From what I can read you are using an old build of VP12, Download the latest build and try opening the project again. also copy the content of the temporary VP12 folder to a different location and make sure the temp director is empty.
VP12 563 is very stable on my system for a whole day worth of work, 5 days a week.

Thanks, I was able to recover a version of my project. I hope 12.563 is as stable as you say. May I ask what video card and drive you use and what other settings you have set to ensure stability. Thanks again,

Kit.

I finally gave up on using Vegas for large projects. It barely handled things in Vegas 10 but 12 is completely unstable for me when I use lots of media files. I'm trying Premiere Pro CS6 right now and have had only one freeze out of many hours of work so far.

Something has seriously gone wrong with Vegas. It used to be the most stable program by far.

@Kit
You can find my system spec by clicking my user name. All settings in Vegas are default but I use only SSDs for editing and system; I use a RAID 1 with conventional HDD to store all footage and projects. The project drive is a RAID 0 with SSDs for maximum performance as I have many multi camera projects. I have 16GB RAM and don't use a swap file, just the minimum. It is very important to have a stable system to begin with; I have been building my own computers and servers since the beginnings of Windows and Windows NT. I also don't use 3rd party plug ins as almost all of them cause problems. An important point that is often overlooked is the power supply; I have a UPS to provide stable power to the computer and a very good 1200W power supply inside the system.

Thanks, I take your point about the power unit. I believe my system is stable but having said that the two programs that I have problems with are CorelDraw X6 and Vegas. I don't use Vegas that much. CorelDraw used to be solid but now is terrible. Not only will it sometimes crash on save but when it does it can destroy the whole file. I had to make a special backup routine to make extra copies...
I always tend to suspect the graphics card but have no proof.

Kit

@Kit
Do you still use the GT8xxx in your system? Try upgrading it; I just bought an old GTX460 of eBay for $80 for my father's editing PC and it is actually a very fast! Which driver are you using? 296.10? There was a Windows update earlier this year that just simple replaced older Nvidia drivers with a version 310 I believe that caused me issues too. I uninstalled it, set Windows Update to manual and reinstalled 296.10 and I am a happy camper ever since.

I'm using a GeForce GTX 550 Ti . Out of curiosity I rolled back to version 296.10. The first time I selected a clip in explorer and bang Vegas crashed.

Kit

@Kit
You seem to have changed your hardware; would you mind updating your system specification? it is difficult to help without proper information.

Sorry, have done so.

Thanks for updating your system spec. I noticed that you are using a Wacom tablet. There have been threads or posts about it and if I remember it correctly it cause problems with Vegas. You might want to try and uninstall it's drivers and use a regular mouse instead. Since you have a 3770K you could actually use the HD4000 for your editing needs, it may actually be more powerful then the GTX550. To get some performance improvement with GPU acceleration you need at least a GTX560Ti. I personally had no luck with using Intel's QuickSync and I found it always to interfere with my GTX card. I eventually changed to a 2011 socket and GTX570. Would you mind telling me which motherboard, RAM and RAM timing you are using?

I noticed that you are using a Wacom tablet...

As far as I know the Wacom driver crash was solved before VP12 was released but I don't know if it was a Vegas update or a Wacom driver update that solved it. The Wacom crash usually occurred while working in an OFX filter dialog so I think it was interface based. The options were to run Vegas in Compatibility Mode (running Vegas in win7 compatibility mode helped even if your OS was win7) or to completely uninstall the Wacom drivers.

I know most stylus users would rather burst into flames than give up their stylus. You could certainly try uninstalling its driver as a test, but I think we're past that problem.

Rob

For some reason the latest multicam project I am working on was crashing my system on a consistent basis. These were HARD Crashes where the computer would freeze or stuck in an audible loop and it would have to be reset or cold booted. All the media was and events were from the same cameras. The only difference is the shoots were longer than previous projects.

I also split my project up into multiple 10 minute segments and the freezing continued.

Tried many things... but to make a long story short here's what stabilized my system so it wouldn't crash after 10-15 minutes of editing.

Changed Multi tread process from 16 to 8 (still crashed but not as much) then down to 4. Now the only time the PC hangs if I render right after I edit. So for this project I always reboot prior to a long render. I have an SSD drive so reboot only takes about 20 seconds.

I am also able to increase my RAM preview, previously it was set to 0.

BTW, I'm using a GTX 550 video card and GPU is turned on. I also have a WACOM Bamboo tablet.

This may help others who are having issues..

I can confirm Byron K's findings:

Have just finished a 2 weeks many-hours-per-day full HD editing project where I had up to 4 instances of Vegas open at the same time and with 30+ minutes long projects open in all instances.

In the project footage from at least 6 different cameras, SD, HD, 30 Fps and 25 Fps, progressive and interlaced, several jpg's, png's, web-downloads, etc. etc. were mixed.

