Sorry - another thought . . .

Could you look in the Media Pool and see if any of the media has "lost" its way? I realise we get an option screen that comes up warning us that all is not what it should be - yeah?

Grazie

thanks Grazie, your experience is terrifying (!!!)

My 80-min project has about 700 clips/images, 80 titles, 100/150 fx (contrast, saturation, ...) dozens of transitions, 7 video tracks, 3 audio tracks, ...

I just CAN'T render the whole and start from *that* ... I still have many things to do before that (despair, despair ...)

You're right with the intermediate saves, but I *did* have them. They went away in a recent cleaning :-((( but, please notice that the bug exists in the first minutes of the project, which means that almost all the intermediate saves would contain the same bug (I haven't done any back editing in this timeline, *yet*).

The Media Pool idea is good, but NO, I don't have any error message when I start the project. It just goes like I described in my first posting.

Well, it's 6:00 am in SoFo Land. I hope that the friendly chaps at SoFo may save my day when they arrive ...

Cheers.

Good Morning, or I suppose day to you...

Here's a couple things to try/check:

Display hardware excelleration... should be off.

New idea: turn off frames and waveforms in the timeline and try to repro.


Please post back results.


HTH, MPH

As Marty says, decrease acceleration-- I was having a problem but when I brought acceleration of Matrox 550 card down a couple of notches the problem seemed to have solved itself.

sorry, I am a little lost (and Vegas is at home).
You mean, HW acceleration in what ? Vegas options ??? Control Panel ???
Turn off frames, waveforms where ? Vegas options ???

Correcting my reply to Grazie: it doesn't seem a Preview problem to me, because I can preview everything alright, provided that the timeline is fully zoomed out. When I zoom in on the affected area, it promptly crashes.

************
*** SOFO ***
************

SoFO, could you please comment now ? 8:44 there now, right ? 15:44 here in EuroLand ...

I must settle this before going home today and meet my destiny (Vegas destiny, that is ...)

Thanks Thanks Thanks

Hi SQ,

HW accelleration in windoze display settings...

Waveforms and thumbnails in TL, in Vegas preferences


HTH, MPH

The error message is a floating point exception. If you have used your current setup successfully with a previuos Vegas project; and haven't JUST added WMP9 and/or DX9 before you started this project you can rule those factors out.

Thus assuming no "upgrade" changes or other software installations have occurred on your computer and that you have narrowed it down to (as you say) something on the timeline, the only thing that comes to mind is a corrupt image file or an image file incorrectly displaying an output which Vegas and/or your Video Card cannot properly display.

John

craftech,
dx9 and wm9 are newer than 1 month so, yes, dx9 and wm9 were added after the project was made ... but I can't roll back these installations (not in Win98).

Then again, my problem is with Project Part 1. Project Part 2 also begun during the "reign" of DX8.2 and then DX9 arrived. Project Part 2 did not glimpse, but Part 1 collapsed.
And I can guarantee, both are absolutely identical in form. Of course, the clips are different.

It may be down to corruption of one clip, but then what ? If one clip is corrupted, why can I preview the project when the timeline is zoomed out ?

Thanks for your opinions.

!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!! SOFO !!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wot !!! No reply ? Nothing ? Zilch ???

Hey, guys/gals, this is v3.0c right ? Stabilized product, right ? Piece of cake, right ?

This side of thread: one distressed, panicked customer, a potential v4 buyer, right ? (read my threads, piggy bank ready).

Where do we go from here ?

C'mon, folks, have a go at this one. Please !

When you are zoomed out the GUI doesn't have to display the possibly affected graphics file in detail if that in fact is the problem.

Download "Direct X 8.1b Redistributable Install" here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=2
Make sure you download the redistributable install.

Download DirectXBuster:

http://www.directxbuster.de/ Don't worry that it's in German. The English translation is there as well. Get rid of Direct X 9, and after you re-boot, install
Direct X 8.1b Redistributable

Fortunately, for Windows 98SE all you have to do is use Add/Remove programs in the control panel to remove WMP9. Go back to the version you had before you installed it.

Then give it another shot.

What is the make and model of your graphics card by the way?

John

Did you try turning hardware acceleration in your video display to OFF?

desktop>right click>properties>settings>advanced...somewhere in there you should see hardware accelleration, so turn it off.

If this doesn't fix it, please report back and we'll dig some more.

Hi, I'm back again (1 o'clock in the morning here ...)

Reporting ...

Craftech:
Many thanks for the tip. It may happen to become quite useful, as you will see below.
My GCard is a Geforce 4 MX440 (Leadtek Winfast A170). So far so good.

