So, our chum here, might be getting an error that wasn’t, wouldn’t have been lodged with vegascreativesoftware engineers, so in any event both User, our chum, and vegascreativesoftware engineers would be left in the dark. Have I got this right?

I was thinking of low-level errors in the code. I had a program which crashed if the file path was too long. The programmer hadnt envisaged it and hadnt trapped the resulting error, but for many people it worked fine. Not saying VP guys would make such a schoolboy error but there are so many details to think about!

Update to my earlier post regarding repeated crashes after pressing the render button. I went through the logs generated by Vegas 18 and also the details in the exception and found a work around that solves my problem. I verified by running Vegas 18 with Microsoft's Visual Studio debugger that the exceptions were caused by code in the x86 subdirectory. I removed the x86 subdirectory in \Program Files\Vegas\Vegas Pro 18\ and was able to use Vegas 18 with minimum issues so far. By removing this directory I will have issues if I try to use 32 bit file I/O software such as Quicktime and probably old legacy format videos. It works well with 4K10 bit HLG files from my Lumix G9 as well as 8 bit files from the same camera. I'm going to test every function to see if anything else is broken. If not, I will upgrade to Vegas 18 Pro.

Update again: For those experiencing crashes with Version 18, the installer does a poor job with assigning permissions to many of the installation files, which causes program exceptions. In such cases, Vegas will tell you the program causing the exception. For example if the program causing the fault or exception is: FileIOSurrogate.exe

1- Locate the file in the Program Files\Vegas\Vegas Pro 18\

(In this case the file is located in the x86 subdirectory|

2- Right click the file: FileIOSurrogate.exe and select "properties"

3- Select the "Compatibility" tab and click "Run as Administrator" and apply

That should solve the problem. This is a far better solution than my previous post.

I ended up buying the upgrade after playing with the trial version to determine how stable it was.

@ngjb - Good work! I’m left with the question, why has this happened with some Users and not others?

I am truly interested in your further experiences as you proceed.

@ngjb - Hah! Now I remember that that FileIOSurrogate.exe needed to PASS Passport Control by my AV before it proceeded with install - guessing it got NERVOUS. I had to wait until my AV phoned-home. After minutes the install proceeded. Now, could this be at the core of others issues and not mine? What do you think?

In any event, if I’m correct, how would vegascreativesoftware engineer an installer that wouldn’t trigger an AV?

@ngjb - Good work! I’m left with the question, why has this happened with some Users and not others?

I am truly interested in your further experiences as you proceed.

It has to do with the permission level of the "user id" used to install the software. In some cases the default user id setup when Windows is installed has full administrator privileges and some do not. But a software installer that is designed properly should be able to take care of that. I removed the trial version and Version 14 from my PC. I deleted all the Vegas folders in Program Files and in the Appdata directories. I ran CC cleaner and cleaned my registry. I then bought the upgrade to Vegas 18 and installed it "as an administrator" and I encountered the same problem as before. I then changed the FileIOSurrogate.exe file to "Run as Administrator" and the problem went away. I did some testing on the trial version and it was pretty stable after the changes I made to program permissions. That prompted me to buy it. I wanted to work with 4K 10 bit 422 files right out of my camera and this version lets me do that.

I will list all the issues that I find along the way.

@ngjb - Hah! Now I remember that that FileIOSurrogate.exe needed to PASS Passport Control by my AV before it proceeded with install - guessing it got NERVOUS. I had to wait until my AV phoned-home. After minutes the install proceeded. Now, could this be at the core of others issues and not mine? What do you think?

In any event, if I’m correct, how would vegascreativesoftware engineer an installer that wouldn’t trigger an AV?

The only AV software I run is Windows Defender and periodically I run MalwareBytes. I installed my second copy of Vegas Pro on my gamer laptop that I also use for video editing. It runs well on this PC also. Rendering has definitely improved and they are using the GPU pretty effectively. The CPU loading during rendering barely hits 30% on both my desktop and laptop computers. One thing that is clear, other than the installation issues, they obviously tested this release unlike version 15 and 16 which were both disasters after they were released.

