Sounds like a combo of Project Settings, Media, PC grunt and another FXs you;ve got going and have you got FXs PRE or POST the Mask?

You're going to need to provide some more info.

Bottom line, Vegas should do this without Red stuff appearing. My feeling is that you are trying to do too much with minimal resources to do it.

G

Ooops - sorry - should have supplied that info

Vegas 13 Pro 64bit
WMV 720x1280 @ 10kbps
Win 7 64bit, CPU Core i7 @ 3.5 GHz, Ram 8 Gig, GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Color corrector is also applied to the clip

I already have GPU rendering disabled in Vegas

thanks

What driver are you using for the GTX560Ti? Note that the latest is not necessary the best.

WMV? That's a delivery format, not an editing format and may be a part of your problem. is the footage not available in another format? Try transcoding it to something like Sony MXF to see if it works any better.

Mike

Mike beat me to it . . . by six minutes.

Thanks for the replies guys

Old Smoke

I'm using the latest driver. I don't think I'd know where to begin trying to decide if there's a better version.

Mike

WMV is the only format I have for the footage. I'm reluctant to transcode to another format because I will lose quality in the process. But I'm happy to give it a try. Can I ask why Sony MXF in particular.

I used to have 2x GTX580 in my system and best drivers where 296.10 and 334.89 for Windows 7.

Yep, I use MXF because it holds the quality of what I'm transcoding and the resulting file is not huge, unlike an uncompressed file would be.

Mike

Yes, 296.10 works great with 560ti, I used them together for years.

Thanks again guys.

Old Smoke and dxdy:

I had a look at the Nvidia driver download page. Unfortunately neither driver appears to be listed now. The oldest is 347.09.

Mike:

I did a short trial encoding a 2 minute section of the WMV file to Sony MXF. I loaded it into the timeline of a new project and applied a pixelated mask. I was able to scrub through in the Pan/Crop screen without any redscreen appearing. So you might well be right that it is the media that is the problem.

However, it's far from a full test. The project I'm having problems with is some 40 minutes long and has a lot of editing which may also be a factor.

So I'm going to transcode the entire original media to MXF, rename the original file, and then specify the MXF version when Vegas ask to specify a new location or file on opening my project. Then I should be able to see if the MXF transcode has solved the problem.

It will probably be a couple of days before I can get around to all of that but I'll update in due course.

In the meantime thanks again to everbody for your input.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-296.10-whql-driver.html

296.10
334.89

A red frame means Vegas is having trouble fetching a frame (decoding problem) and it timed out. Some formats such as WMV are terrible as an editing format. Certain WMV clips require decoding starting from the very beginning of the file as each frame depends on the previous frame. You really can't tell which files are like this but I have found that files encoded from live events tend to be like that.

Old Smoke & dxdy:

Thanks for the links to the Nvidia drivers. I will give them a try in the next week or so.

Mike:

It would appear that you were correct that the media was the problem. I converted the entire original footage to MXF and opened my full project substituting the MXF version. There wasn't even a hint of red screen in the Pan/Crop edit screen. So that is a major result.

Mike, could you tell me if you use Vegas to transcode to Sony MXF, and if so what render settings do you use. The reason I ask is that you said the resultant files are not huge. My MXF transcode ended up being nearly 8 times bigger than the original. I used Vegas with the HD EX 1920x1080-60i template modfied to 1280x720 to match the resolution of the original. Does that sound about right to you? Also there doesn't seem to be a way to dial down the bitrate in the MXF templates. They are all at 25 or 35 MBps whereas my original footage is only at 10Mbps.

Mike and Allegretto:

Thanks also for your comments with regard to editing vs delivery formats. At best I'm an enthusiastic amateur and relatively low on the learning curve. Your comments got me thinking and doing a bit of research. I found the following article on the subject:

http://telestreamblog.telestream.net/2012/04/save-yourself-frustration-use-editing-formats-when-editing-2/

While it comes from a commercial site, I think it is a very clear explanation on the difference between editing and delivery formats. Hopefully it can be of some help to others like myself who might be struggling with some of the basics.

Again a big thanks to all for your time and help.

Mike, could you tell me if you use Vegas to transcode to Sony MXF, and if so what render settings do you use. The reason I ask is that you said the resultant files are not huge. My MXF transcode ended up being nearly 8 times bigger than the original. I used Vegas with the HD EX 1920x1080-60i template modfied to 1280x720 to match the resolution of the original. Does that sound about right to you? Also there doesn't seem to be a way to dial down the bitrate in the MXF templates. They are all at 25 or 35 MBps whereas my original footage is only at 10Mbps.

Yep, I use the same one you did, the default Sony MXF HD EX template.
When I said that file size wasn't huge, I was comparing that to other acquisition formats, not delivery formats as those are (almost) always smaller in size. For example, a comparable ProRes file is 10X (yes, 10X!!) the size of an MXF file.

FYI, there's no need to modify the HD EX 1920x1080-60i template as there's already an HD EX 1280x720 template in there for you to use.

Mike