Latest findings:

Came home, turned hw accelleration completely off (as suggested by Martyh, Rextillion, SonicEPM) turned off frames and waveforms (as suggested by Martyh), confirmed NO offline media in Media Pool (as sugested by Grazie). Boy, do I have a lot of friends here !!!
Crash.
Switched off the preview window. Repeat test.
Crash persisted. I started to sweat ...

Positioned Cursor at beginning, zoomed way in and slowly started to move cursor to the right (using Page Down key). Went on slowly until Vegas crashed. Anotated time and clip number where problem seemed to locate.
Then, I fully zoomed out starting at the end of the timeline (as described in my first posting). Positioned cursor 15 seconds before the anotated time, mark in, then 15 sec after, mark out. Select zone, de-select all tracks, ripple off, delete. Got a 30 sec hole in my project (just experimenting). Saved under a different name. Out. In again, to the newly saved file. Zoom. Crash. Damn !!!

Now, I was cursing ...
Despair. Last resort...

I have an old boot partition with WinMe installed (shame on me). It's a partition with a very controlled atmosphere, that I used to run Pinnacle Studio (a software made of very thin glass ...).
What could I loose ? Just A LOT of time (install Vegas and the upgrades and the plug-in pack and the Satish packs and Pixelan Spicemaster) and checked the level of DirectX (was 8.1). Phew !
Well it seems that I got all the right environment (by the way, I only lost the little man doing his Forge thing in the long waveform, was he the SoFo Man ?, just plainly disappeared from my Vegas timeline bed, I wonder why ...).

OK. Here we go. I first launched Project Part 2 (which gives NO problems in WinMe), just to check. I can manage suffering, you see ? Well, this test went good.
Then, launched problematic project, and made my moves ... NO CRASH !!!!!

GeeWiz !!! Saved under a different name, went back to Win98, reloaded it, CRASH !!!

I am exhausted !!!
But at least I have one hope. If nothing else works, I may be forced to operate in my lousy WinMe partition (bless it !!!)

SoFo And SonicEPM, thanks for paying attention (or have I managed to knock you down already ?)
Might there be anything ugly going on between VV3 and DX9 ???

I will now give a try to Craftech's suggestion, will try to report tomorrow.

To all, please keep in touch and advance more suggestions. Many thanks.

Cheers.

Nah, no way. I regret to report that it didn't work. &%*=$# !!!

Boot to Win98SE, uninstalled WM9 in Add-Remove Programs, used DirectX Buster 2.1 Beta 4 Build 40 to uninstall DX9, reboot, installed DX8.1b, reboot, installed WMP7.1 and WMP7 bonus pack, reboot, cleaned up a bit (however DXDIAG still reports DX9. well ... ).

Fired up VV3.0b loaded problematic project, zoomed in ... CRASH.

Bummer ...

Now what ?

Go to sleep ... 'morrow.

I confess I'm not familiar with the subtleties of dual booting w98 and wMe, so this may not apply. IF w98 and wMe don't share registry entries or DLLs, the fact that you're running under wMe but not w98 would indicate that the problem might be a corrupt installation of VV3. (I dual boot w98 and w2k, and the installations on the two partitions are totally separate - nothing shared on any level). If that's the case, try uninstalling and reinstalling vv3 on the w98 partition (I'd run a registry cleaner between the uninstall and reinstall). Check to make sure that the uninstall won't remove any of your VV working files (like the .veg, for instance!) - I can't help you here.

Good luck.

If Windows is still reporting DX9 you didn't remove it completely. I use Direct X Buster 1.33 build 103 which is an older version and it completely removed Direct X 9 files from my system. My son used the same one you did and was able to uninstall it
from his system as well.

What about the "hole" in the project? Are you talking about blank frames? Are they still there in the trouble area?

John

Hi, I'm back, Good morning.

Nolonemo:

My Win98 / WinMe partitions are absolutely distinct, they don't share anything.
My first approach when problem started was to make a full uninstallation of Vegas (Add-Remove Programs, then Cleansweep, then Registry Cleaner). Then I installed it all over again.

My best bet is that I could have some DLL, VBX, or the like, scattered somewhere in my Win98 partition, and that is causing the problem. But where ? And I am not prepared to format my Win98 partition and do all the works from scratch (worse the cure than the illness, with all those driver updates and service packs and ...)

That's why someone able to read the dumps should be able to start from that and dig.

Craftech:

Strange what you say. I can give a try to DXB 1.33 and see what gives, but if your son used same version as me and it worked ...
I am sure that I selected everything in DXB, rebooted as required, ... I received "work complete" message, no warnings.
How are you and your son pretty sure that you remove DX9 completely ? What tool did you use to check ?

Concerning the 30-sec "hole". It is not blank frames, it is a true 30-sec gap in the project, where "nothing" exists.
Spooky, isn't it ?



Thanks one again for your input. SoFo is still sleeping, so I am eager to know where can we "dig" now ...

