(Tips) Clean up of Vegas Temp files

set wrote on 10/23/2016, 10:09 AM

This tips is written by Joseph S Testa in Sony Vegas editors Facebook group.
(With some editing by me)

If Vegas Pro has appears to gone off the deep end and not acting quite right, you might need to clear out the temp folder:

So in Vegas Pro: Options>Preferences>'General' Tab>near bottom is Temporary files folder,
Make a note of where that is.
IMPORTANT: make sure you have all projects saved, and close Vegas Pro.
In Windows Explorer, go to that directory, DELETE EVERYTHING, all files and all directories under there.
*Set: If you feel uneasy on Deleting this - copy them first to other place - for safety purpose.
If you've never done this there could be thousands of files under there.
Those are all of the saved projects when Vegas Pro crashes, all of the temp files it creates, etc.
I do this when Vegas Pro appears to have gone a lot of trouble.
See if that helps, any of the temp files it needs, it will recreate when you start Vegas Pro again, so the next startup might take a bit longer than usual.

If that doesn't help, other solution (and the easiest one):
On the main screen of Project Media tab in Vegas Pro, look for the 1st icon in the row describing 'Remove All Unused Media From Project", click on this button to cleanup all objects not is use in the current project.

*Notes from Set: I personally leave this temporary folder as it is, because I never had a lot of constant trouble which makes me frustrated, but as Joseph states, cleaning this temp folder has help him solving his many issues.
However, as I read on the comments of his post, one user reported after doing this, he unable to open one of the project (stick at 25% loading and not responding) - all other projects open fine. Other user replied this may depends on the content of the project, for instance, he quite often uses many HitFilm project inside Vegas Pro, this action (cleaning up Vegas temp folder) can slow down Vegas project opening time significantly.

It's better to know several risk in advance when doing this, so I suggest you to execute this action as the last step if you don't have any other alternative way.

Hope this forwarded tips can help users who had a lot of constant crashes.

Comments

Former user wrote on 10/24/2016, 12:16 PM

This is also useful, I needed it once, SVP wouldn't load, this fixed it ...

"To reset software to default settings and preferences.

SCS KB article #2744: "Close the program. Now press CTRL+SHIFT while double-clicking on the program's icon (note: in All Programs, not on Taskbar) to launch it. You should see a window that asks "Do you want to reset all preferences to default values?" Place a checkmark next to "Delete all cached application data" and then click Yes.
For older products, continue to hold the CTRL & SHIFT keys until the program is fully up and loaded."

Jam_One wrote on 12/7/2016, 10:38 AM

Errrr, no. It is not "the last step", it is the very first one.

There is nothing "safety related".
If you were ejected from your last project by sudden shutdown of Vegas, your actual next step is to check whether this project feels OK. Not "maintenance works" of other kinds. That simple.

Have you ever noticed a funny checkbox in Photoshop's settings, telling tales about "Initializing Plugins At Startup" ???
The job it uses to do is essentially the very same. By clearing the Cache/Temp dir in question you will force Vegas exactly to initialize all plugins at next sturtup.

Some years back ago, I was seriously thinking of sending a feature request to Sony to employ that kind of behavior -- to add "Initialize Plugins At Startup" setting.
This takes longer time to load, yes.
But in the days of 32bit Vegas-10 I had enormous trouble using NewBlue & Boris Continuum Complete altogether in a number of projects, so I ended up writing BAT file plus LNK to launch Vegas every funny time this way -- with full deletion of cache in question prior to vegas.exe execution.

This sort of thing was known long time before in Pinnacle Studio. You just had to clear all the caches after installation of any new plugin or program update. The sole really scary consequence with Vegas was the lost of "favorite render settings" and "custom plugin grouping". This consequence is exhibited by V11. My test with V14 showed everything 'custom' stayed intact. You may theoretically 'lose something' if you route 'that something' (like project's prerenders) into this cache/temp folder beforehand; but you are ultimately not forced by any law of Earth or Heaven to do so.

