Running out of rope with V9.

farss wrote on 2/18/2010, 8:59 PM

Until now V9.0c has been enough to get many paying jobs out the door. Yes, playback isn't stellar and yes there's that judder problem but meh, that I could live with.

Now I have a project with three tracks of HD, two being HDV and one XDCAM EX, 90 minutes long, multicam done the old school way, just to keep it simple. As I've progressed through this project V9 locks up more and more regularly. I'm now getting 60 seconds of editing done and then loosing a few minutes killing V9, clicking through the M$ "do I want to send a crash dump..." and then restarting Vegas. I am saving the project after every change. This is absurd.

It can happen playing back the project when it hits a fade. Then the preview progress indicator goes wild stuck in a loop trying to render the same frame, the playhead keeps moving, the audio keeps playing, the audio meters keep moving. Hit space to stop, the meters freeze, V9 will now not respond and the preview progress meter freezes and I get the hour glass. Opening Task manager reveals low CPU and memory usage, nothing looks remiss however I see two instances of the Vegas application but only one instance of the Vegas90.exe process running. No clue how this happens.

Once I was simply moving frame by frame over an empty section of the timeline and much the same happened. I mean what did Vegas think it had to render, truly odd.

I've tried all the fixes mentioned in the past. Preview RAM is down to 32MB, no external monitoring, Preview at Good/Quarter. All the HDV was recorded onto Sony "HD" tape and captured with V9 without a single break over 80 minutes, yes we use the very expensive 85 minute HD tapes. Thumbnails set to head, mid, tail.

I ran Memtest for a few hours this morning, not a wimper out of it. Heck even AE holds together pretty reliably on this box with 100 layers of HD but V9 is choking simply playing back 3 tracks. I have only one FX, a simple limiter on one audio track. Apart from the camera audio I have 2x 24/48K stereo tracks from a multichannel wave file and two audio busses, that's it.

I'm now uncertain which way to jump, I could soldier on, I've only got 10 minutes left to edit but that's going to take hours and the problem is getting worse as I add more cuts. Maybe I should cut my losses and break this project up into scenes. Maybe I should render DV proxies and cut that and then switch for the final render. I wish I had a clue why Vegas is doing this, would make the decision easier.

I'm going to run a few more system diagnostics. It could simply be a HDD going south but I've had that happen before and the symptoms were totally different and repeatable based on T/L position. This problem is not related to T/L position and hence where the media is coming from. Just to be sure though I'll check this out as well. I seriously doubt it's a CPU or power supply issue, rendering out is fine, just playing out or editing locks V9 up.

Bob.

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Comments

Glenn_G wrote on 2/20/2010, 2:12 PM

I'm having trouble a file that I was able to render previosuly. I've made a few edits and now Vegas crashes every time I try. I am using Windows 7, Vegas 9.0c 64 bit (but I tryed to roll back and use 9.0b with the same results). I have a quad processor and 6 GB of memory.

I get the following details when thos occurs

Extra Information
File: C:\Users\glenn\AppData\Local\Sony\Vegas Pro\9.0\dx_video_grovel_x64.log
File: C:\Users\glenn\AppData\Local\Sony\Vegas Pro\9.0\dx_grovel_x64.log
File: C:\Users\glenn\AppData\Local\Sony\Vegas Pro\9.0\vst_grovel.log
File: \\EASYWIND\My DVDs\project_files\2010\01_2010\jan_2010A.veg

Problem Description
Application Name: Vegas Pro
Application Version: Version 9.0c (Build 895) 64-bit
Problem: Unmanaged Exception (0xc0000005)
Fault Module: C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 9.0b\FileIO Plug-Ins\mcplug\mcmpgvout.004
Fault Address: 0x00000000049D840E
Fault Offset: 0x000000000005840E

Fault Process Details
Process Path: C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 9.0b\x86\FileIOSurrogate.exe
Process Version: Version 1.0 (Build 8)
Process Description: File I/O surrogate (not visible)
Process Image Date: 2009-10-26 (Mon Oct 26) 18:33:34

Thanks in advance

farss wrote on 2/20/2010, 3:13 PM

Unfrotunately I doubt anyone here can help you much.
You have a better chance of getting your problems resolved through Support. Not only that, the more who raise trouble tickets the more likely issues are to get addressed.
It can be a frustrating experience dealing with support, be persistant, diligent and polite.

Bob.

farss wrote on 2/20/2010, 3:32 PM

"But I don't see what benefits the 9c has over 9b, so I'm gonna follow your lead here.

V9.0c certainly plays out better than V9.0b, at least for me with HDV and EX footage intercut. With V9.0b trying to judge an edit is impossible however the lockup problems with V9.0c have now made the other good points moot.

Bob.

ushere wrote on 2/21/2010, 8:41 PM

out of curiosity, and nervousness at the prospect of goodness knows what with vegas happening in my next big (long form) project, i downloaded edius.

oh boy, it's like stepping back in history. was nle editing ever this complicated!?

come on scs, gives us what we want (and paid for!).

fingers crossed,

leslie

Former user wrote on 2/22/2010, 3:01 PM

I have to agree. I tried edius...but couldn't get my head around it (and I use After Effects and Autodesk Combustion routinely...and Combustion wrote the book on vague, arbitrary, and complex).

I tend to break down any big projects into sub-projects, and for final rendering put all the "chapters" in a nested project.

ANY NLE with 90 minutes of mixed media is, in my experience, just asking for trouble (not that we don't do it - we just cope in our own different ways).

I /bump the sentiment though...SCS just needs that last few percent of stability and polish before it really challenges for a spot on the podium (apologies for the metaphor...I have Olympics on the brain).

~A

Coursedesign wrote on 2/22/2010, 3:36 PM

If you have 90 minutes of mixed media, there is only one NLE that handles that well (by "well" I don't mean just "still standing" but with maximum quality of the output and a generally boring ability to just work): Avid Media Composer 4.

It's thanks to optical flow and some internal work that is just plain good.

FCP handles mixed media (including frame rates, etc.) without choking, but the output in that case doesn't look nearly as good as with MC (without jumping through hoops)

If you want to edit 90 minutes of mixed media in most NLEs, you need to transcode immediately, and then it will work fine.

farss wrote on 2/22/2010, 4:03 PM

Just to be specific the only mixed media I have is XDCAM EX and HDV, all 50i. Clip count is 8 or less. Hardly anything taxing.
Reverting to V9.0b and not a single problem apart from preview.

I have rendered both halves of the show to 35Mbps MXF for the client to preview. Again not a murmer out of V9.0b, the XDCAM footage was Smart Rendered, all the HDV had to be recompressed. I've put the preview files onto a RAID 0 drive, just because I have some space spare on it and to give Vegas the least amount of time to wait.

I've now added the MXF onto an upper track and it plays back in V9.0b full raster, no dropped frames and looks pretty good. I'm Soloing the vision and audio track of the MXF. This will make it very easy to review and make changes with the client.

Conclusion I've reached is V9.0c has at least one serious issue compared to V9.0b. A few things were improved in V9.0c but something more important was broken.

Bob.