Laggy Video Playback / Constant and Consistent Crashing - Vegas 16

GrantTheHierophant wrote on 1/17/2023, 11:08 AM

I've been having a problem while trying to edit in Vegas, and it has been a problem for a long time now that I've tried to fix many times and have not found a solid solution for.

While editing footage in Vegas 16, playback is ridiculously slow and choppy, even on footage with no FX or transitions applied. Sometimes when I press play, the video will freeze during playback, and once I stop playback Vegas 16 freezes completely and stops responding, then never recovers.

This happens no matter what resolution and framerate my footage is. I've edited 720p, 29.97 fps footage and still had this issue. Currently, I'm editing 2560x1440, 59.940p footage and the problem is just as consistent. (All videos used were .MP4)

PC specs:
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
- ASUS Nvidia 3070ti Graphics Card
- 64GB DDR4 Ram
- 500GB NVMe M.2 - Vegas 16 is installed on this / This is the boot drive for the computer
- 6TB 5400rpm HDD - Source of video files
- Running Windows 11 - 64 bit (though Vegas Pro has run terribly on Windows 10 as well (with my last computer))

As you can see, my computer is beefy enough to run literally anything, but for some reason struggles with Vegas Pro 16. I have not downloaded any third party plugins, either. This is a clean install of Vegas Pro 16. I should have no problems running Vegas with this monster computer, but here we are.

In my video preferences tab, I have 28,000 MB devoted to the dynamic RAM preview max. Even if I reduce this to 8,000 MB the problems still occur. Yes I have also tried setting it to 0 MB. No it didn't fix anything. I also have GPU acceleration turned on (don't worry I've tried turning this off, it changed nothing, it is not the solution to my problem).

Things I have tried already:
- Enabling / Disabling GPU acceleration
- Changing the playback preview quality (it still stutters, freezes, and crashes even on Quarter Draft settings)
- Disabling "Enable So4 Compound Reader for AVC/M2TS" in the Internal tab
- Disabling "Enable OpenCL/GL Interop" in the Internal tab
- Disabling "Enable multi-core rendering for playback" in the Internal tab
- Creating video proxies for files in use / library
- Closing all other applications while using Vegas Pro 16, including File Explorers and Chrome
- Keeping projects smaller (Most of my projects are long-form, 10-120 minute long videos)
- Reinstalling Vegas Pro 16
- Updating my graphics card drivers (yes they're all up to date)
- Updating my OS (yes it's up to date)
- Freeing up space on the M.2 and HDD. The HDD has 2 TB free still. This did nothing.
- Returning all settings to default in the preferences menus
- Using task manager to set affinity for Vegas 16 so it uses less CPU cores
- Going back to Vegas 14 (What a solution btw)(This did not work don't even start with this)(No I haven't tried using a newer version of Vegas and no I'm not going to upgrade)
- Setting priority of Vegas 16 to high
- Running Vegas 16 in administrator mode

I'm at my wits end here. Nothing I try seems to fix this issue. It's definitely not my hardware.

Comments

j-v wrote on 1/17/2023, 12:24 PM

This is weird.
I missed 3 things in your info to maybe give some help.
- Did you reset the program following exactly this tutorial: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-can-i-reset-vegas-pro-to-default-settings--104646/?
- What is the MediaInfo of your used MP4 files as here asked: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/?
- What is your buildnr, of Vegas Pro 16?

GrantTheHierophant wrote on 1/17/2023, 1:06 PM

 
This is weird.
I missed 3 things in your info to maybe give some help.
- Did you reset the program following exactly this tutorial: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-can-i-reset-vegas-pro-to-default-settings--104646/?
- What is the MediaInfo of your used MP4 files as here asked: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/?
- What is your buildnr, of Vegas Pro 16?

Yes I reset the program exactly as that tutorial says. It did literally nothing to effect performance. I lost my favorites.

Media info is attached.

No idea what buildnr is.

andyrpsmith wrote on 1/17/2023, 1:52 PM

There is a major problem as I have a much older and less powerful system yet I can play back at full 4K (Best Full in preview) no proxy files with no issue as below. Media is Sony XAVCS 100mbs PAL 25p. This is using the So4compoundplug.dll which uses my 1080Ti GPU. CPU threads are 4 and dynamic ram at 0. The question is why are you having this problem.

j-v wrote on 1/17/2023, 2:00 PM

Media info is attached

That is not the MediaInfo that was asked for.