Besides I was busily copying/pasting from project to project.

Now looking back: in the 2 weeks not one single hiccup. Simply not one.

Settings: 6 render threads (have a 8 physical cores machine) and 22 MB preview RAM. GPU assist off. Preview fixed at Preview/Half - but running full speed.
At times the Windows Task Manager showed that up to 7,7 GB of my 8 GB RAM were used.

OK, I just set my installation of Vegas to 4 threads. I also set aside a gigabyte of RAM for previewing. I have been using no preview buffer for over a year since it would make Vegas constantly crash if I used it. Will let you all know how it goes.

Thanks, Byron, I've reduced the number of threads to4. I'll see how it goes.

Kit

Ritsmer, you are using six of sixteen available threads? That means your machine is underutilized during rendering. But how much use do the sixteen threads see during editing/preview?

Just curious.

Fred

@dxdy:
1) my machine is stone age: there are 2 Xeon processors - both quad core - giving 8 real physical cores. The old machine has not got Hyper Threading...

2).. but it seems that 1 Vegas thread is not equal to 1 Windows thread - because even one single Vegas thread results in an avalanche of Windows (sub) threads and so even 1 Vegas thread may well utilize all cores.
Actually there is not much difference if I use down to 3 rendering threads - but mostly I (and the machine) feel good at 5 or 6.

3) When rendering (here mostly to Main Concept mpeg-2 full HD 50i at some 31 Mbps) my CPU usage is some 75-100 percent.
Increasing Max Rendering Threads gives the same CPU utilization but results in slower rendering.

4) Preview utilizes all physical processors.
They are running from about 10% total when previewing a single AVCHD time line event to much higher values when previewing more complicated things.

In the good old days (Vegas 8, 9 10 etc) we made many experiments setting Max rend. threads and Preview RAM to different values - but it mostly seemed that Max Rend threads should be lower that number of physical cores - and that Preview RAM should be kept well under some 150 MB. A long time the optimum was around 75 MB - but now - and on my machine and with the media that we use mostly - just 22 MB seems to give a very stable and also quite satisfying experience as to both preview and also rendering.

I never render to preview RAM (you can't with only 22 MB) - but I have made a template rendering to mpeg-2 at only 1280x720 25progressive at some 11 Mbps.
This template renders my full HD and AVCHD timelines at 2-3 times normal speed and is also much better to watch on a computer screen than the 1920x1080 50interlaced at 31 Mbps that is my final rendering format.
But why spend money (=time) for a Ferrari when you get a nearly-as-nice test results with a Chevrolet Cruze...

dx/dy,
To tag onto ritsmer's post, when the multi thread processes were lowered, rendering .mov intermediates, CPU utilization did increase from about 30-40% to about 45-60%.

Lowering the thread count will always increase CPU load and here is why. If you have goods weighing 10kg and you have to carry it across the street alone, that puts 100% load on you. If you now have nine helpers, that reduces the load to 10% for you and every helper. Lowering the amount of threads used is not really a good idea unless you have a lot of background services running at higher priorities you might not be aware of. For example my UPS software that monitors the UPS and would shut down the computer in case of a power failure and the battery getting to low, caused the CPU to always run at its maximum frequency. I couldn't figure out why after closing Vegas and no other application running the CPU frequency was still at max. By stopping one service after the other I finally found the cause for it.
There are many services running in the background and it is always good to switch off what ever you don't need. There are many helpful websites that describe how to make your Windows OS faster and free up resources for the more "hungry" applications.

I've been having lots of crashes with VP12 lately. Very frustrating and I don't get a true crash but a hang. No report box. I did an internet search and some fellow in the UK, blaming it on Microsoft's latests attempts with Win8 and Win7 to be more like Apple causing issues. He recommended running VP12 in compatability mode "Vista". I am using "Vista service pack 2". Seems to improve operability significantly. I also noticed he was running VP12 "as administrator".

Is this old news? Is there a thread somewhere about all the proper OS configuration to optimize using VP12? I know that the DAW folks have detailed postings on this subject for generic usage.

Well, I have these freezes and had long discussions with Sony support without them even recognizing that there is a problem. They just close the issue as "solved." Go figure.

Vegas 12 works for me with Win7 but freezes under certain conditions with Win8. After a hint from a fellow forum user I disabled GPU acceleration and that "solved" the issue for me, kind of.

Vegas 12 works for me with Win7 but freezes under certain conditions with Win8. After a hint from a fellow forum user I disabled GPU acceleration and that "solved" the issue for me, kind of.

So GPU acceleration with Win7 and V12 is ok? I'm still using Win7 and have no plans to get Win8, but I was looking into getting V12 solely because of the GPU benefits. I'm still way back from the pack using Vegas 8.