If VEGAS Pro is hanging or crashing during rendering (or editing), here are some things you can try to troubleshoot it.
1. TROUBLESHOOT STABILITY
First read this post about troubleshooting crashing and stability. In particular, consider the sections about...
- Disabling so4compoundplug. TRY THIS FIRST if VEGAS is hanging during editing, and so4compoundplug is the decoder plug-in in use.
- Disabling GPU acceleration. TRY THIS NEXT!
- Setting Dynamic RAM Preview max to zero. TRY THIS NEXT!
- Overheating. This is often a cause of problems during rendering, especially on laptops.
- Using VEGAS-friendly media formats.
2. DISK SPACE
Check you have plenty of disk space on the drive that you are rendering to. Some renders can be huge.
3. RESTART VEGAS PRO/REBOOT PC
It's a good idea to restart VEGAS Pro before an important render to flush the buffers and cache. You may even choose to reboot the computer, especially if you don't shut it down often.
4. REMOVE UNUSED MEDIA
Try purging the unused media from your project to free up system resources. It can also make a big difference to how quickly your project loads. This is done using the button at the top left of your Project Media Window.
VEGAS Pro 15.0:
VEGAS Pro 14.0:
Sony Vegas Pro 13.0 and earlier:
5. BYPASS SOME FX
The problem might be caused by a 3rd-party plugin, or even a native FX. Try bypassing any particularly demanding FX first by unchecking them in the appropriate FX settings window. If that solves the problem then try an alternative plug-in if possible and report the problem.
6. REPLACE "PROBLEM" MEDIA
If it always hangs at the same frame or place, the media may be corrupt. Try replacing the media at that point with recaptured or newly transcoded files.
7. RENDER SECTIONS TO INTERMEDIATE FILES
If the render hangs or fails well into the timeline, try rendering it in shorter sections to intermediate files, then import those into a new project to stitch together. Be sure your intermediate render settings (resolution, frame rate etc.) match your project properties (which should normally match your source media properties) or your destination properties (more info here).
The same format (codec) as your destination delivery format might work OK as an intermediate file, but you may wish to increase the bit rate to maintain quality. Other good choices for high-quality intermediates might include Sony XAVC Intra, Cineform (installed with GoPro Studio which is now part of GoPro Quik Studio), MagicYUV (lossless VFW codec), and high-bitrate AVC.
Some 3rd-party plugins allow you to automatically render regions. These include Vegasaur Transcoder (discussion) and VASST Render Assistant.
8. SPLIT THE PROJECT
Further to that, you could try splitting your project into smaller projects for editing and rendering. For example if your project is 30 minutes long, you could work on three 10-minute projects. After editing each section separately, render an intermediate file from each and import them into a new project to stitch together.
9. USE STANDARD RENDER TEMPLATES
If you are using custom settings for rendering, try rendering using a standard template without any customization applied. If that solves the problem, customize the settings one by one until you find which setting causes the problem.
10. CONSOLIDATE MEDIA ON ONE DRIVE
If your media files are scattered across multiple drives, try moving them to a single drive. A dedicated media drive that is separate from your system drive can help.
11. SMART ADAPTIVE DEINTERLACE METHOD
If you are using VEGAS Pro 14 or later and your Deinterlace method is set to "Smart adaptive (GPU only)" in the Project Properties, try setting it to something else such as "Interpolate fields" (reported case). However smart adaptive deinterlacing does work well.
12. MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 RENDER - WINDOWS TEMP DIRECTORY FULL
If you render MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4, a temp file (with a name such as "skeo", "s3v4" or "s94c") is written to the Windows temp folder, which by default is C:\user\"name"\appdata\local\temp\ folder. This will cause the render to fail if that drive runs out of space. A workaround is to change the Windows temp folder location using the TMP environment variable, as described here and here.
13. USE CPU ENCODING INSTEAD OF GPU ENCODING
Using CPU-only encoding instead of hardware (GPU) encoding may improve stability, particularly if you disable QSV encoding. It may also improve quality (at the expense of speed). See part #4 of this post.
14. "RENDER AS" HANG WITH WINDOWS 10 CREATORS EDITION
If rendering hangs VEGAS Pro with Windows 10 Creators Edition or later, a package of measures might be required to work around the problem, involving some or all of these steps:
- Plug monitor into discrete graphics card, not Intel integrated graphics port.
- Clean reinstall of discrete graphics card drivers
- In Internal Preferences (hold SHIFT while clicking "Preferences" to access):
- Set "Disable multi-core rendering" to TRUE
- Set "Enable multi-core rendering for playback" to FALSE
- In Video Prefences:
- Set "Dynamic RAM Preview max" to 0
- Set "GPU acceleration of video processing" to Off
- Open VEGAS Pro in Windows 7 compatibility mode (right click program shortcut > Properties > Compatibility)
15. IF YOU STILL NEED HELP
If the above steps do not help you solve the problem, make a forum post and/or support request, including the following information:
- Your system specifications
- Exactly which version and build number you are using
- The type of media you are using, if this is relevant. MediaInfo and VEGAS Pro File Properties reports are useful.
- The exact format you are rendering. If you are rendering with custom settings then a screenshot would be useful.
- The exact point at which VEGAS hangs or fails, and the exact contents of any error messages
- If VEGAS crashes and displays a Problem Reporting Service (PRS) window, send the error report to the support team.
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