Thank you, but having problem with link.

Invariably, they add all this crap I would never use or care about,

Do you mean AI FX (Style Transfer and Colorise) ？😄

take away things I like

Protype Titler and legacy FX window? 😅

I'm not a hot shot pro guy like most of the people in these threads. I have absolutely no idea what most of the people are even talking about in these threads. I shoot video with my camera for my show in front of a green screen. I add a background to green screen. I then make an mp4 that I upload to YouTube. I don't think I'm asking too much for a program to just stay on and not crash. I don't give a crap about new "nested timelines" and artificial intelligence or that you can edit now on an ipad if I had one. I just don't want it to crash. Have you seen that long list of bug fixes this new update is supposed to fix? I read all the fixes and have absolutely no idea what all those things are. Since Sony Vegas 4, I've just wanted a transport bar I can put anywhere like other Magix audio programs have. Will I have to wait to buy Vegas 42 to get a stable program? I'll be dead by then.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem or it's just me, but if I add titles to my video, I always get these minute pixellations in the letters that come up. I also get these little black marks in bottom of screen too. It's very irritating because I have to make tiffs of bad frames and either draw them out or clone a little part from a good frame in Photoshop and then stick it back in video. Also, if I use the Color Corrector and Color Balance together, the rendered file starts flashing black bars and freaking out so I don't ever combine the two.

If there's something you want help with, feel free to share details.

For render speed, if you use the same template as 12 (say SonyAVC) it will probably be about the same. Only new templates like MagixAVC or HEVC using NVIDIA or VCE or QSV leverage the hardware to run faster.

For flashing issues I haven't seen that. Perhaps try setting dynamic ram preview to 0 (preferences/video) and try again. It's helped me with other render glitches.

I also had a good experience with Vegas 12 and not very good with 15 but it's improved again in 17/18 in my experience.. If using old projects, save a copy of them before bringing into 18 so you can continue in the older one if you have to. Otherwise open both programs and literally cut and paste the events on the timeline from one to the other (mostly works- may lose some effects).

Other generic advice is to update graphics drivers (help/update drives). This has made a HUGE stability difference for me and many others.

Thanks. I feel stupid that I didn't think of that before. I should just make a backup of a 14 project before bringing it into 18. My camera shoots 1920x1080 HD mpeg 29.970 ..mxf files. Is there a better format I should be using that's easier to edit with and previews better?

My camera shoots 1920x1080 HD mpeg 29.970 ..mxf files. Is there a better format I should be using that's easier to edit with and previews better?

It would be great if you would advise the details about the camera that you are using as well as the choices of formats that it offers. Forum members may suggest better formats but if your camera doesn't record them then that advice may not assist.

Also, it would be most helpful if you could advise spec details about the computer that you are using. With Vegas Pro 18, the minimum specs for Vegas Pro 18 https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/specifications/#productMenu are a bit tighter than with previous versions though more so for 4K than HD.

Yes, you could simply sort by file type, select all Vegas projects and copy and paste them into a new or same folder. Then only load the ones with 1 in the file name in 18. (or name them VP 18 as I did- I've been editing projects I started with VP 12 recently).

Dexcon's advice is good about the camera. Really depends what the mxf is.
Also what's your computer specs? No 1080p file should give a modern computer performance problems.

If you want to pretend it's 2012, turn off GPU acceleration in preferences/video. Go to file I/O, enable legacy AVC encoding and turn hardware decoding off. You should be more or less back to VP of that era. Not a recommendation but a workaround until you have time to figure the rest out.
 

Just to amplify on RogerS' suggestion re keeping veg files from older VP versions, there are any number of ways of doing this. The way I use is to create a folder for all Vegas Pro veg files but with subfolders for each VP version (10, 11, 12 and so on). So if I start a project say in VP16, the VP16 subfolder has yet anther subfolder named 'project name' which contains all that project's veg files created via VP16. If I move on to VP18 to go on with editing that same project, I create a copy of that VP16 project folder and paste it into the VP18 subfolder and use that for editing in VP18.

