new graphics card - vegas vanishes

Serena wrote on 3/18/2009, 2:01 AM

I've just installed a new graphics card (Geforce 9600GT) to enable Blu-Ray playback. When I initialise Vegas Pro 8c with an existing veg, Vegas comes up and vanishes. I find I can initiate it as untitled and can work with mxf files, but as soon as I put a cineform clip on the timeline Vegas vanishes (without apologies). I can play the clips with Media Player. Any thoughts?

Comments

ushere wrote on 3/18/2009, 3:14 AM

don't want to teach my grandmother to suck eggs (if you'll forgive the expression), but have you installed the latest drivers from nvidia?

i only ask because a few years back i had a similar problem, (5800 series i think with vegas 6 or 7) where vegas would flash on, then off (it was still running in task manager). all came right with a reinstall with latest driver at the time - the one on disk was, iirc, two versions old)

i hope you resolve the problem quickly - things like that are so bloody infuriating.....

leslie

Serena wrote on 3/18/2009, 4:39 AM

I do have the latest driver, because I couldn't get the card to work at all with the one on the CD (despite it being dated March 2008). Or I presume it to be the latest. I'd better do a search and make sure of that. My initial searches turned up several postings about people not being able to get the card to function, not at any rate with the supplied driver. As you say, most frustrating.

megabit wrote on 3/18/2009, 5:24 AM

I did have a similar experience with my ATI 3870 card - drivers are updated and posted monthly, but when I downloaded and installed the one from December 2008, my system (rock stable otherwise) wouldn't even load it... It soon turned out that the specific driver version was incompatible with systems capable of using more than 4GB RAM (e.g. my Vista x64 with 8 GB RAM) - I had to revert to the previous driver version. The one currently posted by ATI/AMD is OK again...

All in all, both ATI and nVidia are notorious of issuing crap drivers, in their never ending strive to make all those PC games work even faster :(

blink3times wrote on 3/18/2009, 6:27 AM

Interesting...

Around the time I STOPPED crashing with Vegas was when I switched from Nvidia to ATI. These crashing issues people are having really starts looking like conflicts with video cards.

Serena; Try installing your video card drivers WHILE vegas is open and running (if that's at all possible). Maybe your card drivers are smart enough to see the memory block(s) that Vegas is using and will steer clear of them.... just a guess mind you but I can't see it hurting anything to try.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/18/2009, 7:31 AM

only reason I know of that a new vid card would cause issues is if it overwrote something vegas uses. What was your previous card? Not sure about nvidia, but ATI's normally just have you uninstall old driver, remove card, install new card, install updated driver (one driver runs nearly all cards for that OS).

Since windows runs, the card seems to work. Vegas uses no D3D/OGL stuff, so that's not an issue (unless you have a plugin that DOES).

but maybe it's time for a reformat since you upgraded your GPU. could "fix" the problem then.

daryl wrote on 3/18/2009, 8:09 AM

On the nVidia web site, the latest driver is dated March 3, 2009.
I have run nVidia exclusively for many many years, never had a problem. Right now I have a 768 m Quadro FX 4600.
Might give the 2009 driver a try,
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/18/2009, 9:28 AM

you have one of nvidia's "pro" cards. From what I've been told, the pro line of ATI/nvidia has much better drivers then the consumer cards. Because you pay the extra $$ for good driver support & features, not speed.

teaktart wrote on 3/18/2009, 12:34 PM

Recently my laptop would crash Vegas 8c every time I put a cineform clip on the timeline. Didn't make any hardware changes but all of a sudden these files would immediately close Vegas.
I reinstalled V8 and that seemed to solve the problem.

Have you tried to just reinstall Vegas and perhaps that could be a solution?

Serena wrote on 3/18/2009, 3:47 PM

Good morning all! Thanks for the good suggestions and comments. I'll have breakfast and get to work. My previous card was a NVIDIA nForce4 -- maybe I should have made the minimum upgrade necessary to get BD playback.

Himanshu wrote on 3/18/2009, 7:03 PM

From your profile it seems you may have had on-board graphics before? If so, check the power supply on your system. NVIDIA says for the 9600GT you may need a 400W or better PSU. Many systems from DELL and HP come with 350W stock PSUs. May be time to upgrade to get a properly functioning system. I'm in the market for a 450W or better PSU myself...

Serena wrote on 3/18/2009, 9:17 PM

Separate graphics card and a 430W PSU. But you're correct that the card wants more grunt than that, or at least 26A from the 12v supply (mine is rated at 18A). My computer guy didn't think this a problem unless I start gaming. One person upgraded their PSU to 650W and the card worked, but without explanation. My card is working, after updating the driver, for all purposes except putting NEO HD 1920 x 1080P on the Vegas timeline. Before I had to leave this morning on a short job I found that opening an old veg with NEO HDV 1440 x 1080i was OK, but not with material originating from the EX1 at full resolution. Just getting back to the problem.

farss wrote on 3/18/2009, 10:03 PM

I'd put good money on the power supply.
The current specs on PC power supplies can be dubious. 18A @12V can be with no other load on the power supply.
The only thing that makes me a bit uncertain about it being the power supply is the usual response to a power supply problem is the PC shutting down. Having an app wink out is unusual.
I'd also mention that Vegas does appear to use the GPU when it drives the secondary display if it's one of the PC's monitors.

Bob.

Serena wrote on 3/19/2009, 12:04 AM

I will get a bigger PSU because I don't like running stuff that would seem set up to fail. My computer guru agrees that PSU specs vs performance are wonderfully loose, which seemed to be his reasoning for having a go.
A check on drivers using th ASUS "driver detective" showed that my GPU driver is up-to-date, even though a number of other NVIDIA drivers aren't (not surprising -- they were installed when the machine was built).
USHERE was right that Vegas was still running, though vanished.
The driver on the CD was useless although labelled for XP (apparently W2000 actually) and that supports Megabit's comment.
Cineform suggested I delete CFHD.dll from the Vegas directory, which fixed the vanishing problem by making the video media unavailable.
I was hoping to avoid re-installing Vegas, so instead did a complete delete of Cineform and did a fresh install. Problem fixed. I'll have to leave others to explain why and how that was the solution!

Thanks all for the pointers.