Sony Vegas crashes when I import many video files.

Captain N wrote on 12/20/2015, 8:15 PM

Okay, so I am at my wits end here, desperate to find a solution.
I'm using Sony Vegas Movie Studio 11 to try and edit some video game recordings for review purposes. But the the thing constantly crashes, no matter what steps I try to take to avoid it.

I've gotten my hands on some pretty good equipment like an Hauppage Rocket, so I can record 720p gameplay in 60fps. (H.264) That part works flawlessly.
I've also invested a lot of money in a so called Framemeister, so I can get 720fps RGB quality out of my retro consoles.
I've gotten a good microphone as well as a, what I would call, pretty descent computer, and I really want to get some work done.

When I open Vegas, I am able to import a few hours of gameplay into the timeline, and things seem to work pretty well. But when I try to add more files, the program becomes incredibly unstable. And if I hit around 10 hours, it basically crash right then and there.

This is completely unacceptable, as video game playthroughs easily takes well over 10 hour for lots of games. So I can't get any work done here, unless I basically throw away like half or more of my recordings.
I've tried to look all over the internet for solutions, but nothing seems to do the trick, and I don't get why I haven't run into a lot of other people having this problem.

I finally tried to put all my recordings on a HDD and go visit one of my friends to use their version of Sony Vegas Pro 13, to see if that would fix the problem. But nope... In fact.. things got even worse. When using that program, I could only import half of what I could in Movie studio 11.

I have a pretty good computer with 12GB, and I've tried to have nothing else run in the background at all, but no matter what, I can't do anything with my recordings in Vegas.
I really desperately need some help here, or I won't be able to get any work done at all.

My computer
Computer Brand/Model: Acer Aspire V3- 772G
Operating System: Windows 8 64-bit
RAM: 12GB
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4702MQ CPU @ 2.20GHz 2.20 GHz
Video Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600
Sound Card: Speakers (Realtej High Definition Audio)
Video Capture: Hauppauge: HD PVR Rocket and Hauppauge Capture

Comments

Grazie wrote on 12/20/2015, 11:08 PM

OK, you've got 10 hours of screen captured footage on a single timeline? Yes? Personally I would not even put 10 hours of my perfectly project-matched real-world camera footage on one timeline. It would drive me nuts. You say it is unacceptable. I'd say you've been fortunate thus far. You could very well have reached a limit of your PC with its need to do the maths.

Have you considered breaking the project up into 2 or maybe 4 sections?

10 hours? Wow . . . .

G

Captain N wrote on 12/20/2015, 11:22 PM

Thing is, I need to have them there so I can easily navigate and find the clips I'm looking for and add them to the project. And unless I'm playing an old platformer. Most games takes longer to record all the way to the end, than Vegas can handle.

Jamon wrote on 12/20/2015, 11:46 PM

Have you tried Catalyst Prepare to build a library with the clips you'll need? I'm curious how it compares. If it worked, you could then export them and import into Vegas using only the footage you'll need, which I presume is less than 10 hours.

Also, this is the Vegas Pro forum, there's one for Movie Studio:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showtopics.asp?forumid=12

Captain N wrote on 12/20/2015, 11:52 PM

I like to look up the right clips for the situation when I get to the point in the reviews that I'm talking about. Doing all kinds of exports and convertions would be very coversum.

Yeah. I know it's the Pro forum, but thing is, I've tried to get it to work there as well, with even less succes, even though the program should've been able to take better advantage of things like ram and such.

Grazie wrote on 12/21/2015, 12:19 AM

If you are adamant about having 10 hours then do as suggested and get some interim encode going on, that will give you better Preview or actually open!

I really think you have gotten/reached the mathematical "event horizon" with your PC and VP.

G

Jamon wrote on 12/21/2015, 12:33 AM

Then try Catalyst Edit. When you get to a point where you need another clip, Alt+Tab into Prepare, and watch through the long video, then set in/out and make a new subclip in your library. When you Alt+Tab back to Edit and refresh your library, it's there to use. There's no exports or conversions required with Catalyst.

Have you tried another video format? Transcode into something else and maybe Vegas will like that better. If you're lucky you'll then be able to replace the transcoded files with the originals before render, but if you can't import them to begin with that probably won't work.

If it doesn't work, and nobody has faced this issue and happens to be reading the forum, and you can't try a computer with more RAM, then I think you'll just have to use other software. Try DaVinci Resolve if Catalyst doesn't work for you.

ushere wrote on 12/21/2015, 1:54 AM

i would think10 hrs of video on the timeline would prove a nightmare in any nle, especially avc and you don't state at what data rate you've recorded it at, the higher you go, the hard it gets?

as grazie suggested, if you really must, at least break it up into manageable chunks - after all, i presume your project is a walk through and therefore sequential?