Edit: And just to add to the house-keeping issue, it is most advisable to keep at least 1 but preferably 2 backup copies of all the veg files on an external HDD or memory stick/cards - and that also goes for all project media.

One interesting about VEG Project file is they are extremely small sizes, so it's not hurting to save as having multiple project files as backups. Yes - Dexcon's suggestions works best, while I only do save as [filename] - VPxx.veg.

Many ways to do it.

Should you need to go back to previous VP, then I can only think run both VP18 and previous VP14 version, copy-paste content from VP18 to VP14 - of course if you have any track fx adjustments, they won't be copied.

@thomas-foley The way I keep track of the veg files, saved by different versions of VP is to simply add -VPnn at the end of the project filename. So MyProject.veg gets saved as MyProject-VP18.veg

Don't see a reason to re-edit an older Vegasproject in the Vegasversion it was originally created, when re-editing also can be done in a newer Vegasversion. I keep only the latest Vegasversion installed and not all other versions.

...It took me 35 minutes to download the 700mb update file....Error Ox80131501...

@thomas-foley What Windows 10 update are you on, are you connected to the the Internet via a VPN or other non-standard method, and does Vegas not work on all of your computers, or just one? Error Ox80131501 sounds like an error Windows started kicking-out after one of the previous Windows updates - it even affected the MS Store/Office 365, so try going back or skipping past it to the next update... For me, the 20H2 Windows 10 update messed-up some of the legacy apps & drivers I use to import tape & film media prior to editing so I restored the last OS image from my NAS & further restricted auto updates...

BTW I've been editing with Vegas since 3.0 & feel that V12, V15 & now V18 have been some of the better / more stable releases on my hardware... I build my own Vegas editing workstations with stability as my #1 priority (then speed) & feel V18 runs GREAT on my 9900K & VEGA 64 LQ... Even Apple uses VEGA 64 / Radeon VII GPU technology in their latest Mac Pro 2019's & iMacs... Also, I've only been using ASUS workstation-class motherboards in my builds which IMO helps everything last longer - less power fluctuations to the CPU, GPU, DDR4, etc... My 10+ year-old Xeons on Asus P6T6 WS motherboards are still going strong...

I also use Premiere Pro on the same Windows 10 systems and have PP & FCP on OSX / older Mac... PP & FCP have their own issues too. Even when I had V16 or V17 crashing a few times per day I was still hours ahead editing in Vegas vs. PP or FCP, especially on projects that involve a lot of sound editing... I eventually found that V16+ did not like when I dropped a lot of 32-bit QT-based media onto the timeline... Once I reduced the number of clips and/or changed them to another intermediate, all was good with V18...

So sometimes source media issues can mess-up Vegas... I have had other NLEs refuse to load a file created (with errors) from a camera, etc. that had issues, but Vegas WOULD allow it to load, then simply crash later...

That said, I am updating my aging Mac Pro because I am getting more requests to collaborate on FCP projects & also need ProRes RAW & BRAW support NOW... As as an educator, I see students producing quality work on a $1000 M1 MacBook or Mini w/ $200 FCP (student license) so I always have to stay current to stay competitive...

OMG! Thanks for all the helpful suggestions! You guys are frickin' cool. ! really, really appreciate you taking your time out to help out a stranger. VERY nice of you! I just woke up, have to do some errands, but will get to every response today. Thanks a lot!

OMG! Thanks for all the helpful suggestions! You guys are frickin' cool. ! really, really appreciate you taking your time out to help out a stranger.

Since your fellow forum members are obviously not screwing you perhaps you'd like to alter your title to say something like "My problems with Magix Vegas".

