan/crop) with a little bit of video mixed in (a bit under 2gb of files). It seems that if I tweak just about anything in that subset of my original project then the problem goes away. Unfortunately, tweaking things in my original project seems to just move the hang to another location.

So, I feel for you. I have basically wasted this week narrowing it down. I have a deadline in about another week (tick, tick, tick...). I plan on splitting the project into multiple titles just so that I can get it to DVD (yuck).

I have found similar sounding symptoms in the Vegas forum as well. Hopefully, the Sony folks can figure it out from the stuff I send them.

Btw, what error messages are you getting? I often see messages about the undo buffer being inconsistent.
Paul Mead wrote on 3/10/2006, 6:11 PM
Per a suggestion from Sony support, I just went thru and resized all my stills to video dimensions (720x480) and now my project renders. I still regard it as a bug that it hangs if you aren't using small dimensions, but at least I can get back to editing.
IanG wrote on 3/11/2006, 9:49 AM
What size were the stills originaly?

Ian G.
jimvette wrote on 3/11/2006, 11:21 AM
Some originals were 1028 on up. I began resizing them to 720x480 or less. I've been reading books also regarding DV, "HDV what you need to know", by Eagle and Dileo. They write about the hardware necessary to edit well, hence the 2nd hard drive idea. I use Corel Paint Shop Pro X now. Just reading about resolution and resizing in "Paint shop Pro 9" by McMahon and Nichols. Also rely on, "Windows XP for Dummies, all-in-one desk reference, by Woody Leonhard. Two books coming, "Vegas 6 editing workshop" and "Instant Vegas Movie Studio+DVD" by Eagle and Rofrano. The resize issue is in the Vegas manual and they recommend saving stills to .png format which I'm doing. So, goal is: install the 250G 2nd hard drive, load Vegas 60a directly to it, and use the drive solely to capture, edit, and output video. (Also need to look more at "virtual memory" effect on editing) The computer specs: Dell XPS Gen5, Intel R dual processor at 3.00GHz, memory 3.00GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 6800, Creative SB Audigy 2Z5(WDM), monitor is 19" ultra-sharp flat screen. All this allows a great experience. As my plan progresses I'll to post the success/failure of it. Thanks for your input.
KCvidkid wrote on 3/11/2006, 12:39 PM
This is an interesting idea. Does anyone know of a program that can resize a group of pictures to a certain dimension? A freeware program would obviously be nice. I have a large number of wedding pics, from different people with different sizes. It would take a long time to edit each one. Thanks.
KCvidkid wrote on 3/11/2006, 1:13 PM
I guess I answered my own question. For anyone interested, you can download Microsoft's PowerToys Image Resizer here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

You can right click on a group of photos, choose "resize" and then once you decide on the size, it creates new photos (the name of the original photo with "small" inserted). It leaves the originals alone. Hope this helps to speed resizing up.

DrLumen wrote on 3/11/2006, 3:07 PM
I don't know of a dedicated program but you can do it in Corel Photo-Paint using a script

What is the "large number?"

intel i-4790k / Asus Z97 Pro / 32GB Crucial RAM / Nvidia GTX 560Ti / 500GB Samsung SSD / 256 GB Samsung SSD / 2-WDC 4TB Black HDD's / 2-WDC 1TB HDD's / 2-HP 23" Monitors / Various MIDI gear, controllers and audio interfaces

KCvidkid wrote on 3/11/2006, 6:03 PM
I have over a hundred. The microsoft program seems to work fine. Thanks for your idea.
Javaholics wrote on 3/11/2006, 6:05 PM
Thanks KCvidkid for the XP power toys info. I downloaded the resizing tool and it'll be quite handy at times.

Another freebie tool some might find useful is a viewer called IrfanView found here; http://www.irfanview.com/ This application not only provides a batch conversion for size but also allows you to; Crop, Resize, Insert text, Change color depth, Horizontal flip, Vertical flip, Rotate left, Rotate right, Convert to greyscale, Negative, Sharpen, Gamma Correction, Contrast, Brightness, Saturation, Color Balance etc.
rustier wrote on 3/11/2006, 8:18 PM
I am really scratching my head on this one. My last project was mixed media with photos and video clips. I just plopped the pics onto the timeline with no regard for their size - and it turned out fine -no hangs. I checked the types and sizes and they were all over the place: 1280x1024, 720x480,640x480, 233x294,936x776,and a lot of 1024x768. Mostly jpegs with a sprinkling of gif and tiff.

I am glad I didn't have to resize all the pics - this time anyway.

I think you are right Paul that this is some kind of bug - but I am not sure where or how.

I am curious what the problem will shake out to be.

good luck with your projects
Paul Mead wrote on 3/12/2006, 7:15 AM
In response to Ian, my pics were all over the place. I had things submitted to me from 1280x960 up to 3000x2000. Pretty standard stuff from today's digital cameras. (Rustier, it doesn't look like you are getting photos from a digital camera.) I also used the scanner on a lot of prints that were given to me, and I always use high-res on them (3600x2400). The impression I got from support is anything over HD res might be looking for trouble. Note that support really didn't know, it was just a hunch. Running Task Manager, I could watch VM Size grow in huge jumps, like 24mb at a time, when processing the big pics, so that was a clue. After resizing the stills memory usage was about a third of what it was before.

It never dawned on me that a video program would choke processing photos directly from a camera. I am a bit annoyed that I had to lose so much time tracking it down, but, that's the way it goes sometimes. Also, I had to call and buy support to get a meaningful answer from Sony. My initial email got the response "format your drive with NTFS" (it was already), which didn't help my mood much.

