Help 8a 7e and 7d are crashing, project due Thur.

DSW wrote on 10/24/2007, 1:25 AM

I have an Quad core 6600 with 2 GB of ram.Intel MB. Win XP Service Pack 2. 4 WD hard drives, 3- 500 GB and 1-150GB (10,000rpm). Radeon X1650 Series Video card and an M-Audio Delta 66 sound card with the omni studio breakout box. this computer is not connected to the internet and has no antiviris software. just defraged harddrives and reinstalled Vegas 8a. I upgraded to Vegas 8a because part way into my first hdv project 7e started crashing. now that I am 7min into this 12 min project 8a is crashing. I am using the Canon HV 20 as a deck for my Canon XH-A1. The project was shot in 24p. Also 8a can not capture correctly. it divids the clips into smaller chucks and the preview while trying to capture is slow and jerky. I also noticed that files in the explorer window/Video Capture in vegas does not show all the video files that are in the explorer window/Video Capture that I can bring up through my computer/E drive/ Video Capture. when I look at these files that are missing under "properties" and "type of file" it just says "file" while the ones that show up in the vegas explorer say "M2T file". Was this a problem at capture? can I Rename these files or do I need to recapture them? could this be causing the crash? If I open a new Vegas project and drag one of these files in it seems to play OK at least for a while. Curently I am using Vegas 7 to capture and then draging the files into vegas 8. If you have any ideas please let me know, thanks.

Comments

NickHope wrote on 10/24/2007, 1:56 AM

Dave, try capturing your footage with HDVSplit.

This discussion may be useful.

In V8.0a check the first and last 2 or 3 frames of the captured clips. They might be repeat static frames. If so use Phil Hemel's excellent script to trim them.

On my system I've edited the script to trim the first 2 frames and the last 2 frames of each cilp because they are repeat frames.

Original discussion about that is here.

blink3times wrote on 10/24/2007, 3:11 AM

I have the HV20 and I have similar problems. I use HDVsplit and capture as one complete clip (no scene select) then I use HDVsplit's option to scene split AFTER the capture.

Laurence wrote on 10/24/2007, 5:41 AM

You have run into a problem that some of have been complaining about for ages. That is that if you use regular DV tape for HDV, that you often end up with data errors that cause Vegas to crash. I get about one or two of these per tape on average.

Here's what you need to do. Buy a copy of MPEG Wizard from Womble.com. This is useful for re-editing SD DVDs anyway. Included with MPEG Wizard is a program called MPEG VCR. This is the program you need to fix your current situation.

Back on your crashing project, you will find that there are just a couple of clips that are causing your crashing problem. You need to figure out which ones they are. Start a new timeline and drag clips to it. Usually the crashing will occur as soon as one of the offending clips is dragged to the timeline and Vegas starts to draw the audio waveforms. Sometimes however this crash doesn't occur until Vegas tries to play or render a clip with errors.

Anyway, once you have isolated the offending clip(s), load them into MPEG VCR and resave them. This resave will not change the actual video data. It will just rewrite whatever formatting data is crashing Vegas. Replace the crashing clips with the resaved ones and you should be back in business. Be aware that the preview performance of the resaved clips won't be as CPU efficient. Final render quality will be the same however.

Yes this is really time-consuming. Yes it sucks to have to do this. Yes this is a major problem that should be fixed.

Ways around this include using HDV rated tape for fewer formatting errors or using Cineform intermediaries. Another way around this might be to use the V1 hard disc setup instead of tape.

I have a slower P4 machine, so the way I deal with it is to use Gearshift to render proxies. During the proxy rendering process, Vegas will occaionally crash due to running into a clip with bad formatting data. When it does this, I resave the offending clip and start Gearshift again from that point. Usually I end up doing this once or twice per tape.

This is a serious problem with Vegas that needs to be aknowledged and fixed.

Laurence wrote on 10/24/2007, 5:46 AM

By the way, I do get fewer of these m2t clip formatting errors if I use HDVSplit instead of the Vegas capture, especially if I capture the video with the HDVSplit preview window turned off.

Also, this isn't entirely a Vegas problem. Offending clips usually crash WMP as well, at least on my system.

DSW wrote on 10/24/2007, 8:12 AM

Thank you everyone for your helpful hints. Blessings

NickHope wrote on 10/25/2007, 9:43 PM

Laurence, I've recently captured something like 20 hours of 1080i50 HDV using HDV split. The footage was shot on a Z1 using standard Sony mini-DV tape and captured to an external drive hanging off an old laptop. I've brought the files into Vegas 8.0a on my x64 desktop and haven't had a single crash yet. So it seems to be a problem that only occurs on some systems.

Edit: But yes, I have used your method a couple of times in the past in version 7 to weed out files that Vegas didn't like.

DSW wrote on 11/5/2007, 5:01 PM

I could never get Vegas 8a to capture right. It became very difficult to identify a corrupted clip. I would add clips till one crashed Vegas. then to make sure I would open Vegas again and bring in the clip that caused the crash only to discover that it did not crash it this time. I ended up dividing the 12 min. program into about six parts and rendered each of these parts to a new file with the supplied Cineform codec. I then stitched the files together in a new Vegas file and rendered to wmv. By a miracle it worked, but it was to close. After working around the clock for several days with the fear of losing this project and one of my favorite clients. This is the first time Vegas has let me down and with a product that they finally call Pro! I hope they get this figured out and soon because there are many more people out there that have Canon cameras and Vegas. By the way the canon HDV 24p footage looked great on a big screen. The audience of about 300 and my client were pleased.