Thank you musicvid for your corrections to my some of the points I have misunderstood. You should be aware that despite the fact that I may not have posted on the forum previously, I own Vegas Pro 7, 8 9 and 10, so I'm not a new-comer the program.

As I mentioned in my post I've been dealing with these problems since Vegas 8. I purchased Vegas 9 with the hope that it would solve the problems, but it didn't. I then waited on a solution to come out in a Vegas 9 patch and it didn't. I then bought Vegas 10 and still no solution. I made Sony aware of the problem I was having even prior to the final release of Vegas 9 so your comment about these post always cropping up on the eve of NAB relates only to this forum and not to my dealings with Sony directly.

DLSR footage may not adhere to the AVCHD standard, but funnily enough, when I select a 5D mkII file in the browser in Vegas, it lists it as an "AVCHD" file so forgive my misguided assumptions.

Thirdly, as I mentioned in my post, the issues I've been having are not hearsay, they have been confirmed by Sony directly with me after a lengthy process uploading sessions and files and numerous conversations back and forth. Whether or not they make sense to you, they are fact.
Please also be aware that Sony, themselves, told me during these conversations that it was Quicktime's lack of 64bit support that was causing the issues I was having.

I am fully aware of the conflict of interest between Apple and and Windows-based NLE's with regard to Quicktime, however, as an owner of Quicktime Pro I would like to think that the product I purchased is kept up-to-date (even if I have to pay more for that support) so that it can work at its full capacity, and allow other things that rely on it to work properly as well. (Cubase/Nuendo, Decklinks and other BMD products etc. etc. ALL having issues under Win 7 64 because Quicktime is 32 bit.)

Adobe have managed to quite successfully bypass the problem, licensing or not. All I'm asking is that Sony do the same.

Your one helpful point regarding Cineform was also suggested by Sony but from what I remember amongst my conversations with them, that option would not allow me to transcode to another format without noticeable degradation to the colour in the videos. I could be wrong about this, but that's what I remember from those discussions.

Finally I should add, that my post was not designed as an attack on Sony. Vegas is by far the most intuitive pro video program on the market and I don't want to have to use anything else. However, I'm working on a project today where over 60% of the footage on the timeline now reads "Media Offline" and the video preview window shows only solid red. I am - as I mentioned - desperate for a solution (not work-around) to a real problem, not hostility from long-time forum members who are offended that not everyone knows as much as they do.

I have no doubt that you know vastly more than I do regarding all the discussed topics, but in spite of that your response offered very little help and instead only succeeded in making me feel stupid for looking for support on this forum.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, however, I'm still looking for other Vegas users who are experiencing the same issue as I am in Windows 7 64bit working with DLSR footage. It would help to know that Sony has heard about it from more than one user.

Daniel

Have you run side-by-side tests with Vegas Pro 10 32-bit, to be sure that the 64-bit version is the problem, and not your system? In my tests, Vegas 10 ran circles around Vegas 8 with 5D footage, though both on 32-bit.

I've read almost every post on this forum since Vegas 10 was released. Although there have been a few rendering and stability problems with 64 bit, which have usually been traced to memory and / or allocation, I don't seem to recall anything specific to directly implicate 5D / 7D footage in 64 bit Vegas. Maybe that is the known issue you refer to, although I would defer to those who do have that specific experience. Unfortunately, most of us do not share direct line of communication to the Sony team that you seem to have established.

Is Vegas Pro 10 decoding 5D / 7D MOV files with qt7plug.dll, or mcmp4plug2.dll, or compoundplug.dll?
Is the same dll being used to decode these files in both 32- and 64- bit versions of Vegas Pro 10?
If it turns out that your problem is isolated to 64 bit Vegas as you propose, the first suggestion may likely be to use 32 bit Vegas 10 instead.

You seem to indicate you think you may have a unique situation. Problems with Canon DSLR footage have been discussed to death here, and have dropped off considerably since the release of Vegas Pro 10. However Sony has never claimed that Vegas 10 was the cure for all problems. From the Vegas 10 release notes:
"Improved support for DSLR video: Performance improvements make editing video from popular DSLR cameras faster and easier"

h264 AVCHD does not support the MOV wrapper according to anything I've read.

If Sony devoted their development efforts to patching Vegas every time a Quicktime release breaks compatibility, that is all they would be doing.

Cineform does not "transcode to another format [with] noticeable degradation to the colour in the videos." It is a respected visually lossless intermediate codec, that many professionals here use specifically to transcode 5D / 7D footage for smoother timeline editing. Some have continued to use it since Vegas 10 was released, and some are now placing their DSLR footage right on the timeline.

