Help with RAM preview setting

Illusion wrote on 12/4/2020, 2:42 PM

So far on my system, I always needed to have the RAM preview setting set to 0 otherwise my system becomes unstable. System spec in signature. Setting to 8192 MB, playback is fine and smooth for about 30 secs, then it would stutter, the preview window would turn black or even red. Getting the setting back to 0 fixes the issue. The only way to get a stable system with a non 0 value is to disable "GPU acceleration of video processing". Both at the same time, unstable. I played around with small and big numbers (up to 16GB) without success.

Fiddling with the RAM value at 1024MB today after installing the latest studio driver, I got a crash that never happened before. Here are the details. This was while playing back a 1080p project. I did a forum search on the faulty dll and found some posts. Suggestion was to update or rollback driver. All of them were related to older version of Vegas. I am on VP18. Any sugggestion?

Problem Description
   Application Name:    VEGAS Pro
   Application Version: Version 18.0 (Build 373)
   Problem:             Unmanaged Exception (0xc0000005)
   Fault Module:        C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispsi.inf_amd64_4a82b713f39f87a0\nvopencl64.dll
   Fault Address:       0x00007FFC3DE94C81
   Fault Offset:        0x00000000000F4C81

Fault Process Details
   Process Path:        C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 18.0\vegas180.exe
   Process Version:     Version 18.0 (Build 373)
   Process Description: VEGAS Pro
   Process Image Date:  2020-10-27 (Tue Oct 27) 04:36:20

Red preview during playback

Media info of the file (Olympus camera, correctly detected as full range)

Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : QuickTime
Codec ID                                 : qt   2011.07 (qt  )
File size                                : 132 MiB
Duration                                 : 55 s 556 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 20.0 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2015-08-02 12:07:34
Tagged date                              : UTC 2015-08-02 12:07:34
TAGS                                     : 8"R

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings                          : 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : No
Format settings, Reference frames        : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=15
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 55 s 556 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 18.4 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 20.5 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.296
Stream size                              : 122 MiB (92%)
Language                                 : Japanese
Encoded date                             : UTC 2015-08-02 12:07:34
Tagged date                              : UTC 2015-08-02 12:07:34
Color range                              : Full
Color primaries                          : BT.601 NTSC
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.601
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.601
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : sowt
Duration                                 : 55 s 556 ms
Source duration                          : 55 s 560 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 10.2 MiB (8%)
Source stream size                       : 10.2 MiB (8%)
Language                                 : Japanese
Encoded date                             : UTC 2015-08-02 12:07:34
Tagged date                              : UTC 2015-08-02 12:07:34

Comments

j-v wrote on 12/4/2020, 2:48 PM

To be short: Do you use the Build Dynamic Preview in Toools or through Shift+B often or never?

Illusion wrote on 12/4/2020, 2:56 PM

I rarely use it, only when I have a complex composition with many tracks. However, I noticed that if ram is enabled, even if shift-b is not invoked, the preview is smoother the second time you playback a portion of the timeline. First time, the playback frame rate is not quite a full rate during difficult portion. Play it back again and the frame rate is steady at full rate, even if I never touched shift-b. If I set ram to 0, I do not have this behavior.

j-v wrote on 12/4/2020, 3:08 PM

Pay attention that the amount you reserve is at that moment only available for that option, but cannot be used for other things in Vegas where RAM is needed, untill you change that setting.

Illusion wrote on 12/4/2020, 3:27 PM

With 64GB available, giving 1G seems reasonable to me.

RogerS wrote on 12/4/2020, 8:13 PM

I would keep it at zero if you are having any display problems. Or the default of 200. Red screen is indicative of a GPU error.

You didn't say what your graphics card is. I assume NVIDIA. Are you on the latest Studio driver?
What is checked on the File I/O screen of properties?

Illusion wrote on 12/4/2020, 8:21 PM

I would keep it at zero if you are having any display problems. Or the default of 200. Red screen is indicative of a GPU error.

You didn't say what your graphics card is. I assume NVIDIA. Are you on the latest Studio driver?
What is checked on the File I/O screen of properties?

As said, system spec in signature. RTX 2070 latest studio driver 457.30

File IO legacy is uncheck. MKV is checked, however I was not using MKV during the tests.

Indicative of GPU error, why? I don't have anything exotic.

RogerS wrote on 12/4/2020, 8:31 PM

I see, I didn't click on the signature.

Good that legacy decoding is unchecked. What's under File I/O for decoding- is it on auto?

Red screens indicate a problem communicating with the GPU. It's pretty rare in Vegas these days. I see it very rarely when a GPU accelerated Fx crashes. If it keeps occurring I'd file a support ticket. Usually a system restart clears things up.

Illusion wrote on 12/4/2020, 8:55 PM

Auto NVDEC

The red screen and crash occurred with bare footage dropped in the timeline. No FX applied at all. I had this problem since the beginning, with both previous builds of VP18. I restarted countless of times and the problem is still there.

lenard wrote on 12/4/2020, 9:36 PM

@Illusion red screens of death are extremely common.

Have you tried using ticking the 'use legacy avc decoder' box. With a 3900 you should have the cpu to make up for the lack of gpu decoding, and you still have gpu processing. Note that gpu ram preview using numbers other than 0 were causing crashing way back to vp13 (or before) and that was before the disaster that was so4 decoder so maybe still crash, but overall should have more stability.

Some video formats can't be read by legacy decoder

Illusion wrote on 12/4/2020, 10:19 PM

Considering that the crash is caused by nvopencl64.dll, I remembered a Youtube tutorial from Scrapyard film about stability and an internal parameter. So I gave this a try, disabling OpenCL with the following settings

Restarted Vegas. So far, I haven't had any crash, freeze or red preview in the more than 2 hours since I made the change. GPU video decode is still operational during preview. RAM is filling as I go down the timeline. Going back playing a segment that I already played and I get a 0% GPU decode, proving the frames are taken from RAM.

