Same Day Edit on V12. Why not?

Zelkien69 wrote on 9/27/2012, 9:21 PM

My company shoots weddings with Canon DSLR's and this weekend we have a Same Day Edit. We've done them since V8 (with HDV tapes and Canon XH-A1's:), and I can't wait to see how it goes. I've had no better or worse luck with V12 so we'll give it a go.
Reason I'm posting this now, is I'll be keeping a detailed log of footage, cards, amount of data, and length of video and rendering times. I'll post them here along with issues and number of crashes and lock-ups.
If it all goes bad... I'll have my back-up laptop with V11 (the original problem child) as a back-up.
Computer is a newly built rig with two full edits completed on it with DVD, Blu-ray, and MP4 output. Specs as follows.
i7-3930k
GTX480 1.5GB (Not driving monitors)
8500GT 512MB (Driving two 1920x1080)
32GB DDR3 1600 G.Skill Ram
2x1TB 7200.14 Seagate Media drives in Raid 0
1x1TB Render to drive (Seagate 7200.14 as well)
1x256GB Scratch drive M4 SSD (this is where we put temp files)
1x180GB System drive OCZ 3
System is liquid cooled with clock to 4100Mhz on the CPU
using Shuttle Xpress by Countour Design, Logic Keyboard for Sony Vegas, and a Logitech G500 mouse. Sound is through an E-mu 0404 card and Sennehieser HD280Pro headphones.
Wish me luck.

Comments

Tom Pauncz wrote on 9/27/2012, 9:33 PM

Bon chance. Look forward to report of the day.
Tom

Zelkien69 wrote on 9/27/2012, 9:45 PM

Also need to add what additional software is on the system though it may or may not be used in the edit.
Izotope RX.2
Davinci Resolve Lite 9
Datacolor Spyder 3 Elite
Go Pro Cineform Studio (latest build as of today)
New Blue Flash Remover
Prodad Mercalli 2.1 Stand alone and plug in (We use Stand alone 99% of the time)
Singular Plural Eyes 2.#
Gooder Video/Dynapel Slow Motion
Neat Video v3
Magic Bullet Looks 2
& Vegas 11 64-bit

I've always disliked that people act like Vegas crashes because of "other" software. I think it would be a self sorting problem like the level issues with Cineform, GPU errors with the old Neat Video, and other errors with plug-ins that have corrected over time. Vegas hasn't.
I'm to the point I use Vegas because it's what I know and the multiple licenses are cheap. I can't really say it's what I want to edit on, I've just been hesitant to change.

Zelkien69 wrote on 10/2/2012, 12:41 PM

We did the same day edit on Saturday and all in all it went really well. In 5 hours we captured and processed
14 Compact Flash Cards
divided into 17 folders
for a total of 421 files

We used Vegas 12 and the following filters
levels
color balance
color corrector
2ndary color corrector
color curves
--3rd party
Neat video v3 (5 clips)
Magic Bullet (1 clip)

Before applying the very few 3rd party filters we had two crashes
One crash was simply trying to move a clip on the timeline
the second crash was while deleting filters to reset a clip to original

After we started adding Neat to a few clips we had three additional crashes
while editing where the cursor froze and the "vegas has stopped" box appeared

Rendering crashed the computer once while trying to render to an intermediate Cineform file using the latest GoPro Studio codec. (I've found it to be pretty consistent that if I simply pick my saved template without going in and viewing the codec list it will often crash. If I pull it up and then render it works. Must be an access issue.)

The biggest pet peeve was Vegas would reset to its own default view (which has been discussed many times) resulting in the scopes being gone every time I had to reboot. After a crash it was an extra hassle when on a hard deadline.

While everything will be finessed now that we have time, all in all I was pleased with the highlight. Open to any critiques or questions on process with Vegas or an SDE.

If this Vegas doesn't end up 95% right, I'm going to switch editors. V11 never made it past 80% for me. Simply a headcase waiting to crack at the most important moment of your day. Vegas 12 appears to have many of the same issues (though it did not replace footage or lose my volume envelopes-both great signs)

Here is a link
https://vimeo.com/50622502

VidMus wrote on 10/2/2012, 1:27 PM

I see the Vimeo stutter on pans and things in motion. And that stutter was really bad at times in this video. The main reason I do not use Vimeo anymore!

Find somthing else for your videos. I use my own web site.

Otherwise a very good video.

Zelkien69 wrote on 10/2/2012, 1:45 PM

We originally used Vimeo 4 or 5 years ago and the stutter got so bad we switched to Smugmug for video hosting. Played smooth, but it butchered the colors and sharpness of the video. Now Vimeo stutters, doesn't upload, crashes Chrome, and offers horrible support. I'm not a "net" guy at all so as I've looked for other services I've come up with nothing. Not sure what to do, but no point in doing a good job (thanks for the compliment) and have the host "ruin" it.

videoITguy wrote on 10/2/2012, 1:51 PM

To analysis as Posted by: Zelkien69:
This is one of the most useful analysis of a real-world install and use of VegasPro. It is thorough and gives the reader a sense of potential piftalls and triumphs in one reading. Thanks to the OP for this amount of work to just write it up.
I am beginning to draw some conclusions from this and others experiences that Vegas11 and Vegas12 differ enough that the latest version 12 is far better out of the gate than Vegas11 ever got to be with the latest update. That is some very good news - indicating this may put SCS on a whole new and better track.

It remains dissapointing that typical medium stress to the system still places Vegas into a vulnerable crash point condition. I would not have expected this with such efforts as merely moving an event on the timeline or resetting an applied efx. I WOULD expect higher stress to be break points, but this report brings in to question how little it takes to crash this NLE.