"However, I'm working on a project today where over 60% of the footage on the timeline now reads "Media Offline" and the video preview window shows only solid red."
Thanks for sharing some specific details.
That sounds like memory loading, but without some pertinent information about your system and how Vegas is allocating memory it's anybody's guess. You could start by posting your system specs, how much DSLR footage you are placing on the timeline, what other footage and stills are on the timeline, how much RAM is being used, your Quicktime version, your Project and Render Properties, and what effects and plugins you are adding to the project. And then try the same project in 32 bit Vegas to confirm if the problem is limited to the 64 bit version. That at least will enable others to be able to ask the right questions to lead you to a possible solution, if that is what you are after.

Not to chide, but coming in with lengthy first posts expecting development-level action based on a series of assumptions rather than specifics is likely to raise some eyebrows here. Intended or not, your first post sounded like a commercial (or a campaign speech). But as I said, welcome to the forums, and we await some more details.

I can only comment on footage from a Canon Rebel T2i but I assume the format is the same as from the 5D. 1920x1080 24p AVC.

I have had ZERO issues editing on Vegas Pro 10c, 32bit. Quicktime is 7.6.8, if that helps at all.

See 'System #1' in my systems specs.

Tom

Thank you musicvid for the information. I downloaded the Neo HD demo and gave it a test and it's certainly an impressive tool. Direct A/B comparisons between the source footage and the Cineform footage in MOV container showed a considerable difference in how the colour is displayed on screen in Vegas (at any profile level). However, I realise now I can compensate for that colour change non-destructively using metadata in Firstlight so I think Neo HD might be a possibility for me.

I tried re-encoding the project I was working on to Cineform (into a different folder) and then reassigned the files (proxy editing-style) so that Vegas would look at the Cineform files instead. Unfortunately the project would no longer load under Vegas 9, so instead I just tried dropping the (Cineform) files onto the timeline but that made Vegas lock up - both versions 9 and 10 (most recent versions).
I then tried dropping smaller numbers of files onto the timeline and while Vegas 9 still locked up with only about a quarter of the files from the project, Vegas 10 handled it OK. I also tried using that amazing Batch Replace script that Rosebud made and Vegas 10 managed to get to the point of displaying the new clips on the timeline then crashed with the Bug Report option.
Obviously this is not completely indicative of how Vegas will behave starting a Cineform session from scratch, but it's something that I'd really like to be able to do with the sessions I'm storing in uncompressed format (enormous) and the sessions where I've assembled the 5dmkII footage on the timeline and are hence not showing video preview.

The current project spec's are as follows:
1920x1080p @ 23.976 fps - 48kHz/16bit stereo audio.
51 x Canon 5DmkII or Cineform converted source files between 8 seconds and 4 minutes in length (between approx. 40MB and 1GB in file size). Around 5 Sony Text Media Generator clips, 1 JPG and 1 48kHz/16bit stereo WAV file.
Source footage is either 23.976fps or 29.97fps with a 0.8 playback speed and a 0.8 undersample rate applied to drop it back to 23.976fps on the timeline. Total edited length of the project is less than 10 minutes.

This is the limit for Vegas 9 though Vegas 10 is dealing with it better.

My computer spec's are:
CPU: i7 920

MB: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P

RAM: 6GB (3 x 2GB) Kingston Hyper-X 1600MHz (Triple Channel)

HDD: 1 x WD Blue 3.5" 320GB SATAII - System Drive
1 x Seagate 3.5" 1TB SATAII - Storage Drive
4 x Seagate 3.5" 500GB SATAII - Video RAID

RAID: Highpoint Rocket Raid Internal 4-Port PCIe 1x Card

Graphics: Zotac NVidia Geforce 9800GT 1GB

Video I/O: Blackmagic Design Decklink HD Extreme 3D

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64bit - No transitional FX, no Glass, no Aero Peek, no virus scanner
, no internet access, no network aside from Firewire with TCP/IP protocol applied but never used for network.