I did send a reproducer to Madison. Hopefully they can come up with a better strategy for processing digital photos.
jimvette wrote on 3/12/2006, 12:45 PM
Resizing seems to be the key. The Vegas 6 manual addresses this on page 227, working with still images. My case is that my stills are scanned bw photos and color slides (scanner is visioneer 9320 usb) which has super software. Then we have digital photos of bw glossy paper from a school annual, and contemporary digital camera shots. So the resolution ranges from 72 to 1200 and size is all over the place. So, using Corel Photo Shop Pro X, I enhance, resize to no more than 720 x 576, crop for composition, and save. I created several folders to save in, using categories for my timeline. Hoping when I pull in the media to Vegas it won't choke up. Still waiting on the hard drive delivery. Today is still photo day. Again all of your input is appreciated.
rustier wrote on 3/13/2006, 6:19 AM
Okay Paul, you say Sony is suggesting to stay below the hi def resolution - but which one? 720p is 1280 x 720, 1080i is 1440x1080. My last photo mix project would suggest the 1080i resolution since I had a bunch at 1024x768.

So as long as my final photo's to be imported into VMS are below the 1440x1080 I should be golden right? This begs the next question then - if you are doing a standard definition production and you use a high def picture - what is the final (photo) resolution delivered to your television and how is that set (if it can be)?

And this begs the next question which is really geared more for DVDA (3) - if you skip VMS and compile your photo's there - will it be able to handle the high def photos - and does it resample(downsample) as well? I am guessing ti would have to - and I wonder if it would hang as well.

hmmmmm - fortunately this has not been a problem for me - yet
Paul Mead wrote on 3/13/2006, 7:27 AM
Honestly, I don't remember exactly what dimensions were recommended. It was basically an educated guess on the part of the support person so it isn't meaningful for me to give an exact number.

Also, as hinted by in jimvette's doc pointer in a previous post, you have to account for differences in pixel aspect ratio. The docs say for NTSC the video pixel width is .9091 of the photo pixel width. So, for example, 720 video pixels is about 655 photo pixels. In other words, if you use the output aspect ratio, and you want to fill the whole screen with a photo, you would use 655x480 as your photo dimensions. If you use 720x480 you will end up lopping off the edges or squishing the photo (as I discovered after resizing to 720x480).

What throws a wrench into things for me is pan/crop. If you crop the image window down and pan across the image then I would think you would want to provide a photo with enough resolution that you end up with good results. To me, the higher the better, just let the video editor figure it out. At least, that is the approach I was taking when I started this project, but, obviously, that led to a lot of frustration.
rustier wrote on 3/13/2006, 9:02 AM
I believe 640x480 is considered standard definition NTSC. I was under the impression that Platinum VMS could play around with HD (which I haven't gotten into). Given that alleged capability I am not sure why you couldn't at the very least get the hi def res for your photo's instead of the standard res. Come to think of it you use the standard version dont you?

I can't help but laugh at the doc which say a video pixel is .9091 of a photo pixel (I guess I missed that page). As if the water "ain't muddy enough". Oh I am sure there's a very technical explaination - LOL.

There is another program out there a fellow mentioned in the forum some time ago that he said was far superior for showing photos - although I can't remember what it was. I wonder how it handles all these resolution issues. (maybe a search in this forum -keyword photos?) Maybe that would be better for you - of course that means shelling out some more money for another program.
Paul Mead wrote on 3/13/2006, 9:34 AM
Yes, I am using the standard version; I didn't see myself taking advantage of the Platinum features. I'm sure that somebody knows the technical details of how VMS processes still images, but I haven't found that person yet.

I am putting together the standard high school end of season video, which basically means gathering everybody's video and pictures and putting it into a video that is visually appealing and (hopefully) somewhat entertaining. I received all kinds of formats for my media sources, which requires a flexible tool to put it all together. VMS seems like the ideal product for doing this kind of thing, and I think it is, except for this little wart.
rustier wrote on 3/13/2006, 11:19 AM
According to these guys VMS will downsize to the format you chose - the only issue is memory - not your memory (haha) but the computer memory. Apparently VMS becomes obese with large photo's and cause your operating page file to "choke" as you put it so well. how much memory you got ?

the link on photo resolutions and such is
here

I remembered the name of the other photo program -
here is the link for the program called
Proshow Gold
Paul Mead wrote on 3/13/2006, 12:26 PM
I'm running with 1.5gb of memory and a 768mb pagefile (I thought it was bigger -- it is now).

When watching VMS execute, I would see its VM size grow to as much as 1.7gb, so it definitely was hogging up the system. It would hang at smaller amounts, however. I would often see hangs when the VM size was 1.3gb, so I think there is more to it than simple VM limits.

That link has an interesting discussion. However, based on my observations, I would say that VMS does not free memory used to render a photo after the photo has been rendered; I bet it just keeps creating new buffers for each photo. Also, the comments regarding panning mirror my feelings; you gotta give it something to pan over.

I did not downsize all of my photos to video size; I only did the ones with a dimension over 2048. That seemed to be enough.
Paul Mead wrote on 3/14/2006, 1:25 PM
Just to better answer rustier's earlier question, I found this in the response I got from support: "Vegas supports resolutions up to 2048x2048 (KB article 924)." The referenced article doesn't explicity discuss stills, but I suppose it could apply to stills as well.