Former user wrote on 10/2/2012, 2:28 PM

Thanks for doing this. It's really helpful to know that others are spec'd similarly, and also having similar issues. It's especially helpful to know that random "I moved something on the timeline" crashes aren't imaginary (it's not the crashing that bothers me so much as the random nature, if I knew what to avoid, I'd avoid it). "Moving stuff on the timeline" isn't really avoidable. :-
Please keep these up...it's really helpful to see what others are experiencing.

As an aside, I really liked the video. I think the attention to light is what really made it for me. Lovely visual story telling without a lot of chatter is something this couple can come back to over the years and remember the flavour of the day, rather than big gaudy party moments.

vicmilt wrote on 10/2/2012, 3:24 PM

I'm back in Vegas 10.

It was rock solid for a full feature - BUT that was in HDV with the Sony Z1.
Once I switched to the Canon5d it all became mushed up.

At first I was using NeoScene to transcode - then they upgraded Vegas and I could go direct.

As I remember it was pretty reliable.

Ver 11 as above has simply been a mess, with me hoping from upgrade to upgrade to get a solid platform - well - just don't bother with v11

I'm in the middle of a commercial job now and can't affor finicky software.
So I'm at v10 and watching this page like a hawk.

Thank you! (nice setup, BTW)

Also - do you feel it's necessary to continue to use striped drives?
I had my last rig set that way, but when I bought the i7, someone on this forum said "no need for that anymore". What are your thoughts?

videoITguy wrote on 10/2/2012, 4:47 PM

To vicmilt: I note you have dropped by with your "striped drives" question several times ( I assume you are meaning to use Raid-0 for performance rather than other Raid configs for fault tolerance??).
If my assumption is wrong forgive what I am relating to next.

I think the answer to configuring Raid-0 in your systems is a whole lot more complicated than can be given with a pat response. There are so many issues to consider- I have configured Raid-0 for editing for many years and yet today I am more confused than ever and certainly even feel underqualified to deliver consultation today.

The answer all depends on using Raid-0 based on where your config and deployment stands. If I build a workstation class machine today for Firewire capture and edit - I would likely use the following parts and technology -1) A high-end CPU/motherboard with Sata6 drives and USB3 ports with as many drives and ports filled as possible- no Raid-0. The workflow would be capture to one drive, render to another drive, maybe scratch disk on a third or several drives supporting mutliple streams with one stream dedicated per drive.

On the other hand - Raid-0 would probably be necessary for capture of 10-bit 4-4-2 uncompressed through high-end capture cards.

There are many places that Raid can be configured and some are very cheap - but you usually get what you pay for and the result in performance can easily be throttled by bottlenecks elsewhere in your configuration. So you could easily spend $600 for a hardware raid that will deliver no improvement to a given system.

set wrote on 10/2/2012, 7:19 PM

Zelkien69, congratulations for the SDE !
Very risky move, but finally you did it...

-------------------
In my last experiment of VP12,
I have trouble during copy-paste FX of Curve between different instances of VP12, where the Curve FX in 2nd VP12 is going back to default (the FX is copied, but, the preset didn't).
This will also occurred when running VP12 first time, and then copy-pasting attributes, Color Curve preset is not copied perfectly.

Set

Ros wrote on 10/2/2012, 7:31 PM

Set: same problem here when copying an event with Color Curves to a second instance of V12, Color Curves will be set to default on the second instance.

Color Corrector seems to works fine.

Zelkien69 wrote on 10/3/2012, 8:14 AM

Thanks for the all of the replies.

To the question of Raid 0-

I used Raid 0 for a couple of reasons. The first and foremost is that with video, faster is better. I've had up to 6 cameras on a timeline at once stacked and it just seemed to make sense that with our most common number being 4 cameras we'd benefit from faster data rates. I get it that playback and a 7200RPM drive is "fast enough", but even on a single camera shoot when you have fades or compositing of any sort it has to help to have a faster drive set. We can get up to 150-160MB/s sustained and not only does it help with transferring a 200GB transfer, it really comes down to headroom and future proofing.
Currently we shoot with Canon DSLR's (5dii's, 7d's, & 60d's). We have held off on a new video camera purchase for two years because of the variety of shortcomings in camears under $7k (our companies point of diminishing returns of a camera investement). While we are considering a Black Magic Cinema, it's storage needs and the storage and data rate needs of any camera in the next 3-5 years could drastically change. The Raid 0 gives us more headroom, faster transfer (realize before we can touch a piece of footage to edit it has to be in 2 places + we leave it on the card), what seems like better playback with multiple cameras, and smoother play overall on heavily filtered pieces. I much prefer 19 frames to even 14 frames. More is always better.
Failure is the #1 reason people scoff at Raid 0. We are only keeping raw data (which is in 2-3 locations) and the saves are done to another internal drive and backed up daily to our "active project" thumb drive. If the Raid0 crashes, I'll have to recopy from an external hard drive or our Raid 5 Sans Digital unit. It's not a big deal in the day to day operation. Back up and save often. Vegas should have trained us all to do that.

Aside from my laptop which did our SDE's in the past (i7-2720QM with 8GB ram and two internal 750GB's at 7200RPM) and a i7-950 with 12GB Ram and three drives, the difference in speed is fantastic. Both in rendering and playback on the new machine. I haven't done side by side with V11, but on a previous project from V11 that I opened in V12 that used a parent child relationship with two tracks with masking, Magic Bullet Looks, and Neat Video over the original clip it played at about 23 frames per second in Best Full.

Has anyone else noticed that playback is actually faster and smoother when viewing at Best Full instead of say Preview Full? Not sure why. I guess if the processor can handle it scaling it back slows it down.