When Vegas 10 was first released, I tried both the 64 bit and 32 bit versions on a fresh install of Windows 7 64. I have also since tried it on Win 7 32 bit. I some cases sessions from Vegas 9 that were 'red-framing' actually wouldn't even open in Vegas 10. Vegas 10 would just hang trying to load them. In other cases Vegas 10 managed to open and display sessions that were 'red-framing' in Vegas 9. There didn't seem to be a consistent pattern to it. 32bit versions reacted differently to 64 bit. They would just be less likely to re-open a sessions without hanging, though I don't remember them exhibiting the re-frames issue. Problem is that in 32 bit the RAM access is limited to 1024MB as opposed to 64bit being able to use all available RAM in my system. One thing that was certain was that Quicktime import and export under 32bit versions was solid, and under 64 bit versions was very unstable. Vegas 10 was in most cases, more robust regarding the 'red-frames' issue but still relatively easy to tip over.

I hope you can begin to see that I've had a long time to get 'speechy' in my head about this issue. Had I not had access to Sony support through distributor channels, I'm not sure I would have got the answers I did. I am grateful to the Sony team for allocating the time that they did to my issues, and for the apologies they offered me, but unfortunately it hasn't made my projects work any better.

Now I have to decide whether I'll be allocating my next $500 to Neo HD instead of the Boris FX bundle I was going to get.

Finally, to Tom Pauncz: thank you for your reply. From what I understand the Ti Rebel encodes at a lower profile (or data rate?) than the 5DmkII. Maybe this is enough to make the difference.
Not sure.

Daniel

For use in Windows, you should be rendering Cineform AVI, not MOV. The gamma shift introduced by rendering to MOV formats from within a Windows NLE (as you've apparently discovered) is a whole different topic, not to mention that they "may" be being decoded with the QT lib, which puts you right back where you started. As I'm certain you are aware, Vegas ingests AVI natively, not by way of external libs.

Your experiences with 32- and 64-bit Vegas on 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows are atypical (if not a bit unusual), and bear further investigation, perhaps at the resource allocation or hardware level. Best of luck.

Actually it appeared to me that there was a bigger difference in the way the colours were displayed in Vegas using the AVI container than there were using the MOV container, but I'll do some more tests. My main concern is that any format changes I make to the source footage before getting to Vegas are not visually desctructive. The only better result I've had from any other format was with uncompressed. It plays and edits beautifully but it's just too much to store when a project is finished.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions.
Daniel

Daniel,
I'd be happy to try one or two (or more) of your clips if I could FTP them from somewhere. I didn't shoot the T2i clips and have no direct experience with DSLR footage. I was merely editing footage shot by others.

I AM contemplating either a 60D or a 7D (body, as I have lenses) so this could be worthwhile from my perspective as well.

My Vegas 10c has been rock solid apart from one issue which SCS has been able to replicate.

Let me know.

Tom

Cineform AVI should not be introducing any color shift when rendered and viewed in the proper colorspace. There are others here with more experience converting 5D / 7D footage who can help you with that (this is not untrodden turf).

Hi Tom,
The red-frames issue only starts to present itself when a certain number of clips are introduced into the project. I don't think you'll be able to replicate the problem using one or two clips. You'd have to propagate more video in the same format. I'm not sure if you did, that the resultant files would cause the same problem due to the fact that they would be produced by an encoding program that has Quicktime integration and not a camera.
I'm pretty sure you'd be able to reproduce the crashes on MOV export from Vegas though. That was the easiest thing for Sony to confirm with me. The crashes were - according to Sony - due to the 64bit issue and the inability ti re-import files back into Vegas was due to Vegas not fully supporting Quicktime's customize functions in the output codec.
In short, I don't think going through that proceedure would be of much use to you.
I have however looked at the 60D and the 7D and I would definitely recommend you go with the 7D. If for not other reason than that the 7D is a better built camera. 5D mkII footage from my end probably wouldn't be a fair comparison for the 60D and 7D because the 5DmkII is a full-frame sensor and so the lighting and cropping are different. I found the best place to compare footage is Vimeo.
Thanks,

Daniel

Hello Daniel,

I have to admit I have not read through the entire thread yet, but as soon as I read that someone else was having issues with MOV files from a DSLR I knew I had to respond.

I'm getting the same behavior with files from a Nikon D7000. I've tried the same project on both Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Version 10.0 (Build 179) and Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum (build 9.0b). I'm currently running an Intel i7 quad core 860 @ 2.80GHz, 8GB RAM, 64-Bit OS, Windows 7 Home Premium.

I tried the "Large Address Aware" hack (here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=750920) and the ">2GB CFF Explorer" fix (Here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=697122)... all without any success addressing this problem. (Now it seems i've been chasing the wrong problem!)

I will now go and read this thread more thoroughly, but I just had to comment right away to express my thanks for posting this!

