I've marveled over the years at why I have had a relatively easy road with Vegas (not perfect, but above serviceable) and read on the forum of those who have nothing but trouble. After twenty plus years I have to ask myself: what must my secret be? I know my situation doesn't fit everyone, but here are the constants: Dell computers, I don't chase the "fastest," usually XPS or Precision models. No overclocking, Usually AMD GPU's, stay away from extraneous software served by aggregators or third parties. I extensively use Boris, Voukoder, MagicYUV, and Vegasaur, but stay away from the oddball stuff that may install untested codecs. I only run Windows Defender and don't experiment with every new thing that comes along unless I know the company's reputation and get positive feedback from longtime forum users.
I make no pretention about anyone's editing situation or financial capability. Just telling my experience FWIW. I don't get a new box every year. Some, I've run for up to six years and done relatively well. I find it more fun and productive to be editing and creating rather than being consumed finding and using the latest and greatest. And finally: Perhaps I tend to cut the developers a little slack having come from a time when "nonlinear" editing was a figment of imagination. I still marvel at what one can do with Vegas and Boris at a dirt cheap price. Want a real headache? Spend thousands on a scantily supported hardware video board that was outdated in months and never worked as advertised . . . and that was just to do a title overlay. In conclusion, I'm getting old.
I've marveled over the years at why I have had a relatively easy road with Vegas (not perfect, but above serviceable) and read on the forum of those who have nothing but trouble. After twenty plus years I have to ask myself: what must my secret be? I know my situation doesn't fit everyone, but here are the constants: Dell computers, I don't chase the "fastest," usually XPS or Precision models. No overclocking, Usually AMD GPU's, stay away from extraneous software served by aggregators or third parties. I extensively use Boris, Voukoder, MagicYUV, and Vegasaur, but stay away from the oddball stuff that may install untested codecs. I only run Windows Defender and don't experiment with every new thing that comes along unless I know the company's reputation and get positive feedback from longtime forum users.
I make no pretention about anyone's editing situation or financial capability. Just telling my experience FWIW. I don't get a new box every year. Some, I've run for up to six years and done relatively well. I find it more fun and productive to be editing and creating rather than being consumed finding and using the latest and greatest. And finally: Perhaps I tend to cut the developers a little slack having come from a time when "nonlinear" editing was a figment of imagination. I still marvel at what one can do with Vegas and Boris at a dirt cheap price. Want a real headache? Spend thousands on a scantily supported hardware video board that was outdated in months and never worked as advertised . . . and that was just to do a title overlay. In conclusion, I'm getting old.
I'm getting old too. 75... However still producing programs for PBS. It is strange about Vegas because on some projects it works very well with just occasional crashes. Other projects for no particular reason I can see, it crashes constantly. I mean constantly.
You can understand that.
@Roger Bansemer, I completely understand the frustration, and I'm sorry. Let's see if the support guys can help figure out what's odd about your situation and help you resolve it. The other users here on this forum are also a great resource if you share the specifics for them. The devs will be back in the office after holiday break next week and can also potentially offer some advice. But let's start with a support ticket.
@gary-rebholz Hi, the ins & outs of why it crashes can be various & it's understandable that it's not easy to fix all, but I was once asked by a Boris member "How long does Vegas hang for?" ..... - 'How long does Vegas hang for?' ... Vegas doesn't 'hang' Vegas crashes, get a pause in the workings of Vegas, you get the white screen & it's all over! ,
The regulars on here don't talk about this, you can tell by the lack of input from them in this thread, but there are plenty of other posts reg crashes & the replies are always - 'Wrong/bad media' or 'change this or change that' in Preferences, , some can be resolved easily but often it's just the software that falls over itself, As has been mentioned other editors can go all night & day without crashing, & often when they do have a problem they do 'hang' for a moment & then come back,
I think this is the main complaint, the fact is Vegas crashes a heck of a lot more than other editors,
Believe me, I understand the "main complaint". But go ahead and run the search "Does [VEGAS competitor X] crash a lot?" You will undoubtedly come across users of that software saying things like this (copied directly from one of the articles linked when I ran the search):
Upon going back into [VEGAS competitor X], everything worked completely fine for an hour or two, and then constant crashes (every 30 seconds or minute doing ...
Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? Visit their Reddit pages once. You'll see much the same.
Now to be clear, I'm absolutely not saying this absolves VEGAS or the VEGAS team from any responsibility to do better. It most certainly does not. But what it does point to is that the complexity of what VEGAS and our competition are trying to do and the variables of hardware, conflicting software, operating systems, drivers, and so many other things makes it very difficult to figure out why one guy has a blissful experience while the next guy doesn't, or why the same guy edits happily for "an hour or two" and then has it all fall apart.
And I only point this out in order to say, yes, I know how frustrating this is for you, and yes, I'm very sorry about it. And also to say that this is exactly why it's important to work through the trouble-shooting steps you get from our support guys. It's how they try to get to the bottom of it.
And, just to repeat for good measure, I'm absolutely not saying this absolves VEGAS or the VEGAS team from any responsibility to do better. It most certainly does not.
I just want to start off saying, I really enjoy using Vegas Pro 21, I will upgrade again when the life cycle of 21 is over. I only do family videos, nothing professional. I have been using Vegas since version 13.
gary-rebholz I really enjoy your training videos and I do believe you really have your heart into Vegas Pro.