My camera is a Panasonic AG-Hvx200 DVCPro which shoots on P2 cards and its format is .mxf files. If I right click on file, that's all it says it is. I used to have to buy this Raylight codec thing to get Vegas to import it, but they finally added support for these mxf files. I bought the camera many years ago for$5500. At the time, it was the hot thing. Maybe now it's considered crap. I don't know. So what I do is convert those Panasonic mxf files to Sony MXF files in the Vegas template because they were smaller, played better in Vegas, and I couldn't see the difference. Maybe I should have converted the files to some better format but, like I said, I'm pretty ignorant. If you offered me a $1000 to tell how interlacing works or what the hell ACES RRT (sRGB) is, I couldn't tell you. For as long as I can remember, I convert everything to the Sony MXF template (HD 1920x1080 29.970 Progressive MPEG-2 50Mbps(CBR). I've edited my 5 hour show  "Eccentroworld" on YouTube with thousands of these files. If you have a better suggestion for a format for me to start editing on, I'd love to try it. I have i7 and AMD computers running Windows 7 and 10. My computers can't play 4k footage smoothly, but if you can recommend a render setting to some other template-format in Vegas that's more stable- previewable, I'd love to try it. Whenever I put on a few fx in Vegas, I can never watch it on the good setting. I usually have to be in Preview or Draft setting. I use the Build Dynamic preview a lot. I know this has been asked a lot of times in these threads, but I would love to know what the minimum I need to spend on a great, hot shot computer. I can't spend like $5000 on a workstation because I'm a poor man with delusions of grandeur, but if you tell me I can spend like $2000 on something that will play smoothly with FXs, I might be able to swing it. Are these Ryzen computers the thing to get that work best with Vegas?

A search indicated this camera's from 2006.

First, how are you converting the MXF to a different MXF? Software like Handbrake? In Vegas? If Vegas can use them I'd just stay with it in Vegas. Otherwise I could suggest a different intermediate format to render to. ProRes is one obvious choice. MagicYUV is a new kid on the block with good playback performance. https://www.magicyuv.com/

Both work well in Vegas and I use both.

Watching in preview or draft is fine- happens to the best of us when Fx are added. You can wring a bit more performance out of it by right-clicking on tough media and setting "create proxy file." I did this for years to deal with 4K performance on a laptop from 2012.

I wouldn't start with buying a computer, but it costs less than you think. Get a GPU with 4GB+ of ram, SSD hard drive and a modern CPU and 16 to 32GB of ram and you will have more power than you need for this type of file. I'm editing 4K without proxies on a several year old laptop from the Dell Refurb store- you can get something at least as good for about $1000 US. Desktops are cheaper than laptops.

Did you ever fix the rendering issue you started this thread talking about? If you're using a lot of dynamic previews, be sure to set the MB allocated to it back to 200 or 0MB before rendering.

Just a few observations:

From an online manual for your camera:

Variable frame rate recording is just one of the features that makes the AG-HVX200 unique in its class. Using technologies that make the Panasonic VariCam camera-recorder a favorite in movie production, this powerful function allows the overcranking and undercranking techniques used with film cameras to create fast-motion and slow-motion effects. 

If you are using Variable Frame Rate (VFR), that is something Vegas Pro is not all that happy with. Most smart phones from Apple and Samsung use VFR and if you do a VFR search on the forum you will find lots of posts about the problem. The recommended resolution is to use a program like Handbrake (free) https://handbrake.fr/ to convert VFR to Constant Frame Rate - there are other programs that can do this as well.

MXF files are typically rather large, so consider converting them to mp4 as mp4 is much more modern and smaller in size.

ACES RRT (sRGB)

ACES is effectively a LUT (Look Up Table) that provides as a VFX color 'look' to a project - many feature films have a 'look' to them. Some Sci-Fi movies have a green or blue look to them while retaining proper flesh tones. Check out for a detailed explanation:

https://acescolorspace.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookup_table

Though some with Vegas Pro 18 still successfully use Windows 7, the recommended OS for Vegas Pro 18 is Windows 10. Those with pre-W10 may find that some functions in Vegas Pro 18 do not work or function optimally. And if you do have 4K media, consider using the proxy option in Vegas Pro to improve timeline playback speed.