Strange as it seems, so far nobody asked to see the dump that Vegas produces with the error. Is that useless ? Shouldn't the Lab be able to read something from it ?

Thanks to all. See 'ya.

Y'know what, Sqblz? I think it would be great if we could "send" a suspect file over to VV SoFo for them to have a look see. I have Opus Pro - an av multimedia presentation s/w package - whose support people "ask" for the suspect file and analyse them to see what may be amiss. Neat idea for SoFo? Any thoughts? Hmmmm . . . .

Grazie

FWIW...

Vegas doesn't crash on it's own, so I wouldn't necessarily start there. If something in the windows environment had changed drastically, I wouldn't expect the 2nd half of your project to work.

I would expect that something you're importing into Vegas, &/or a filter or something you might have used on the first half could well be the culprit. So if it were me, I'd try moving all the media for the first project, rename the folder, so that vegas doesn't know where it is on project open. Then when it asks you to find the missing files, leave out the part that's a problem, leave it off line. [simpler way might be just to move the problem file, but if the file is bad, trying to move it will destroy it].

OK, assuming now the 1st project is loaded, including all the other media, check things out, zoom, whatever, making sure that no problems exist, no crashing etc... A problem now would mean look at the filters, envelopes, whatever is on. Save the project under another name and start turning stuff off, removing fx & so on. IF nec, load the project with no media, rename the folder again. Could be something even set in the preferences for Vegas with that project now throwing a fit.

My guess is that the problem might be with the media itself, & if you can open the project without Vegas knowing the problem media file exists as above, that should confirm it, one way or the other.

IF you've got or suspect a bad file, I have had some luck doing a direct stream copy with vdub, & on occassion have used it's built in repair features. In one situation I used videomachine to get back 99% of a video file. I wouldn't try moving a bad file, or doing a disc check if I knew a file was bad as this might loose it altogether. Still, if nothing else works, something could be off on the hard drive data tables & that could cause your problem.

Hope at least I've given an idea or three
mike

Yeah, Grazie, it just seems that those dump listings are a ghost from the past that nobody uses anymore ...

What puzzles me is that someone inside SoFo took the trouble to program the dump procedure, so that Vegas could produce that list of numbers. But then, it doesn't seem to be good to anyone anymore... strange that.

There are many SW products that write a log file. When the time arrives, this is what the logfile is good for.
Geez, even Micro$oft took the trouble to do it. I get a new BOOTLOG.TXT everytime I boot ...

Improvement request for VV5 ?????


Mikkie, you are throwing out a couple of reasonable ideas, that make much sense to me, and I fully agree with your first sentence: Vegas doesn't crash on its own. And the 2nd half loads ...
My project has around 800 clips so I will not start to change the folder name, I will 'only' rename 20 or 30 clips, and see what gives.

As a procedural habit, my disks are spot "clean". I run Norton Disk Doctor at least once a day, and Norton defrag once a week. If I had "bad" files (from the Windows point of view) I would have known it already. But yes, you are right. I may have "bad" files from the Vegas point of view.

One other possible way (oh boy, what a bore...) is to re-capture the affected clips. Because this is DV I guess that Vegas Capture would manage it easily...

You put it well on words, let me see if I put it as well on the screen (reposition the clips, replacing the keyframes, re-inventing the effects and the transitions, ...)
Oh boy, Oh boy ....

Thanks so much for your input !!!

Here's another thought sqblz,

When this happend to me, I could raise the split-bar to show fewer tracks and V3 would not crash...

Perhaps the same will work for you as a way to identify where the hangup is.

HTH, MPH

In an attempt to track down the culprit, would you:

1. Make a copy of suspect VV project. Hmmm . . call it something like "Sherlock Holmes"

2. Open it up and start "deleting", from end to begining, trying to identify "exactly where the "rogue" media could/might be.

3. Once you've establish the "media", "fx event", "text", "still" or whatever that is the likely culprit, isolate it and try and really see if you can observe any silliness.

4. Pour yourself a large Scotch and decide if you want to go on with it!

5. Once you've identified the "issue", be very thourough and rigorous in attempting to "replicate" the nonsense - yes? NOW this will tell you what you may have done produce this anomaly. Hey it's worth a shout surely? You and all of us have be banging our heads against this wall for sometime now . . . If it aint a techie thing - not part of my talents - try this "inductive" approach. It won't do any harm, and it might give all of us a view to the "DON'Ts & DO's" in VV - yeah?

I'm still around. . . trying to help . . .

Grazie

Yeah, Martyh and Grazie, we're around for some time on this one, I could well go until the end myself and learn something along the way.
I am only a little sad for not having a *little bit more* of SoFo help on this one. After all, we are only "detectives" but they *know*. Which should make some difference, I guess.

Will try to raise the split-bar.
Will try to delete project elements one by one.

Oh dear ...