Captain N wrote on 12/30/2015, 1:26 AM

Well. I'm not really sure how other video game editors do then. You need to capture a complete playthrough if you want to be able to show of specific points.
This is not even an RPG which takes MANY hours. This is just a 10 hour playthough, so I have a little footage from every level.

I feel like I'm missing some really important thing here.
This is how I have always edited in the past, and it's been working well. Having my timeline where I am easily able to pick out the point I want and insert it into the review timeline.

It's just neat and quick having it all in one place. Easily accesable.

Byron K wrote on 12/30/2015, 1:43 AM

I haven't used Studio since version 9 and don't recall if the new versions of studio allows you to do proxy editing.

But since you can access Vegas Pro 13, try converting your files to proxy intermediates on your friends machine and edit those, then you can render out the final edit using the master clips.

Warper wrote on 12/30/2015, 5:31 AM

For me game footage is split by 4Gb sections by capture programs. I select files I need and import them to timeline.
For playthrough you need some sort of script that divides process into missions/quests/chapters etc. There is no need to worry about other things unless you want to show some sort of cross-relations. But even in this case you don't get anything from adding it all to timeline - it's in your head/paper/script.
Most playthroughs I've seen on youtube divide process by clips. No section is longer than 30 minutes. It's better to organize them as playlist instead of making one long video.

rmack350 wrote on 12/30/2015, 3:54 PM

I have a PVR Rocket that I use to capture BIOS screens from. IMO, some of your problem stems from the Rocket but is really severely compounded by the way you're using Vegas.

Your first step should probably be to make sure your firmware on the Rocket is up to date. I had to apply an update to get video files out of it that played well in Vegas. There may also be an update to the capture program itself. You could update both of those and hope they improve playback performance rather than making the video files totally unusable in Vegas.

The next thing to look at is using the Hauppauge Capture app to convert it's native TS files to mp4 files. Vegas *might* like one better than the other.

Having said all that, loading 10 hours of video onto the timeline is a recipe for misery. If you insist on doing that then you might try loading the files one at a time. Vegas is probably reading each file and maybe making proxy audio files. If Vegas has to decompress your files and they are big long takes it might be choking on their uncompressed size (any video you can view is uncompressed frames. By definition. Compressed video files must be decompressed into RAM when you play them.)

Vegas makes it a little too easy to just throw all your footage onto the timeline. Many people ignore the trimmer. However, the conventional way of dealing with masses of footage is to load it in the trimmer, select the in and out points of what you want, then load that little section onto the timeline. I imagine your viewers really only want to see somewhere between 15 seconds and 15 minutes of gameplay, not 10 hours. The timeline really is for your edits, not for trimming raw footage, even though it's very easy to do on the timeline. You might find that this approach works better for you, assuming your raw clips will import into the project at all.

The trimmer gives you two organizational tools in addition to allowing you to add parts of clips to the timeline. It also allows you to create Regions and Subclips. Regions was the earlier feature, Subclips were grudgingly and half-@ssedly added when users on this forum requested it in numbers.

Regions have an advantage when you have very long media files in that you can view a list of the regions in Vegas Explorer if you set the right view mode. So, if you have a file consisting of one long game session on one level of the game, or one long interview for a doc, or whatever, then all the regions will be displayed when you select the main clip in the Explorer. It's a good organizational tool for long media clips. The disadvantage is that you have to use the Vegas Explorer window rather than the Project Media window. And since the Vegas Explorer was rewritten a few versions back I've been reluctant to leave it open. Maybe it's much more stable now than it was at first.

Another advantage to Regions is that they don't have hard starts and stops when you add them to the timeline. Subclips have definite beginnings and endings.

Subclips have the advantage of being browsable in the Project media window, and might offer some advantage to certain filters if they benefit from having a hard start and stop to the media. I can't think of any filters that need that off the top of my head. The disadvantage to me, and the last time I bothered to check this was 5 or 6 versions of Vegas Pro ago, was that if you applied a custom name to the subclip and then copied it to a new project, it'd lose the custom name.

So, update your PVR Rocket firmware AND the Capture app. Then try either TS files or MP4 conversions from the Capture app to see if one works better than the other. Finally, make a habit of loading media into Vegas Project media without dumping it all onto the timeline. Use the Trimmer to select what you want to put onto the timeline.

Rob