Preview window crashing. Vegas 13 Pro/GTX980.

TTT wrote on 4/13/2016, 3:42 PM

Hello,

I used Vegas since version 4 or so, I am currently using Vegas Pro 13 Suite which came with came Hitfilm Pro plugins.

A few months ago, I was using it on GPU: GTX 660TI, OS: Win7 64, CPU: Core I7-I don't remember the exact which one.

Since November 2015, I use on with
GPU: Asus Strix GTX980 4Gb ( Drivers are up-to-date.)
CPU: Core i7 6700K
RAM: 32 GB RAM Trident-Z
OS: Win 10 64 bit.
MB: Asus Maxiumus VIII Extreme
PSU: Corsair AX860 / 860 watt

The problem I am getting is

Step1:
I resize the preview window. Tthe image inside won't resize, it may be shifted like half of the image is now outside the preview window. The extra surface is filled with black. Then, I have to close the preview window or vegas and re-open so that the preview image gets resized.
I also undock the preview window.

Step 2:
After step 1, pressing "play", resizing the preview window, changing a setting in menus ... actually doing mostly anything while the preview windows is rendering something (even a still image) will make the application unresponsive until crash.

Stex 3-->x
Once it crashed, it will crash every time I'll do one of those again.

Other precisions:
- The crash won't happen while the preview window has not been undoked.
- The crash seems to be really about the preview window, I have never experienced a crash on rendering the project to an output file.
- The crash happen with a single video track "Generate Media - Solid color" sequence and no video effects/plugins as well as when I have one of my heaviest multitrack projects open. And in other circumstances those "heaviest" projects work fine.
So it doesn't look like a codec/performance problem.
- Edit: Seeing encoding time with and without GPU. My rendering to files is definitely GPU accelerated. Just rendering to (while editing) and/or the preview window crashes.

Situation between 11/2015 and 04/2016:
After crash. I had to open Sony Vegas Pro by clicking CTRL+SHIFT+double-clic, which opens a "clear application cache" dialog. Then I had to disable GPU acceleration from "Preferences" menu, check that it played, close Vegas. Then I could re-open it normally and re-enable GPU acceleration. Until next crash every few weeks.
So it looks like a GPU (or possibly Win10?) problem.

Situation since a few days: When I re-enable GPU acceleration, Sony Vegas Pro will re-crash immediately. So I am not able to use GPU acceleration at all any more.

Questions:
1) Does somebody have a solution for that? (Not a work-around like "disable GPU acceleration".)
2) I read that Sony stopped "supporting" Nvidia acceleration because they (Nvidia) were pushing prioritary technology instead of OpenCL. Still true?
3) I read that therefore, AMD should be better. But I also read that Sony stopped supporting most recent AMD GPUs. True? What about it?

(My two most used softwares are Vegas Pro and Lightroom, and both crash on GPU acceleration, gaming is really marginal in my usage. But I think GPU acceleration really helps with complex projets and Hitfilm plug-ins and is even required for some of them. So...)
I am thinking of switching to an AMD R390 or R Fury and re-sell my GTX980 while it still have value.
4a) Would it be a good move? (regardig Sony Vega Pro usage)
4b) Did somebody else experience the same problem with AMD GPUs?
Edit:
5) Does Vegas have a crash log?

Thank you for your help.

PS: The complete title was supposed to be "Preview window crashing. Vegas 13 Pro/GTX980. Move to AMD? Or other solution?" be it got cut after "Move ". Which looks weird, sorry about it.

Comments

OldSmoke wrote on 4/13/2016, 3:56 PM

Read this https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/SonyVideoCards.htm

TTT wrote on 4/13/2016, 4:06 PM

Thank you.
I have already read some parts. Please could you point out what you I should pay most attention to ?

I'm asking the question to know if other people have recent concrete experience about it. The article is interesting but it has no publishing date and doesn't mention R390, R Fury and/or Vegas 13.

TTT wrote on 4/13/2016, 4:09 PM

Also I see that the article is talking about performance. I didn't see it talking about crash/no crash (or it is in parts I didn't read yet).

Eagle Six wrote on 4/13/2016, 4:22 PM

The article was updated on 12/08/2015. Insn't the R Fury an R9 series, which is mentioned in the article?

Hopefully you will get a response to your specifications.

Best Regards.....George

TTT wrote on 4/13/2016, 5:24 PM

You're right, I'm not familiar enough with AMD model numbers and I forgot the R..."9".

But yet their tests may be limit to R9 380.

I still hope I get some more concrete answer. It seems like the kind of matter that is hard to tell while you don't have the stuff hands on. (As it goes for some aspects of carmeras for example ...)

