Need Help Getting Around a Vegas Bug

fr0sty wrote on 4/13/2018, 6:33 PM

So, Vegas' support for Panasonic GH5 10 bit files is 100% broken. The memory leak prevents you from rendering anything with so4 enabled, if you disable so4compoundplug.dll. you have to do a time consuming rewrap process to even open the video, and timeline performance is terrible. It renders so slow that it isn't even worth it (I've been rendering a 1.5 minute video for an hour now, on a Ryzen 7 1800x, GTX 970 system), and I have a huge music festival shoot coming up next weekend. I have to edit on-site and do daily recap videos that they post at noon each day of the festival after the first. I cannot afford to be slowed down by bugs and slow render times, so I need to know what the highest quality and easiest to edit intermediary format for me to use is. I need something that will encode reasonably fast as well, as once we get back to our hotel room at midnight, we don't sleep until the video is ready to deliver the next morning. I can't spend hours encoding my source video before I can even get started.

I really don't know what to do, I feel as if I'm forced to either record everything 8 bit, which removes the benefit of this $2000 camera I just bought, or abandon Vegas for something that can actually edit my video without choking. Problem is, a week isn't enough time to get acquainted with new software either, so my back is up against the wall here. I'd really like to avoid having to downgrade my video quality, we do a lot of color grading and such and those extra 2 bits of color make a big difference, as does VLOG.

If any of you have any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated. I have adobe media encoder, so I can use that to batch encode my intermediates, but time is of the essence... so if you had to pick a format to render to given these circumstances, what would you use?

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 4/13/2018, 7:03 PM

I would shoot 8 bit and breathe out.

fr0sty wrote on 4/13/2018, 7:15 PM

Definitely makes it easier on the shooting end of things... makes it harder with less dynamic range when it comes to post, but yeah... I still was hoping there was something that could be done. The other editor I'll be with uses FCP, so maybe we'll just do all the cutting on his laptop. Still frustrating that this bug is almost a year old, and it's now getting to the point where I'm taking a hit in the quality of my productions because of the NLE I'm using.

OldSmoke wrote on 4/13/2018, 7:49 PM

Have you tried transcoding your footage to a more Vegas friendly format like XAVC-I which is also 10bit? You can try the free Sony Catalyst Browse if it can read the GH5 files.

Musicvid wrote on 4/13/2018, 8:04 PM

makes it harder with less dynamic range when it comes to post,

Your delivery will no doubt be 8 bit. Yes, it's tighter, but shoot right and you've got it made. Best advice is a jaw-clencher for hired guns: Attend the final dress rehearsal. Make small correctiins on opening night. WB on full up. And don't chase zebras, tame them.

Musicvid wrote on 4/13/2018, 8:10 PM

OldSmoke makes a good point. XAVC-I is fairly bulletproof.

Kinvermark wrote on 4/13/2018, 8:45 PM

There is also FOOTAGE STUDIO, which can convert to 10 bit cineform files.

FWIW, I think the 8 bit GH5 files are so good I don't feel any need to endure the hassle of 10bit. Also, in my opinion the camera has a lot of benefits that are more important than 10 bit, most notably IBIS. I almost exclusively shoot hand-held in IS LOCK mode and now don't even bother stabilizing in post .

Former user wrote on 4/14/2018, 6:14 AM

8 bit sounds good, simpler and quicker. Just curious @fr0sty is this the rewrap that you use ... https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/gh5-4k-24-30p-problem--105152/?page=2#ca658569 by GJeffrey?

fr0sty wrote on 4/14/2018, 1:44 PM

I think I'm just going to shoot 10 bit and edit in FCP on my partner's computer. Mine will just handle the after effects stuff. Vegas will have to sit this one out. Just really frustrating knowing I could throw these files into Premiere, Resolve, FCP, Avid, etc. and they'd work just fine, when "support added for 10 bit GH5 files" was added to Vegas in the update right after it released, yet here we are all this time later and it is still completely broken.

Yes, JN_, that's the script I was using.

I am going to use XAVC-I in the future, until this bug gets fixed, thank you for that input. I wasn't sure of if it would hold up quality-wise, it's one of the few codecs I never learned much about.