P.S.:
Sample batch file "Vegas MAGIX Clear Cache.bat"

@echo off
if exist "C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\VEGAS Pro\14.0\" (
del /f /s /q "C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\VEGAS Pro\14.0\" )

set wrote on 12/7/2016, 4:15 PM

Thank you for the explanation @Jam_One - very informative one...

ritsmer wrote on 12/8/2016, 12:52 PM

Did so. Found more than 1.000 old files under 13.0 and also more than 1.000 under 14.0.

Strange.

Wonder why Vegas does not clean up this garbage from the AppData folder as most other modern programs do ?

that said - a great part of these garbage files were BCCxxx (from BorisFx...)

set wrote on 12/8/2016, 4:47 PM

Did so. Found more than 1.000 old files under 13.0 and also more than 1.000 under 14.0.

Strange.

Wonder why Vegas does not clean up this garbage from the AppData folder as most other modern programs do ?

that said - a great part of these garbage files were BCCxxx (from BorisFx...)

Do you clean up this folder after knowing this? And how's the performance after you cleaning up this?

ushere wrote on 12/8/2016, 7:43 PM

i've always directed all my nle's to use a dedicated 'temp' directory which i simply erase when the projects finished. never had any problems doing so.

ritsmer wrote on 12/9/2016, 1:11 AM

@ set: Have not noticed any change

@ ushere: This is not the temp folder, from Preferences-General - and wich most of us are aware of - and clean up from time-to-time - this is a folder under your user profile.

PS: I wonder why BorisFX uses this folder - and not the temp folder from Preferences-General? BorisFX anyone ??

ushere wrote on 12/9/2016, 1:32 AM

i've changed that folder to via system properties to, though not to the same as vegas's temp.

NickHope wrote on 12/12/2016, 9:40 PM

Errrr, no. It is not "the last step", it is the very first one.

I've never deleted a file in those temporary files folders in my life. There is some useful stuff in there like thumbnails that would need to be rebuilt if needed. My V12/13/14 folders are currently around 10-50MB in size. But it's a good tip as something to try when troubleshooting and I did include it in this FAQ post... at #16 😉

teaktart wrote on 12/19/2016, 11:14 AM

I went into Vegas options/Prop/temp files.... only 7 items there...but I've been directing my current project to put temps in a main project folder > with all media and Vegas project/files (33 individual Vs related to the overall video shoot) . That main folder has about 70 sfk files - 40 sfl files - 35 BAK files....

I had been adding FX to each project as I went along....

"In Windows Explorer, go to that directory, DELETE EVERYTHING, all files and all directories under there." I don't know how to do that.... I use C Cleaner to clear out stuff ...does that do it ?

"if exist "C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\VEGAS Pro\14.0\" I got as far as C:/username/... and don't see any "AppData"..... so don't know how to do that...

I just turned off GPU acceleration.... will experiment this evening.

Thanks so much,

eileen

NickHope wrote on 12/19/2016, 9:25 PM

"In Windows Explorer, go to that directory, DELETE EVERYTHING, all files and all directories under there." I don't know how to do that.... I use C Cleaner to clear out stuff ...does that do it ?

Just do a standard Windows delete. Open File Explorer (or Windows Explorer), select all the files and press DELETE on your keyboard.

"if exist "C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\VEGAS Pro\14.0\" I got as far as C:/username/... and don't see any "AppData"..... so don't know how to do that...

Copy and paste this into the field towards the top of your File Explorer (or Windows Explorer) window. It should take you to the right place:

%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\VEGAS Pro\14.0

Red Prince wrote on 12/19/2016, 9:53 PM

"if exist "C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\VEGAS Pro\14.0\" I got as far as C:/username/... and don't see any "AppData"..... so don't know how to do that...

It’s a hidden directory. It does not show in the directory listing, but it’s there, so you can cd to it.