I happened to be on my oldest i7-980X system that runs Vegas last night doing firewire video captures with v16 and as an afterthought transferred over the v18 license from my xeon where it was buggy. Just briefly tried track motion on a 4k clip and It sailed though without a problem. Need to do more testing and a deeper analysis to figure out the differences in configs. That system now houses by Vega64 board with the same amd drivers but maybe a couple of revs out of date. Same Win10 rev2004 and the same in other hardware respects except it has an older slower cpu, less memory, and a firewire port on the motherboard. I'm suspecting Vegas 18 might have issues with newer amd drivers. Wondering what driver amd revisions folks are having v18 success with.

I'm using: Driver Version
20.10.27.02-200708a-357781C-RadeonProEnterprise

No issues.

Thanks, fr0sty. Switching from 20.8.1 Adrenalin drivers on my 9900k/Radeon 7 machine to the Q3 Enterprise drivers and then doing a Vegas cntrl-shift startup seems to have done the trick. I can now get into track motion and drop keyframes without crashing. I'm running v20.5.1 Adrenalin drivers on my 980x machine with no visible issues there. Funny thing is I saved the 9900k machines Vegas preferences before doing anything and restoring them to the 980x machine causes no issues there. But if I restore them to the 9900k machine, it goes back to crash state and the only thing that will fix it is another cntrl-shift startup of Vegas. Once it's in crash state, it won't load saved preferences at all. I'll have to do some editing in it for a while and see if it holds up.

I find that to be the case more often than not... VEGAS GPU acceleration is very sensitive to changes made in drivers, which is why these studio drivers work so much better than the game ready drivers, they do not update them as often (only once per quarter), so they get tested more, and have fewer changes made that can break something. Perhaps the OP should make sure they have the same driver installed.

Ah, Ha!!! Turns out the driver change did not solve my Vegas 18 issue. But I analyzed my saved preferences file and it's an option on the Preferences/Edit menu: "Collapse loop region when no time selection is present." Don't know what it has to do with track motion or cropping but checking it blows up Vegas 18 on my Radeon 7 system. Just checked it on my 980x Vega64 box... there too. Go figure.

I can consistently get Vegas 18 pro to crash when rendering a time stretched clip with/without GPU acceleration. I have a simple project consisting of an 11 second 4K30P clip followed by the same clip stretched to 22 seconds (half speed). It doesn't matter if the clip was stretched on the timeline manually or by using Vegas Slow Motion. It consistently crashes during the rending of the slow motion portion. This is on my Acer Nitro 7 laptop running Windows 10, Intel Core i7-9750H, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 2TB HD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650. I haven't attempted this on my AMD desktop.

can you upload the media clip and the .veg file for others to try? sounds interesting

Update: I tried the same clip on my AMD system and it rendered without any issues. So the problem seem to be with my newer Intel/NVIDIA based gamer laptop.

can you upload the media clip and the .veg file for others to try? sounds interesting

I can but where do I upload it to? The total clip is 781 MB and 1:08 long. I trimmed an 11 second portion from this clip.

Please see "C 3. A Sample File" here.

I am really perplexed with the AI working sometimes but not others, It seems that if I load the plugin from the plugin chain on the clip it's self I get a better percentage of success. I would welcome other people's experience on this issue.

I should have said loading the plugin from the plugin chain on the clip as opposed to dragging it on from the selected effect.

I to was receiving a lot of crashes on 18. my fix was to turn off GPU acceleration under the file io tab. if you render proxies you can still have smooth play back without the need for GPU acceleration.

^did you try a GPU driver update? That usually sorts that kind of issue.

^did you try a GPU driver update? That usually sorts that kind of issue.

Yes currently on the latest studio drivers. Additionally I had to shut it off because my renders would be choppy and be skipping frames when the GPU was on.