The article was update on 12/08/2015, published in 2015 not precise date. Still deosn't mention Vegas 13. And I already see a point that is outdated. When they say that Premiere uses OpenCL and Cuda while Vegas only uses OpenCL. Well, Vegas 13 uses both (in theory and in interface at least, not sure if it's related to crashes.)

Eagle Six wrote on 4/13/2016, 6:04 PM

I understand your frustration......

The article was published on 12/08/2015, which was an update, but that is the date the information contained should be current.

It doesn't mention Vegas Pro 13 because they stated Vegas Pro 12 was used for the test.

Vegas Pro 13 interface allows for CUDA, but doesn't mean it will use all cards with CUDA and that is the prime part of the article that seems to escaped you. The article states that Vegas does use CUDA in earlier version of GTX cards.

Your crashes may or may not be related to your graphics card, again, hopefully someone will reply who may have your card, your exact or similar system and system setup with the same crashes you are having.

It just seems like you are taking your frustrations out on the article, when the article has some good factual information. I will agree it doesn't have the answer you want, but it was offered in good faith.

I'll go on down the road on this one, because I can not help you with your crashes. My GTX 460 card works well and I don't have the crashes as you are. But I certainly hope someone can help you out with your problem.

Best Regards......George

TTT wrote on 4/13/2016, 6:30 PM

Thank you. I'm not truly frustrated or anything about the article.
It's just that it is a part of the information I already had and that motivated me to post. Because it gave me hints but no precise answer. I was just trying to get out of this "loop about the article".

I suspect the crashes may also possibly have to do with Win 10. But I think the GPU or a combination of both is more likely.

Mark_e wrote on 4/14/2016, 2:06 AM

Not sure why your is crashing but I ran it fine with a 980 on win 10 with 13 for ages and I'm currently running 2 x titan x and that's fine as well which is the same architecture. Sure performance sucks for what it should be but that's been done to death for why and it's better than no acceleration :-) but it is stable for me with the newer cards.

The fact that you say other apps crash like light room says to me it's not vegas related and that's just a symptom. Could be so many things, could even be something like your power supply on the way out or not high enough etc. I'd try running other benchmarks and seeing if it keeps crashing then go from there rather than just focusing on the vegas part.

The only change I always may to vegas in in the advanced settings set the OpenCL Filter memory size to a larger value it defaults to 300meg which is not great, I usually set mine to 3000 and it seems to make a difference but it's not caused it to crash.

TTT wrote on 4/14/2016, 4:21 AM

Thank you.
I don't know much about benchmarks but I reproduced the crash with GPU-Z and HWMonitor open. I noticed no significant changes in power consumption. The PSU is 860W and I didn't notice anything over ~25% of power consumption.
Actually, it "looks" like Vegas is running into a deadlock before GPU gets involded.

(After these tests, I edit the original post to give more configuration details and a more precise description of the crash.)

When you say you change the "OpenCL Filter memory size" how do you change it? The closest I found in Vegas looks like Preferences>Video>Dynamic RAM Preview Max. Maybe it's something outside of Vegas ?

Though when I do GPU Check by Vegas (in the custom output configuration menu), it say "CUDA is available" so I always guessed it is using CUDA.

Though when rendering (to output file), it doesn't look like it's using GPU at all.

TTT wrote on 4/14/2016, 4:28 AM

Interesting precision I just found:
Vegas won't crash if the docking window has not been undocked.

This is not a solution has I cannot work decently with the tracks and preview window on the same screen, not enough space. (Well, maybe it's time that I get 4K screens but that's another story.)

Mark_e wrote on 4/14/2016, 6:29 AM

if you hold down shift while clicking preferences in the option drop down it opens with an internal tab, click on that and you can find that setting.

It's not a panacea but it seems to help playback for me with 4k files etc.

Don't expect it to use much GPU it's essentially broken with modern nvidia cards the best you can hope for is it not crashing and smoothish playback with light effects applied. It's usable but needs some love from Sony. Some of the plugins will use the cards effectively so neat video for example can use both my cards working within vegas so ts not all bad news.

edit: vegas dosen't scale properly for 4k screens either or at least on mine so the text will be tiny so that's the next problem if you do splash out :)

TTT wrote on 4/14/2016, 5:06 PM

I was about to give up but the last thing I tried seems to have solved it.

Check "Preferences > Video > Display at project size"

Never had to care about in the past, no idea what it is supposed to do.

TTT wrote on 4/15/2016, 1:54 PM

Well this worked for 1 day. Now it's broken again.

Question re-opens.

TTT wrote on 4/19/2016, 1:11 PM

But seeing encoding time with and without GPU. My rendering to files is definitely GPU accelerated.
Just rendering to (while editing) and/or the preview window crashes.