Reported similar problem about 10 days ago. Still waiting for answer from Sony. The only still image format I can use in V5 is PSD. BMP, PNG, JPG, and GIF stills all crash my system. Had to go back to V4 (which works fine for all). Sony requested emailed examples of troublesome stills from V5 users.

I've had no trouble with PNGs. Easy enough to fix, move the offending media to another folder and tell Vegas to ignore it. Well hardly a fix but a at least you can open the project!

Try as we might, nobody here can repro this, but we'd definitely like to figure out what the problem is and fix it. So,

If you are crashing with stills: Please post the crash dump here.

Also, if you have Photoshop, please post the version #. If you have Quicktime, what version #.

Thanks

I have just started a project using TIF files. Each one is 17MB - 35MB in size. I can add a few at a time to the timeline from Explorer and the response is very slow. However, as I add more stills to the timeline, the Pagefile continues to grow and eventually Vegas crashes. I have experienced this in V4 as well as the demo of V5. I have even tried turning off or reducing the pagefile but as I monitor it in taskmanager, it keeps increasing. Net result-- if I add more than about 15 of these stills to the timeline Vegas will crash. Is this a Vegas problem or is it my PC?

Thanks

fw scott, I suspect your issue is memory related. How much ram do you have? What size are these files in pixels?

I have 1Gig of DDR memory on a P4 3.0 with 1MB of L2 cache. The files are 3000x2000 pixels.

Thanks

My opinion those files are way to big for the memory you have. You need at least 3 more gig of memory. Also check your paging file and set it to 4000 max and 4000 min.
JJK

The first project I tried was with about 100 3000x2000 pixel Tiff images. I quickly learned that Vegas handles Tiff images through Apple Quicktime. After installing quicktime, Vegas was only able to open a handfull of Tiffs before completely halting. I found that Vegas had no problem with BMP images, even 100 3000x2000 images on the same timeline.

Size of 3000x2000 would not be an issue. I have been using that size in projects with vv4 for over a year with never a scrach . Yes, alittle longer to render down to 640x480 but I do lots of extreme pans & zooms on the photos.

Only BMP's crash and ONLY when opening a project. I suspect it is in the code for the initial rendering of the tracks. In fact, when running a test I had a BMP added as the last item added to that project. When opening it, it would do "Execption occured" while some of the tracks were still rendering on the timeline. Seems only one thread crashed while others continued to completion.

To Sony Programmers:
===================
1. do you start a thread to render the data on each track when opening a project? And is that thread different code from what is executed once the project is opened and you start to add tracks/video/images/ etc.?

2. What difference would Phoioshop make? What difference would Quicktime make? this when the problem can exist in a project where you have only 1 BMP image (and 1 BMP is the entire project - just to show how easy it can crash with only one thing in the project)?

3. What drivers/dll's/etc. would affect the processing of BMP's in vv5 that is different from vv4?

4. Could it be dot-net related? Didn;t you shitch many things to that?

I spent a lot of time already to isolate this problem. I am willing to track down more details. I will be able to look more at this tonight. What should I look for- driver/dll/etc. versions or file dates? What might exist that vv5 did not update when installed? I don't know if the "details" from the crash will allow a copy & paste, but I can do screen dumps & paste them together so you can have the info.

Also, Tiffs are not recommended for Vegas, because Vegas has to rely on outside progs to use them. Much better to use PNG - which is handled natively, has Alpha and is compressed lossless.
Tor

During the beta period we got reports of some some occaisional crash dumps that reference "psicon.dll", a Photoshop CS-installed .dll. No solid repro here but I am wondering if this could be at the root of your problem. Please let us know- thanks.

I get a similar crash whenever I try to add media to the media pool in V5. It occurs if I make the files show as thumbnails and look for media in the windows folder of my C drive. It happened one day when I tried to quickly find a pic to use for an example veggie. I use windows xp home version. If you want more info tell me what to send.
Cheroxy

If you crash, you should see a window pop up with crash info text. Please post that back here AND submit to tech support along with a precise step by step repro. This info really helps us troubleshoot- longtime users know if we can repro a crash, we do our best to fix it in the next update.

