Please Sony fix memory handling in next Vegas

MarkHolmes wrote on 3/29/2009, 1:15 PM

I know this has been discussed endlessly, but it bears repeating, since we seem on the verge of the release of a new version of Vegas:

Please, Sony Creative Software Team, before you add any feature or fix any other bug, great or small, fix one thing. Memory handling.

As it stands, every time I try to render our feature film, a 90-minute piece in 720P, the memory builds until the render fails and an error message comes up. We've managed workarounds, rendering the feature to 9 sections and bringing it into Final Cut Pro as Quicktime JPEG2000 reels for final renders, but I want to stay in Vegas every step of the way. And for people without access to separate systems, I don't know what people are doing.

But kudos to SCS for an otherwise exceptional effort maintaining and upgrading what I consider the most forward-thinking and creatively satisfying NLE out there.

Mark Holmes
San Diego, California
www.readyokmovie.com

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Comments

blink3times wrote on 4/4/2009, 10:41 AM

Your video card makes little difference in Vegas... ti is almost 100% cpu and memory driven. If your preview is too slow then make sure your preview mode is set to "preview". and use dynamic preview for the more complicated parts of the time line (highlight that area and then press SHIFT-B which loads that part of the time line into memory for smooth playback) Make sure you have preview ram set high enough though.

As for losing files... this is not a bug as far as I know. It's the first time I have heard of it and I can only say that it must have been something you did.

marcel-vossen wrote on 4/5/2009, 1:35 AM

The 'losing' of files is a bug, I've read it somewhere on this forum that others had it too. It's not that I actually LOSE files, it's just that vegas doesnt see some files when I open the project immediately after I saved it, although they are there. But when I point out where the file is it does find it.

Maybe this has something to do with the trouble I have been going through during the rendering, I can imagine that Vegas will crash as soon as it doesnt find a file that it has to work with.

I am using a legal Vista 64 Business on a i7 based system with 6 Gb of RAM installed. But again, I have a second computer that is more stable but also has its weird moments in Vegas.

Last time I had this (on a previous installation of Vista on this computer) I remember that I even changed the access rights on my filessystem , that looked as if it did something good but that didnt fix it 100%. Maybe Vegas handles the file system incorrectly or something, I am not a programmer, just an experienced IT professional and I know as a fact that a lot of serious (not user error related) computer trouble in companies (I'd say over 70%) has something to do with access rights. But then again, of course I am running Vegas as the administrator of this system, I do hope Vegas 'knows' that.

Feeling pretty depressed right now, I started the rendering of my 3 minute videoclip in 1920x1080 that contains multiple greenscreen layers yesterday afternoon on 2 different computers and now, 15 hours later, my main computer had a 'access violation error' and crashed at about 65%. The other one , the older slower computer, is still running at 75%, but it's not funny if it take 24 hours to render before it crashes near the end...I know 1920x1080 is huge, I already have all the original MOV files from my Canon 5D mark II converted to Sony MXF files , someone here adviced it for being a 'Vegas friendly' format, and it does work a lot faster than the MOV files from the camera.

If it crashes I will have to learn how to use Adobe software because this is killing me.

I hope Vegas 9 is better , and I think they should give us a free copy for the trouble we are experiencing because 8,0c is costing us a lot of money....Vegas 7 NEVER let me down, was worth every penny!

PeterWright wrote on 4/5/2009, 1:50 AM

> " ... I think they should give us a free copy for the trouble we are experiencing ... "

I don't agree - ultimately there's no advantage to us squeezing Sony out of income - I want them to be financially successfull to give Vegas as secure a future as this world can offer.

The last updates were free, including the first 64bit version, and anyway the cost of upgrades is miniscule, seen as an annual software maintenance cost. Paying for new Versions enables us to acknowledge the value of continuously improving what we are using for our income.

- yes, I know - fix old bugs first before new versions, but if the new version does not have that bug, that's fixed as far as I'm concerned.

JJKizak wrote on 4/5/2009, 5:55 AM

I am so relieved that IRQ's contribute absolutely no problems with Vegas (abolutely none, not even one problem anywhere with anyone) and are totally perfect in their performance.
JJK

MarkWWW wrote on 4/5/2009, 10:05 AM

> I already have all the original MOV files from my Canon 5D mark II converted to Sony MXF files

This sounds a very peculiar thing to do.

Much more sensible would be to use Cineform Neo to deal with material shot on the 5D2.

Mark

Terje wrote on 4/8/2009, 5:44 AM

And what marketing departments "STATE"... of course you don't know too much about this do you.

No blink, I do not. You are correct. I stick to the technical stuff. Technically all versions of Vista 64 can access the same amount of memory since they use the same memory addressing scheme. When various versions, in this case the toy or home versions, have limitations these are imposed by the marketing department, not by the engineering staff. The limitations are not technical in nature, they are there to artificially lower the price on "entry level versions" of the product, even though the underlying software is identical.

Microsoft previously often used a simple registry key to determine if such limits should be imposed, so users could actually easily work around the limits. I doubt that they do so with the OS. Still, given that the underlying operating system is identical, there is only one reason to limit Vista 64 Home to 8G, and that is because the marketing manager wanted it.

Terje wrote on 4/8/2009, 5:51 AM

I am so relieved that IRQ's contribute absolutely no problems with Vegas (abolutely none, not even one problem anywhere with anyone) and are totally perfect in their performance

You should be, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with Vegas. It is a Windows/motherboard/bios issue. Since IRQs are virtualized on modern computer platforms IRQs haven't really been an issue in NT-based system. So, for those of us who ditched real-mode Windows (3.x, 95, 98) IRQ issues have not been around since about 1999 or so. Perhaps a year more.

There have been some motherboards and boards released with some issues, but they have been fixed rather rapidly. Some board makers, notably Creative and VIA, were slow to "get" virtual IRQs, but I haven't heard about board makers today who still struggle with this. With virtualized IRQs there should be no issues unless there are serious faults on your motherboard.

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 4/8/2009, 11:59 AM

Hi,

Just received the following error when editing with 8.0c mixed material on the timeline:

An error occurred while processing the undo buffer. You should save your work immediately using a new project filename and restart Vegas Pro. The reason for the error could not be determined"..

Well, is this an memory handling error or not. At least with this kind of errors it is hard to blame anyone else than the original software writer...

I sincerely hope that SCS will soon bring back the stability I got used to in both Vegas 6 and Vegas 7. I NEVER had a single crash!! Today I have already had 3.

Cheers

Christian

MarkHolmes wrote on 4/8/2009, 12:28 PM

Yes, Christian, exactly.

And thanks to all who have responded to this thread and kept it a civil discussion of the software.

I still want to reiterate that Vegas is, for me, so far superior to other NLEs that I'm willing to work around these bugs while SCS works them out.

Just spent three hours last night working on a music video made up of hundreds of high-res stills for a South African band. The editor I worked with, like me, has both Final Cut and Vegas setups in the same room. At least three or four times during the work we said to each other "This would have taken so much longer in Final Cut..."

Vegas was rock solid, with two instances of Vegas 7d and three instances of Vegas 8c at 720p24, all with hundreds of high-res stills on their timelines. Amazing. And no rendering problems at all. The only time I've had these crashes was during rendering of long-form HD content. But for short form; no problems whatsoever. Just hope SCS figures out this problem that arises during very large renders.