I even went crazy and configured the RAM amount to 16GB. Still no crash. As you can see, the RAM slowly fill-up going down the timeline, eventually capping to the configured value + some RAM for the remaining of Vegas and Windows. With 64GB, I am far from saturating it.

I will see how this change hold the road. I did not had to tick the legacy AVC decoder yet.

lenard wrote on 12/4/2020, 10:53 PM

Didn't you just disable gpu processing?

I would check that

Grazie wrote on 12/4/2020, 11:00 PM

I’ve moved from RAM Previews to HOS KwikPreview. Marvellous! Oh yeah, no restriction on size. No more futzing about waiting to see if I get 0.5 of a second or 2 seconds, whilst I hold my breathe. There’s even, get this, a SEPARATE Preview Option too! I used all day yesterday. Keeps my Creative juices focussed on what I want as an okutcome and NOT on the HOW. It’s Grazie-Proof. 😎

RogerS wrote on 12/4/2020, 11:50 PM

Auto NVDEC

The red screen and crash occurred with bare footage dropped in the timeline. No FX applied at all. I had this problem since the beginning, with both previous builds of VP18. I restarted countless of times and the problem is still there.

You could try to clear the Vegas cache/settings just in case (control + shift upon startup) but if that fails, I would file a support request to Magix at this point.

wilvan wrote on 12/6/2020, 1:18 AM

I’ve moved from RAM Previews to HOS KwikPreview. Marvellous! Oh yeah, no restriction on size. No more futzing about waiting to see if I get 0.5 of a second or 2 seconds, whilst I hold my breathe. There’s even, get this, a SEPARATE Preview Option too! I used all day yesterday. Keeps my Creative juices focussed on what I want as an okutcome and NOT on the HOW. It’s Grazie-Proof. 😎

Kind of embarrassing for the developers at Vegas Creative Team , they can't get the dynamic RAM preview to work properly anymore like it has always been with the sony's versions and whilst HOS KwikPreview seems to be capable to do . All those messages in this forum to put dynamic RAM preview to 0 or 200 MB , whilst modern real workstations are having between 64 GB and 128 GB of RAM , is totally absurd . Get this solved Vegas Creative Team , one should not have to pay an extra 79 US$ to get this working . PS: I do appreciate the HOS capabilities

RogerS wrote on 12/6/2020, 2:24 AM

In my opinion, the whole setting should be done away with. Vegas should be able to allocate system ram in an actually dynamic fashion to ensure smooth playback and caching of files. Users shouldn't have to touch anything.

walter-i. wrote on 12/6/2020, 4:25 AM

In my opinion, the whole setting should be done away with. Vegas should be able to allocate system ram in an actually dynamic fashion to ensure smooth playback and caching of files. Users shouldn't have to touch anything.

Illusion wrote on 12/6/2020, 7:10 PM

Didn't you just disable gpu processing?

I would check that

@lenard

I am not sure it is disabled completely. In both cases, video decode is about the same.

Here is a task manager view when OpenCL is set to true.

CPU at 15%, 3D at 15% and Cuda at 8%

Now this is with OpenCL set to false.

CPU at 29%, 3D at 7% and Cuda at 3%

CPU is more busy and GPU less but not off. At least my system is more stable.

There is all kind of weird stuff happening. Disabling OpenCL cured it for AVC but not for HEVC. I had to tick legacy HEVC in File IO and I also had to set the display scaling to 100% in Windows. I have a 4K monitor and running it at 100% scaling makes everything so tiny. A scaling of 125% helped a lot. But it seems to screw up many things. HOS InfoBar is all screwed-up at 125%. I wonder if 125% also had any effect on AVC. I will keep testing things around.

lenard wrote on 12/6/2020, 8:01 PM

I checked, this turns off GPU(compute) processing, you are effectively going into preferences and choosing video/GPU acceleration of video, and selection OFF in gpu settings. Obviously this isn't what you want to be doing, so turn the openCL settings on again, so you don't introduce all the faults you did, and you get some performance back. GPU processing ON, but turn off GPU decoding OFF by way of choosing legacy decoder is generally better for timeline performance without lags and stability. 4K HEVC is where my computer can no longer perform adequately without GPU decode.

Being that Vegas is the kludge software that it is, using legacy decoder will remove support for various video formats, as new decoder is the magix part hot glued on, and legacy decoder is the sony vegas 13 version. By doing this Vegas will crash and be as unstable as Sony Vegas 13, but not crash as much as Magix Vegas 15-18.

I think this is best solution for someone with a good cpu, but not 4core or lower.

Illusion wrote on 12/6/2020, 9:12 PM

I was able to get HEVC working without legacy ticked. And now I found a way to avoid/reproduce the red/black glitches at will in the preview window.

If the preview window is sized randomly, the display dimension is in red font. Within a minute of timeline playback, I get red/black glitches and even the pale screen of misery where Vegas freezes.

If I resize the preview window to be an even divider of the project setting, I have yet to see a glitch or freeze. I played a full project without any issue.

See below, when the size is an even divider of the project setting, the display font changes from red to white.

lenard wrote on 12/6/2020, 9:59 PM

I was able to get HEVC working without legacy ticked. And now I found a way to avoid/reproduce the red/black glitches at will in the preview window.

If the preview window is sized randomly, the display dimension is in red font. Within a minute of timeline playback, I get red/black glitches and even the pale screen of misery where Vegas freezes.

That's interesting. We know that often Vegas often can not encode to odd number resolutions, and playback is rendering without the encoding