Crash dump will look something like this (old example from beta period):

Sony Vegas 5.0
Version 5.0 (Build 115)
Exception 0xC0000005 (access violation) READ:0x8 IP:0x694DAF
In Module 'vegas50.exe' at Address 0x400000 + 0x294DAF
Thread: Engine_RenderFromCookedSlices ID=0x164 Stack=0x54CE000-0x54D0000
Registers:
EAX=00000000 CS=001b EIP=00694daf EFLGS=00010202
EBX=054ce398 SS=0023 ESP=054ce2ec EBP=054ce818
ECX=00000000 DS=0023 ESI=05f3cb08 FS=0038
EDX=05f3c1d8 ES=0023 EDI=054cec88 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
00694DAF: 8B 48 08 8B 01 8B 40 10 .H....@.
00694DB7: 8B 10 8D 4C 24 1C 51 68 ...LQh
Stack Dump:
054CE2EC: 05F3C1D8 05C60000 + 2DC1D8
054CE2F0: 00000000
054CE2F4: 054CEC88 053D0000 + FEC88
054CE2F8: 05F3C1DC 05C60000 + 2DC1DC
054CE2FC: 00000001
054CE300: 05F3C1D8 05C60000 + 2DC1D8
054CE304: 00696595 00400000 + 296595 (vegas50.exe)
054CE308: 00000000
054CE30C: 054CE810 053D0000 + FE810
054CE310: 00000000
054CE314: 054CF2C0 053D0000 + FF2C0
054CE318: 054CF2C0 053D0000 + FF2C0
054CE31C: 88E004C5
054CE320: 00000000
054CE324: 00000000
054CE328: 08610020 08610000 + 20
> 054CE338: 77E7391C 77E60000 + 1391C (kernel32.dll)
> 054CEC8C: 006324C6 00400000 + 2324C6 (vegas50.exe)
054CEC90: 05F3C1DC 05C60000 + 2DC1DC
054CEC94: 00011051
054CEC98: 00000000
054CEC9C: 054CF6EC 053D0000 + FF6EC
> 054CECD0: 00633C9A 00400000 + 233C9A (vegas50.exe)
054CECD4: 05F3C1DC 05C60000 + 2DC1DC
054CECD8: 054CF2C0 053D0000 + FF2C0
054CECDC: 00000000
054CECE0: 00011051
> 054CEE3C: 00626D8A 00400000 + 226D8A (vegas50.exe)
054CEE40: 001A7BF0 00140000 + 67BF0
054CEE44: 00000001
054CEE48: 00000001
054CEE4C: 05EFE8C8 05C60000 + 29E8C8
> 054CEE60: 0063514E 00400000 + 23514E (vegas50.exe)
054CEE64: 01911038 01850000 + C1038
054CEE68: 00000000
054CEE6C: 00000000
054CEE70: 00000000
> 054CEE9C: 77E704A4 77E60000 + 104A4 (kernel32.dll)
> 054CEEA0: 0102E61C 01000000 + 2E61C (vegas50k.dll)
- - -
054CFFF0: 00000000
054CFFF4: 00568910 00400000 + 168910 (vegas50.exe)
054CFFF8: 038D3B18 03770000 + 163B18
054CFFFC: 00000000

cheroxy,

Your media pool crash sounds like it is the "psicon.dll" problem. Take a look at this Knowledge Base article and see if suggestion #1 fixes your problem:

Crashing in the Media Pool view.

This is the result of a crash-test with one BMP image.

Sony Vegas 5.0 TRIAL
Version 5.0a (Build 134)
Exception 0xC0000005 (access violation) READ:0x154 IP:0x4E38D7
In Module 'vegas50.exe' at Address 0x400000 + 0xE38D7
Thread: GUI ID=0x7F8 Stack=0x124000-0x130000
Registers:
EAX=04157114 CS=001b EIP=004e38d7 EFLGS=00210202
EBX=0410a8b8 SS=0023 ESP=00124408 EBP=00000002
ECX=00000154 DS=0023 ESI=00000000 FS=003b
EDX=00000154 ES=0023 EDI=00000001 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
004E38D7: 8B 32 89 74 24 28 8B 4A .2.t$(.J
004E38DF: 04 89 4C 24 2C 8B 42 08 ..L,.B.
Stack Dump:
00124408: 00000001
0012440C: 00000000
00124410: 01C57560 01C20000 + 37560
00124414: 0410A8B8 03FC0000 + 14A8B8
00124418: 00000000
0012441C: 040FA950 03FC0000 + 13A950
00124420: 040FA350 03FC0000 + 13A350
00124424: 04071CD0 03FC0000 + B1CD0
00124428: 00000002
0012442C: 00000002
00124430: 000000F5
00124434: 01100074 01000000 + 100074 (vegas50k.dll)
00124438: 01100073 01000000 + 100073 (vegas50k.dll)
0012443C: 00000073
00124440: 004EBB7D 00400000 + EBB7D (vegas50.exe)
00124444: 8E010AAE
> 0012445C: 77F46425 77F40000 + 6425 (GDI32.dll)
> 00124494: 77F46434 77F40000 + 6434 (GDI32.dll)
> 001244A0: 004EC77E 00400000 + EC77E (vegas50.exe)
001244A4: 00000001
001244A8: 8E010AAE
001244AC: 01C57560 01C20000 + 37560
001244B0: 8E010AAE
> 001244B4: 77F437E6 77F40000 + 37E6 (GDI32.dll)
> 0012452C: 00610052 00400000 + 210052 (vegas50.exe)
> 00124530: 00650074 00400000 + 250074 (vegas50.exe)
- - -
0012FFF0: 00000000
0012FFF4: 00000000
0012FFF8: 007287E0 00400000 + 3287E0 (vegas50.exe)
0012FFFC: 00000000


Aditional info:
BMP file is only 43k but any BMP crashes it
Windows 2k, (through latest updates as of yesterday, service pack 4)
Pentium-4 2.53g with 1/2 gig of ram
Photoshop-6
Photo Elements 2.0
Quicktime 6.5
Windows media 9

Anything else needed?