But as a part time editor I have to agree with some of the posts. Vegas does lock up out of nowhere at different times while editing. I can also edit on Vegas for hours with no lock ups.
For example, I can put 4K files from my Sony AX 700 camcorder onto the timeline, then overlay a Vegas title or .jpeg file and Vegas will lock up instantly, or when I started to preview playback it would lock up. My solution was to go to Task Manager and close Vegas. Sometimes a report box would come up and send crash information to Microsoft or Magix. This happened a lot with Vegas Hub clips also. I can take a 4K hub event ( mov or mp4 ) put it on the timeline and overlay a Vegas title or .jpeg and mask it and Vegas would lock up. When I restarted Vegas (had no choice program froze) that would mostly clear things up, but not always. I had to make sure to keep saving the project.
Timeline playback is really bad unless I am using ProRes files. I just made a 90 minute family Christmas Movie. I edit in chapters. I will do my edits in 5 to 10 minute chapters, render them out to ProRes. When I have all of my chapters rendered out one by one to PreRes. I separately bring each ProRes file back into Vegas in the order I want and do my final Render. Those ProRes files play back at full frame rate. While editing any of those chapters before I render them out to ProRes, playback suffers really bad. It suffers when adding Vegas plain text as a overlay, or adding a overlay .jpeg file, or if I do any kind of mask, or using pan and crop. Just for the heck of it I downloaded Resolve for free and put those same events on their timeline ( minus the hub events ) and overlay .jpegs, and titles, and they played back great, no dropped frames.
My PC is running a 13900K with Integrated Intel UHD Graphics 770, and it is turned on in Vegas hardware decoder to use. I also have a Zotac RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO for my video card. That is used for GPU Acceleration. I always update my drivers to the latest Intel and Nvidea Studio drivers.
Like I said in the beginning I will continue to use Vegas. I have read that Magix are now putting more resources into Vegas. I hope that is true? I would love to see less crashes and better timeline playback. Thanks
Bezier Masking causes me a lot of problems, especially when I adjust the mask in the preview window or clicking on the tracking motion one-frame-at-a-time button. Vegas just hangs, then I need to close Vegas down the hard way.
@Roger Bansemer Here's what a developer suggested to another user in order to get more details on why Vegas may be "not responding"...
https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/crashes-all-the-time--143650/#ca898939
The internal setting causes a "Working" message to be displayed when Vegas thinks it might be stuck and after a couple attempts to continue it gives the option to terminate. Which presents the Crash Report screen where you can check all the boxes to provide the most info.
99% of the time that crash screen where you can forward the issue does not appear. Whenever it does, I do send it in but have never heard back.
@Roger Bansemer That internal setting gets you the crash report screen for most of the 99% of the time it does not normally come up for you.
The fact that someone is happy with the editing and others are not, also depends on the setting of the correct Ram values. When I built a new computer with 64Gb, the stability of Vegas depended on the correct values. Vegas does not like different timings or different voltages than what Ram should have. I speak from my own experience.
If someone's Vegas crashes every now and then even with a simple project, I would focus on Ram.
The fact that someone is happy with the editing and others are not, also depends on the setting of the correct Ram values. When I built a new computer with 64Gb, the stability of Vegas depended on the correct values. Vegas does not like different timings or different voltages than what Ram should have. I speak from my own experience.
If someone's Vegas crashes every now and then even with a simple project, I would focus on Ram.
I have 64 gigs of ram on my computer as well. Anything in particular I should do or look out for concerning it?
The fact that someone is happy with the editing and others are not, also depends on the setting of the correct Ram values. When I built a new computer with 64Gb, the stability of Vegas depended on the correct values. Vegas does not like different timings or different voltages than what Ram should have. I speak from my own experience.
If someone's Vegas crashes every now and then even with a simple project, I would focus on Ram.
I have 64 gigs of ram on my computer as well. Anything in particular I should do or look out for concerning it?
Ha, call me old school but I've always tended to allocate ram in 128k increments. But for sure, I would say that plenty of ram supersedes processing power.
Another hang, seems the same issue I posted before (libmfx64-gen.dll)
It was a new project, just clips on the timeline, viewing and deleting, noFX, no cuts yet.
Faulting application name: vegas210.exe, version: 21.0.0.208, time stamp: 0x6567bfa5
Faulting module name: libmfx64-gen.dll, version: 23.6.12.3975, time stamp: 0x6486c4e1
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x0000000000977c15
Faulting process id: 0x0x551C
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DA46BE7DE6937A
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 21.0\vegas210.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\iigd_dch.inf_amd64_effe9612081e9042\libmfx64-gen.dll
Report Id: 872b13f4-69e0-4457-af1a-f82f04c73054
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
As a result of the above hang, I ran a intel driver update (clean install) and libmfx64-gen.dll (version: 23.6.12.3975) is being replaced by a new version. Lets see if it hangs again on that .dll in the future.
I did notice intel QSV rendering has disappeared from the choise of MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 (but not from MAGIX HEVC).
I have seen and had this before, and it was then rectified by the regular Microsoft updates, which tend to place back older Intel drivers.
It is an annoying ping-pong game for Intel GPU HW between Microsoft updates persisting in putting in older (sometimes 1 year old) drivers, and then the next day Intel driver and support assistant wants the update to a newer driver, and the ping-pong continues. And by the way, I am not alone in this (according to internet searches).