I really hate when people make mistakes and don't take responsibility for them. With that in mind, I do have to apologize because part of my problems with 8c (some of the crashes) were actually due to a faulty RAM module, which became evident after testing each of the four with Prime95 and Memtest. I wonder if maybe it's because the faulty one was the closest to the CPU, which is very close in my motherboard (Intel D975BXB2). I do have a rear fan and a front fan, and obviously the CPU fan that came with the boxed Intel CPU, but the computer case has a grille on the side for a smaller fan, so I'll put one in there just in case.
It was evident to me that since these crashes began as soon as I installed 8c, that the update was to blame, but I suppose this new version accesses memory in a way that 8b didn't, or perhaps the module became faulty two days ago.
I do maintain however, that this update is far from being decent and ready for the public. To summarize my list of disappointments:
- The crashes followed by reboots are gone, but I still have software crashes, sometimes just by scrubbing the timeline, or by prerendering a loop. As I'm typing this, I'm experiencing crashes too often just for doing simple things, such as choosing "Clean up prerendered video" from the menu, or switching from an effects window to the timeline. Since I took out the faulty module these crashes don't take down the whole system, but just Vegas.
- Releasing an NLE with a NTSC render template that has a PAL frame rate in its settings, as well as a Browse button that doesn't update the path you selected (in the Burn to Blu-ray disc option) is downright pathetic, and proper maybe of an alpha release, not even a beta, and certainly not of a third revision to a "Pro" NLE.
- Doing a prerender to 1920 MPEG2 gave me like one full minute of plain red taking all the footage space. I have no clue why this happened. Even worse, scrubbing that area back and forth crashed Vegas. When I relaunched it, I selected Clean Up Prerendered Files, and Vegas crashed again.
- I still can't get over the fact that the software bundled with my Canon HF100 can do AVCHD smart rendering perfectly and Vegas Pro cannot. It's hard for me to believe that Pixela (http://www.pixela.co.jp/en/index.html) holds some secret to the AVCHD format that Sony Creative Software cannot have. AVCHD is a great format with many advantages, such as not having that annoying tape motor noise, not being constrained to just one hour per tape, access each take much faster than with tape, not overwriting takes accidentally, etc. But until the major companies that sell NLE software don't put an effort to support it properly, it's a pain to edit.
- While AVCHD playback speed in the timeline has improved a bit, it's still not good. At times it will play at 29.97 fps, but as soon as there's movement in the footage such as a pan it will go down to 13 fps. This is on a 2.66 Ghz Quad Core with 4 GB
- I still don't understand why, if DVDA 5 can encode to 1920x1080 AVC at whatever bitrate you tell it to, Sony Vegas cannot go any higher than 16 Mbps. Since Vegas doesn't give me smart rendering, I need to re-encode my footage with a bitrate as high as my Blu-ray player will take on DVD media, which is 20 Mbps. With DVDA I can do that, but not with Vegas. I have to render my timeline to Huffyuv, taking up a humongous amount of disk space, to then import it in DVDA 5 and let it encode to 1920x1080 at 20 Mbps. It's just ridiculous.
It was evident to me that since these crashes began as soon as I installed 8c, that the update was to blame, but I suppose this new version accesses memory in a way that 8b didn't, or perhaps the module became faulty two days ago.
I do maintain however, that this update is far from being decent and ready for the public. To summarize my list of disappointments:
- The crashes followed by reboots are gone, but I still have software crashes, sometimes just by scrubbing the timeline, or by prerendering a loop. As I'm typing this, I'm experiencing crashes too often just for doing simple things, such as choosing "Clean up prerendered video" from the menu, or switching from an effects window to the timeline. Since I took out the faulty module these crashes don't take down the whole system, but just Vegas.
- Releasing an NLE with a NTSC render template that has a PAL frame rate in its settings, as well as a Browse button that doesn't update the path you selected (in the Burn to Blu-ray disc option) is downright pathetic, and proper maybe of an alpha release, not even a beta, and certainly not of a third revision to a "Pro" NLE.
- Doing a prerender to 1920 MPEG2 gave me like one full minute of plain red taking all the footage space. I have no clue why this happened. Even worse, scrubbing that area back and forth crashed Vegas. When I relaunched it, I selected Clean Up Prerendered Files, and Vegas crashed again.
- I still can't get over the fact that the software bundled with my Canon HF100 can do AVCHD smart rendering perfectly and Vegas Pro cannot. It's hard for me to believe that Pixela (http://www.pixela.co.jp/en/index.html) holds some secret to the AVCHD format that Sony Creative Software cannot have. AVCHD is a great format with many advantages, such as not having that annoying tape motor noise, not being constrained to just one hour per tape, access each take much faster than with tape, not overwriting takes accidentally, etc. But until the major companies that sell NLE software don't put an effort to support it properly, it's a pain to edit.
- While AVCHD playback speed in the timeline has improved a bit, it's still not good. At times it will play at 29.97 fps, but as soon as there's movement in the footage such as a pan it will go down to 13 fps. This is on a 2.66 Ghz Quad Core with 4 GB
- I still don't understand why, if DVDA 5 can encode to 1920x1080 AVC at whatever bitrate you tell it to, Sony Vegas cannot go any higher than 16 Mbps. Since Vegas doesn't give me smart rendering, I need to re-encode my footage with a bitrate as high as my Blu-ray player will take on DVD media, which is 20 Mbps. With DVDA I can do that, but not with Vegas. I have to render my timeline to Huffyuv, taking up a humongous amount of disk space, to then import it in DVDA 5 and let it encode to 1920x1080 at 20 Mbps. It's just ridiculous.