How I solved random AVCHD crashes/hangs in MS13

Birk Binnard wrote on 4/4/2014, 4:54 PM
Quick answer: resize still images to 1920 pixel width

Long answer:

I've been using (Vegas) Movie Studio Platinum for several years. I make BluRay disks from 1920x1080 AVCHD video and 16x9 aspect ration JPG stills that I take with Panasonic cameras (currently GX7, previously GH1.) I assemble the videos & stills and render them for final BluRay creation with DVD Architect5.

In many cases the still images I use are large panoramas, sometime comprised of as many as 20 different individual shots.Needless to say, these panoramas can very large files - sometimes hundreds of megabytes.

I had been dropping these on the timeline right along with standard single-image files (about 4 - 6 MB each) and often editing them with pan/zoom options to show specific details. All of this works fine in edit mode.

But I have been experiencing random hangs and crashes whenever I tried to render the final project for input into DVD Architect. At first I thought I had some glitch with MS13, so I deleted and re-installed it. This was no help.

Then I noticed that my smaller projects (maybe 5 min. in length - video only, no still images) rendered A-OK; it was just the longer ones (around 35 min. - video & JPGs) that crashed at random times. So I started looking at alternative video editors figuring maybe there was some inherent problem with MS13.

(Aside: I looked at PowerDirector, Magix Pro6, and Premiere Elements. All of these seemed amateurish and just plain ugly compared to MS13.)

One of the tutorials I looked at (Premiere Elements) mentioned making sure the size of still images used on the timeline matched the overall timeline resolution. Since I can resize my huge panoramas with just a few clicks (I use FastStone Image viewer) I thought I'd try this, and resized 7 really big panoramas I had placed on a 35 min. timeline.

Much to my pleasant surprise the project rendered flawlessly (I didn't change the names of the resized JPGs so I had to make no changes to the MS13 project file.) So it seems that I've solved my problem.

I do wonder though why this should be necessary - my system has 16GB RAM and even a really big panorama should have no problem being completely loaded into memory. I'm guessing there is some glitch in the re-res portion of MS13 - after all, someone has to do the work to get the JPGs resized down to 1920x1080. It's an extra step for me to do that using FastStone, but not a bad one, and certainly not worth trying to switch to a different editor.

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 4/4/2014, 4:57 PM
well, sorry to burst your bubble - but merely resizing an image on the timeline has really nothing to do with your random reliability of the software.
What is really important to your question, is the use of jpegs, what kind of jpegs, and where they are sourced.
Try creating standard png files outside of Vegas.
Ivan Lietaert wrote on 4/4/2014, 5:32 PM
The issue you describe has been around for many years. Also your solution, reducing the size of still images, has been posted here and there many times.
In your case, when zooming in on panoramas, reducing the resolution is not the best solution.

I too was struggling with these crashes in the previous years. I have a 6 year old machine with only 3GB of ram, running an Intel Quad Core 2.4 cpu. All issues disappeared when I installed my OS and Vegas Studio (vs 12) on a 90Gb SSD.
I am currently working on a complex 40 minute documentary with uncountable still images, some of them over 20Mb in size, with Ken Burns effects all over, timelapses and with video shot with three different cameras, and there hasn't been a single crash when rendering (it takes 3 hours to render to 720p and 6 hours to render to 1080p).
Birk Binnard wrote on 4/4/2014, 6:19 PM
Oh dear!

I really thought I had it solved. Hmmmm....now what?

My JPGs come straight from my camera and are edited with Photoshop Elements 11 and FastStone imager. My OS (Win7-64) and all application software is installed on a Samsung 128GB 840 Pro SSD. I have separate HDD's for MS13 input and output. CPU is an i7-3770S that is not overclocked.

Does MS13 prefer PNG to JPG for still image format?