Lower Thirds Don't Appear in Rendered File

drewU2 wrote on 8/24/2010, 2:05 PM

Howdy Ya'll,
I have been a Vegas Pro user for years but just purchased Vegas Production Assistant and love it. I really hope Sony continues to support this software. It has a ton of potential for full-time editors like myself (and part-timers for sure).

Question: when I render my project, the lower thirds I created with PA and that shows up in the video preview clearly before rendering disappears when I render the video...any ideas?? I have never seen this behavior in Vegas, where something is clearly on the timeline but doesn't appear when rendered.

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/24/2010, 4:17 PM

Wow, I have never heard of this behavior before. Is it all lower thirds or just some? The lower thirds are nested projects and should render along with your main project. Can you tell us more about what you are doing so we can try and recreate it?

What version of Vegas Pro? (8 or 9) (a,b,c,d,e) (32 or 64-bit)?

What are your project settings? Which preset and what did you change if any?

What are your render settings? Which template and what did you change if any?

Which lower third?

If there anything else you can think of that would help us recreate the problem let us know.

~jr

drewU2 wrote on 8/25/2010, 10:27 AM

"What version of Vegas Pro? (8 or 9) (a,b,c,d,e) (32 or 64-bit)?

VEGAS PRO 8.1 64 BIT

What are your project settings? Which preset and what did you change if any?

1920 x 1080 23.976p - VIDEO FILES ARE A MIX OF .MOV FROM A CANON T2i AND AVCHD FROM A PANASONIC GH1 - I MADE THE "ZIGZAG" LOWER THIRDS PRESET FROM 5 SECONDS TO 9 SECONDS.

What are your render settings? Which template and what did you change if any?

RENDERED TO MPEG2 1080p 25mbps (MainConcept)

...on a related (I think) note...I had to reinstall Vegas Pro 8.1 because after failing to render at all (I think the .mov Canon t2i files are to blame) , Vegas crashed every time I opened it with this message:

"Sony Vegas Pro 8.1
Version 8.1 (Build 171) 64-bit
Exception 0xC0000005 (access violation) WRITE:0x0000000000000008 IP:0x0000000004CC89EA
In Module 'sfmarket2.dll' at Address 0x0000000004C70000 + 0x00000000000589EA
Thread: RefreshAlerts_Worker ID=0x1078 Stack="

Which lower third?"

JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/26/2010, 9:29 PM

I cannot recreate this problem with the media that I have here so I'm guessing that the mixture of MOV files from the Cannon T2i and AVCHD from the Panasonic GH1 are to blame. You can try contacting Sony about it, but I'm not sure 8.1 is even supported anymore.

I would download the trial of Vegas Pro 9.0e and see if you can recreate the problem. If you can't then the solution is to upgrade. If you can, then you can open a support ticket with Sony.

One thing to keep in mind is that you are asking an old program like Vegas Pro 8.1 to support a new format like the Canon T2i which didn't even exist when Vegas Pro 8.1 came out. That's asking for a lot. If you plan to use the latest camera formats, you should also plan to keep your software up to date.

~jr

drewU2 wrote on 8/31/2010, 9:12 AM

Hello, I do plan on upgrading to Vegas 10 (when it comes out) but have found in the forums that 8.1 has been just as good as 9 at what I am doing.

That being said, I converted all of my .mov files (from the Canon t2i) and my .m2t files (from the Panasonic AGHMC150) using Neo Scene to AVI files which work great in Vegas.

And still this problem exists. Check out this video I made of the problem...

http://screenr.com/AZr

I also just created this other video below to show that the lower thirds in Production assistant doesn't work when rendered in a bland Vegas page either...

http://screenr.com/lZr

Thanks for your help.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/1/2010, 6:50 PM

Those videos were a big help. By watching them I was able to reproduce the problem and it appears to be a bug in Vegas Pro 8.1.

The problem is that you are not selecting a render template and instead just using the "Project Settings". The bug is that Vegas Pro 8.1 will not render nested projects if you use the project settings as a template.

If you'd like to prove this, start a new project, add a generated sample text and save it. Create a new project. Add two video tracks and drag the veg file from the sample text project onto the top track. Finally render to Sony AVC with project settings and the text will not show up. This shows that it is not related to Production Assistant but rather to a bug in Vegas Pro 8.1 and nested projects.

The good news is that the fix is simple. All you have to do is select a "real' template and your renders will work fine. So if you want 1920x1080-24p then you need to select that particular template. Do not use "Project Settings" and the lower thirds will render in your projects.

Alternately, just stop using Vegas Pro 8.1 and use Vegas Pro 8.0c which does not have this bug. In fact, Vegas Pro 8.0c doesn't even have a "Project Settings" option at all (neither does Vegas Pro 9). It sounds like this may have been an experiment in 8.1 that never worked quite right.

~jr

drewU2 wrote on 9/7/2010, 8:37 AM

Hey Johnny,
Thanks for all your time and help on this issue. However, the solution you provided only works in one format...

Basically I can only render the lower thirds with a template that is 480p or smaller. If I try and use a template that is 1080p, the render either crashes or the lower thirds just don't show up. I have made another video showing what I mean here...

http://screenr.com/4Hn

And just so you know, I installed 9.0e and that didn't help...it was still crashing the renders!?

Thanks again for any help you can offer.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/7/2010, 7:04 PM

Well... I guess my workaround doesn't always work. :(

I wish I had something better to tell you but it's a bug in Vegas Pro 8.1 that I can't do anything about. You need to use Vegas Pro 8.0c or upgrade to Vegas Pro 9.0.

~jr