Maybe fix to some GPU rendering crashes in certain situations

Former user wrote on 4/15/2018, 10:57 PM

Sorry for the vague title, but I have ran a test on a problem I had rendering when the GPU was enabled and seemed to have found a possible cause for crash during render, at least in this specific situation. Maybe others can try as well and see what it does.

Quick hardware notes: I am on an old system computer running Windows 10, Vegas version 12. It is an Intel Core 2 duo 3ghz, GeForce GTX470 video (driver 372.90), 4 gig memory, etc.

I render to MPEG2 for HD Bluray and also a Media Player I use for video demos. Source is normally AVCHD from a Canon vixia. I leave GPU turned on in preferences. This works fine for short renders (2 to 5 minutes or so) but more often than not, when rendering to longer videos, 10 minutes or more, it would crash near the end of the render. Mainconcept MPEG2 does not have a GPU option under its render settings. I only have GPU preview under preferences. If I turned this off, it would always successfully render, but with it on, it would crash.It renders and previews much faster when enabled, although I am not sure what part the GPU plays with an MPEG2 render.

I tried to think why it would get that far into the render and crash and I realized that the video card is being used for display at the same time as it is being used in some way for rendering. I obviously cannot turn my display off, but I wondered what would happen if I turned off the "DISPLAY FRAMES while Rendering". This is an option in the extended preferences. You know, where the program screen updates showing you the frames being rendered. ( I think the default is 5 frame updates). I turned this option OFF and was able to do a render twice that previously would crash.

I have not tested this extensively, but I thought maybe others who have problems of unexplained crashes during render might try this and see. Of course, you lose the ability to see the frames being rendered, but you still see the frame count and time left for render. A bit unsettling but worth it if it actually fixes my problem and allows my renders to proceed at about twice the time as just a straight CPU render.

Let me know if you test this and see any similar activity.

Thanks

Comments

matthias-krutz wrote on 4/16/2018, 1:15 AM

I already had the same idea. But I had no way to test, because there were no problems. Now I had massive problems with a project. The rendering stopped at different places. It was about 15min short, Bluray MVC HD 23.976, footage as always, slideshow with MPO files and AVCHD. I set the Dynamic RAM Preview to 0MB and was successful. With that I could leave the GPU on.

OldSmoke wrote on 4/16/2018, 3:50 AM

Vegas uses the GTX470 for processing any FX that is GPU accelerated via OpenCL/GL during render and preview. If you use GPU-Z, a small software or the Task manager of Win 10 you will see activity. I would monitor the GPU’s temperature during render, it might overheat. Also make sure your PSU is powerful enough to handle the stress, the GTX470 does draw a lot of power when stressed.

NickHope wrote on 4/16/2018, 3:50 AM

Do you mean "Show progress in Video Preview while rendering" in the internal preferences?

matthias-krutz wrote on 4/16/2018, 6:24 AM

I do not think this parameter has any significance in batch rendering with vegasaur. The error occurs also with Vegasur. I thought more about it "Optimize GPU display performance".

But because these problems

disappeared with Dynamic RAM Preview max. 0 MB, I also tried it for rendering.

Why a stereoscopic project? I have seen the same issues on "Mono" projects, just not that often.

Former user wrote on 4/16/2018, 8:19 AM

Nick, yes that is the setting I am talking about. I am going to stress it more and see what it does. I just wanted to throw it out there so others could try it as well.

OldSmoke, it does pull a lot of power but I do have a pretty good size power supply. You could have some valid points and I will try GPU-Z. Unfortunately I am not always in the room when it crashes. Also, it does not affect the computer display when it crashes, it just stops Vegas. I would think that the whole monitor display would be corrupted if the video card was having a heat or power problem.

Plus on my system, it seems to happen near the end of the render, regardless of how long it is. This last segment is around 8 minutes and it crashed. Previous segments were an hour and it would crash but not after rendering for a few hours (I know my system is old and slow)

Former user wrote on 4/16/2018, 8:25 AM

This is a good find, another item to disable in search of a crash free Vegas 15.

I wonder if we are fast approaching the stage where more than half the functionality of VP15 needs to be disabled to get the other 49% working🤪

OldSmoke wrote on 4/16/2018, 8:38 AM

Nick, yes that is the setting I am talking about. I am going to stress it more and see what it does. I just wanted to throw it out there so others could try it as well.

OldSmoke, it does pull a lot of power but I do have a pretty good size power supply. You could have some valid points and I will try GPU-Z. Unfortunately I am not always in the room when it crashes. Also, it does not affect the computer display when it crashes, it just stops Vegas. I would think that the whole monitor display would be corrupted if the video card was having a heat or power problem.

If the cards really overheats than yes, the display could be corrupted but it may also just cause VRAM issues only which may clear itself when new information is feed to the card... very simply speaking. I run a GTX460 in the days of SVP11 when GPU acceleration was first introduced and I had to upgrade my PSU to a gold certified 750W to get a stable system with i7-2600K at that time.