No idea what buildnr is

Look at Help/About.... in the program

fr0sty wrote on 1/17/2023, 3:43 PM

Build number... listed in help/about .

andyrpsmith wrote on 1/17/2023, 4:23 PM

Looks like you are using variable frame rate media which does not work well with Vegas, it can be converted to constant frame rate by a free program such as Shutter Encoder.

GrantTheHierophant wrote on 1/18/2023, 12:32 AM

Media info is attached

That is not the MediaInfo that was asked for.

No idea what buildnr is

Look at Help/About.... in the program

I've included the MediaInfo this time. But know, the media more than likely isn't the problem. As stated in the original post, towards the beginning at the top, Vegas Pro 16 is slow and choppy and crashes frequently no matter what kind of media I am editing. No matter the resolution or the frame rate, .mp4 or .mov.

Small oddity: While combing through the "About" section of Vegas Pro 16, I noticed that in the "Computer" tab, Vegas states "Platform: Windows 10.0 (64)", which is weird. I checked my msinfo and it says "Microsoft Windows 11 Pro", so I am for-certain running Windows 11.

Build N(umbe)r:
Version 16.0 (Build 424)

Media info of the 1440p footage:
Complete name : D:\Video Projects\Bank - Video\OBS\Ready Or Not\2022-12-21 20-53-16.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 18.6 GiB
Duration : 1 h 19 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 33.3 Mb/s
Writing application : Lavf59.16.100

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.1
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1 h 19 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 33.1 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate : 120 Mb/s
Width : 2 560 pixels
Height : 1 440 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 60.000 FPS
Minimum frame rate : 58.824 FPS
Maximum frame rate : 62.500 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.150
Stream size : 18.5 GiB (99%)
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
mdhd_Duration : 4790866
Codec configuration box : avcC

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : mp4a-40-2
Duration : 1 h 19 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 182 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 104 MiB (0%)
Title : simple_aac_recording
Default : Yes
Alternate group : 1

RogerS wrote on 1/18/2023, 1:08 AM

Vegas for some reason seems Windows 11 as 10 but it doesn't matter.

Try converting the media as suggested. A newer version of Vegas may work better with VFR media but it's still best practice to convert. (MP4 or MOV container doesn't matter)

EricLNZ wrote on 1/18/2023, 1:34 AM

The framerate variation in the file shown isn't great. I wouldn't have expected Vegas to struggle with it.

RogerS wrote on 1/18/2023, 2:00 AM

We're talking VP 16 though, the so4 decoder was still new then and not so flexible with source media.

andyrpsmith wrote on 1/18/2023, 5:22 AM

I remember a significant improvement in So4 decoder in going to version V17.

GrantTheHierophant wrote on 1/19/2023, 10:49 AM

Alright, I tried reencoding the media using Handbrake and it seems to have done the trick. I don't know why the program was struggling so hard with variable framerate footage, but it looks like having a constant framerate has significantly improved the program's performance.

Would upgrading to the newest version of Vegas actually improve performance when I'm using variable framerate footage? Because it would be a pain to reencode the 30 hours of footage I have.

VEGASDerek wrote on 1/19/2023, 11:19 AM

@GrantTheHierophant: 4 different So4 internal options are available in the preferences, disable all of them.

GrantTheHierophant wrote on 1/19/2023, 11:51 AM

@GrantTheHierophant: 4 different So4 internal options are available in the preferences, disable all of them.

While I hadn't stated it in the original post, I thought it was obvious that, had I tried disabling one of the So4 options, I more than likely would have already tried disabling all four.

I already tried that, and it did nothing.

EricLNZ wrote on 1/19/2023, 5:57 PM

I more than likely would have already tried disabling all four.

Have you gone back into Internal Preferences to check that you did actually disable all four?

GrantTheHierophant wrote on 1/19/2023, 6:10 PM

I more than likely would have already tried disabling all four.

Have you gone back into Internal Preferences to check that you did actually disable all four?

Yup.

GrantTheHierophant wrote on 11/5/2023, 2:42 PM

This is still a problem that has not been fixed, by the way. I do not know what is going on.

NickHope wrote on 11/5/2023, 5:25 PM

Work methodically through this: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-can-i-make-my-video-preview-play-smoothly-in-vegas-pro--104624/

Do not skip #15, which suggests disabling so4compoundplug in its entirety, not just features of it. In fact you might try that first and see if it helps. The details are in this post: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/avc-xavc-s-issues-in-vp15-16-try-disabling-so4compoundplug-dll--108345/.