Thanks TSW. I don't have PS installed on my system so that file doesn't exist. I did find the file that causes the crash though last night (on my laptop not connected to the internet). So when I get home later, I will email Cus Support with the file attached and the crash report. Thanks for your efforts.
Cheroxy

My system is working fine now. Thanks for all the input and suggestions. I tried most of the suggestions but ended up taking the easy way out. I went into Photoshop and batch converted all the TIFFs to PNGs. Loads quickly into the timeline with no hangs or crashes. I showed the photographer a comparison of a TIFF and the PNG of the same shot. He couldn't tell any quality difference, so I'm off and running.

Thanks everybody!

I have had the same problem. Again, they couldn't repro it. Ted H. thought it was a video card problem (though V4 didn't crash with the same images). for me, pulling the images into PS and saving them as PSDs takes care of it.

So help us repro this- could you post a screenshot of your app layout (or send it to dr.dropout@sonypictures.com) and additionally provide any operational steps that result in a repeatable crash? Believe me many people have tried to repro this in our engineering department and we've had no crashes at all with any still files. All we need is a repro in house- if we get that from anybody, we'll get you all a fix in the very next V5 update.

Thanks-

Vegas Dev team

To reproduce it is really simple.

Start Vegas 5

I started a new project. Everything was the default as it was installed and nothing changed.
Use the media explorer to find a BMP file and drag it onto the project. Any BMP causes the crash. You now have one video track, no audo, and only 1 still image on the video track. It will play, do anything you want, even effects work. For the purpose of the test, I did nothing other than drag the one image to the timeline. No effects. Not even a fade in or fade out.

Save the project.

Close Vegas.

Open vegas again. If "Open last project" is on as an option, it will crash.
Othewise, manually open that project and it will crash. If it doesn't, try closing Vegas and then open it and the project again.

If you really need more, let me know where to email the project and a BMP file.

the bug is something in your code when opening the project. Once a project is open, you can add BMPs all day long and everything seems OK. But try to re-open the project, and it crashes when opening it.

Have same problem and recently found some relief by removing the still image file name EXTENSION (.bmp, .tif, .png, .jpg, .gif, etc) using the V5 "re-name" option for media bin files. This does not alter the still image file original names in XP folders, but when a V5 project is saved with truncated still image names, it will re-open without the crash and entire project loss experienced earlier. The new names utilized have NO extension. Not an ideal solution, because my projects can include hundreds of stills.

Find V5 can only manage "PSD and TGA" still formats without the above modification. Have now tried V5 on 3 different computers here and all display same problem.

Hopefully this will give Sony Techies more to go on.
But they should also look for differences in that part of the code between vv4 and vv5.

One (maybe) clue: we write bowling and kiosk software. We started having a problem on some machines opening up some JPG files. Like all programmers, we use component sets from other companies. We used ImageEngine to process the images. To shorten the story, we found record alignment of the data structures was the culprit.

Image Engine needed 8 byte alignment, but didn't force it with a compiler directive in their code. We always used 1-byte alignment, just out of old habit. When we changed to 8 byte alighment, things worked fine. Where we did need 1-byte alignment (for disk records) we just forced byte alignment in that part of the code or defined them as packed records.

The symptoms are similar - so Sony guys, maybe something as obscure as this could be the problem.

I think it would be interesting for you to trace the code if there is a BMP file extension and if there is not an extension. As others reported removing the extension made it work, then you should be able to trace that.

repeating: no need to send you a .veg prohject as just putting one BMP in a project is all that is required. If you really really really trhink you need it, OK. I'll send it,

I think the above items should get you into the area of the problem. If necessary, do what we have done when a couple customers of our software have had a strange problem: take a few minutes and throw a bunch of debug statements (or a debug log) into that part ofthe code so you can get data from each step of the opening with a BMP to help narrow down and hopefully find the cause of the problem. I don't mind downloading a special debug version and then sending you the debug log ,.... or doing an OK to debug message boxes and noting the last message box before the crash. there's something different in teh code between vv4 and vv5 as vv4 doesn't have the problem but vv5 does.