I'll leave it to others on the forum to comment about uploading to YT.

Re a new computer, first decide if you want a desktop or a laptop - only you can decide that. Basically, laptops are very convenient from a portability point-of-view, but desktops are more upgradeable and sometimes less expensive. Keeping in mind the minimum specs for Vegas Pro 18 (https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/specifications/#productMenu) - its better to go for a better spec'd computer IMO taking into account the concept of medium term future-proofing - search the various computer manufacturer websites (e.g. Dell, HP, Asus and so on) to compare their offerings and prices.

One more thing to think about, VEGAS 18 has higher system requirements than previous versions, as new features were added that require more under the hood to work right, so keep those in mind when considering any upgrades.

 I've actually made tests with Vegas 12 versus Vegas 18 with all its GPU acceleration nonsense and Cuda crap, and there's zero difference in my rendering time.

Your GPU may not support the new GPU acceleration features added in the newer versions. As a rule of thumb, video editors want to keep their hardware younger than 4-6 years max in order to keep up with the latest features. Windows 7 isn't supported by VEGAS 18. Only some render formats (Magix AVC or Magix HEVC) support GPU acceleration.

We need detailed hardware specs to know more... the i7 chip first launched 13 years ago, so just telling us it's an i7 doesn't tell us enough to know if it's powerful enough for running VEGAS 18. The minimum specs require it be at least a 6th generation i5, or a 7th generation i7 chip for 4k (you can tell the generation by the first number of the 4 numbers that follows the i7, so for instance my PC has an i9 9980hk CPU in it, so that makes it a 9th generation chip.)

For AMD, you want nothing older than their fx 8 core series of chips, preferably a Ryzen chip.

You also want to have 16GB of RAM for 1080p, 32GB for 4k.

Your GPU should be an Nvidia GTX 970 or newer (RTX chips are preferred, or one of the professional quaddro cards). For AMD GPUs, you want :

AMD/ATI® Radeon with 4GB and VCE 3.0 or higher (Radeon Pro series with 8GB for HDR and 32 bit projects)

If your systems are using intel GPUs, you want: Intel® GPU HD Graphics 530 series or higher

That gets the hardware end out of the way, if you meet all of the above, then you should be good to go with looking at software fixes.

First thing to try, especially if getting flash frames or artifacts in the image, is upgrading your GPU driver. VEGAS 18 has a handy utility in the help menu that will direct you to the best driver to use, so run it and download and install any drivers it recommends.

...It took me 35 minutes to download the 700mb update file....Error Ox80131501...

@thomas-foley "What Windows 10 update are you on, are you connected to the the Internet via a VPN or other non-standard method, and does Vegas not work on all of your computers, or just one? Error Ox80131501 sounds like an error Windows started kicking-out after one of the previous Windows updates"

I'm going to forget putting Vegas 18 on this Imac with Windows 7 and Bootcamp. I guess Vegas 18 doesn't like this computer and like you say, I should be putting Vegas 18 on a Windows 10 computer and see how that works.

"A search indicated this camera's from 2006.

First, how are you converting the MXF to a different MXF? Software like Handbrake? In Vegas? If Vegas can use them I'd just stay with it in Vegas. Otherwise I could suggest a different intermediate format to render to. ProRes is one obvious choice. MagicYUV is a new kid on the block with good playback performance. https://www.magicyuv.com/"

Forgive me that I'm not doing this quote stuff right

I will definitely try converting my stuff to ProRes and try the MagicYUV also, but will start using ProRes immediately today and see how it works. I really know nothing about it, other than it's an Apple thing. I actually, need by tomorrow, a ProRes file of my MXF master. I made this 30 second commercial that I'm going to be advertising on Spectrum at the Comedy Channel, and they're asking me to upload a ProRes mov and not an mp4. I don't know what template to pick in Vegas. Can you please give me the settings I'm supposed to pick in the menu for making these ProRes files?