Thanks,
-VSightnSound

> "* Rendering out to MOV files with an uncompressed codec not only crashed Vegas consistently unless Render Threads (in the Video tab in Preferences) were set to two or less"

> "As I mentioned earlier, the Sony Creative team have confirmed both issues so this is fact. The problem is I can't see that anyone else is experiencing these issues so I feel that if there's only one Vegas user having this problem, it's not going to be a big priority for Sony to fix."

I can confirm that this is a HUGE problem not just for you. We have been unable to get Vegas Pro 9 or 10 to render an uncompressed MOV file without crashing and the reason it's a huge problem is because most post houses will only accept ProRes422 or Uncompressed MOV files and Vegas cannot produce either of those formats. We actually had to switch post houses and finally found one that would accept XDCAM HD422 MXF files.

> "Now I have to decide whether I'll be allocating my next $500 to Neo HD instead of the Boris FX bundle I was going to get."

Take a look a CineForm NeoScene. It's only $99 and will do the same job for converting your footage to CineForm AVI. It just doesn't have FirstLight. It specifically says that it supports the Canon 5D/7D so I would try it and see. That will leave you some money for the Boris FX BCC7 plug-ins which are absolutely fantastic. ;-)

~jr

Maybe I am just not 'getting it'. Is this only a Win 7 64bit issue?

I managed to get a hold of some Nikon D7000 footage - in Vegas Pro 10.0c compoundplug.dll is decoding it and claims it is SONY AVC format.

I rendered the timeline to QT MOV uncompressed using the default template and changed the quality to high - all other options were left alone.

Zero problem rendering (threads set to 7) and zero problem bringing the uncompressed MOV into Vegas - audio included and audible.

What am I missing? See my system specs (#1) in my profile - am using WinXP Pro-SP3 32bit. QT is Pro at 7.6.8.

Tom

Hi Daniel (et. al),

I can confirm that the "red-frame" or "black-frame" issue only occurs when placing more than 1 or 2 clips on the timeline... Moreover, it seems it is also dependent on the size of these clips as well - or at least how much total memory VMS uses for all the clips combined when working with the project.

In my case, I upgraded from Movie Studio 9 Platinum to Movie Studio HD 10.0. Working with a single clip, about 5-min long, I was able to edit & render with no problems (to .WMV file). It wasn't until I started working on a more complicated project with multiple takes/angles that the "red-frame" issue popped up. I then tried to apply the hacks (mentioned in my first post) - they failed to improve the situation.

I then went on a frustrating journey of uninstalling and reinstalling both versions, even including a regedit cleaning exercise. Now, I only have VMS HD 10.0 installed, with the >2GB hack implemented.

I was able to render a problematic project with several Nikon D7000 clips (of various lengths) into .WMV file without any "black-frame" issues. However, the "complicated" project that uncovered this whole problem is still giving me the "red-frame"/"black-frame" issue. AND if I try to render it, I get the "Low Memory" issue that the ">2GB" hack is supposed to fix.

At this point, based on the info in this thread I'm beginning to conclude that it might be a problem with the QuickTime version installed on my PC. Also, it sounds like it is a hit-or-miss situation with going to Vegas Pro 10.0 - I've read the "Low Memory" hacks work for that version, but they don't specify if their problems are related to .MOV files from DSLRs...

Thanks,
VSightnSound

Hi VSightnSound,
You have found yourself on the Vegas Pro forum, which is different software under the hood than either of your Movie Studio versions.

So although there may be issues with DSLR footage for some users of either version, they are likely "apples to oranges" because of the different decoding engines used. Thought you would like to know.

Hi musicvid,

Thanks for the clarification. Is there a more appropriate forum/thread that I should be reading/posting to that specifically addresses the problem I've tried to describe?

(I've tried a different angle by searching on Quicktime compatibility issues - which I plan on confirm tonight after work...)

Any assistance to point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Searching 'dslr' on the Movie Studio forum brought up 71 hits.
The problems with your software may not be addressed until version 11, the release date being anyone's guess.

In the meantime you could download the Vegas Pro 10 trial, and see if that helps your Nikon footage. Best of luck.

I was able to load and edit files from my Canon 60d without a problem until about 3 weeks ago. Out of the blue, I get the black screen described in the original post here?
I'm using V8c. I downloaded a trial of 10 and that works just fine again. My thinking was that I didn't have the right codec on my 64bit machine. But that can't be the case if V 10 handles the files fine. any suggestions?
Baffled?