uninstalling, installing every few days....

TeeJay wrote on 6/30/2005, 8:13 PM

Hi all,

Well, you'd think that stepping up to a new version would be a good thing, but since upgrading to Vegas 6b, I have lost soooo much time in productivity, due to the fact that I am having to un-install and then clean install every time before doing a render. If i create a project and then go ahead and render, it will continually crash after a few percent into the render. I am not suggesting that this is the fault of V6, but would like to get to the root of the problem.

I still have Vegas 5 on my machine and I never had any problems such as this with that version, so I am perplexed as to why it is happening now. It is driving me nuts and I am at the point of seriously considering a re-format of my entire system.

Anyone experienced this problem with V6?

I am running a Pentium 4, 3.2 gHz machine
80 Gig Primary HDD
2 x 80 Gig Slaves configured in a Striped Array (RAID)
200 Gig External Firewire Drive.
2 Gig DDR Ram

One thing to note is how I have been creating projects lately in a slightly different process.
Vegas runs from the Primary HDD
My video captures and media are all on the External FireWire HDD.
I am rendering to the Slave RAID HDD.

Does this seem like a feasable method? I previously used to store all media and captures on the RAID HDD and also render to that drive. I presumed my new method would be more efficient and less taxing on the system.

Anyway, any thoughts on this will be very gratefully received.
Cheers,

TeeJay

Comments

fldave wrote on 6/30/2005, 8:46 PM

Definitely not an expert, but I have been rendering a lot of short clips lately. HDV mpg or HD uncompressed to uncompressed, Sony YUV, mpg etc.

C: drive: boot and all programs WD Raptor SATA
D: temp/swap second partition on WD raptor SATA
E: data - misc stuff not involved in render - IDE 8MB cache
F: video drive: source media and target renders. IDE 8MB cache

No problems. HDV uncompressed regions after a few passes play at 29.97fps at best auto preview. Even with FX applied.

P4 3.2 but I have the new 640 HT 64bit-capable processor. ASUS PD5A premium motherboard. 2 GB DDR2 ram.

I would render from/to an internal drive (for temporary purposes) and rely on the firewire drives for storage. Just because of one less delta in the mix.

Not a lot of experience rendering from/to firewire drives, but I do have several I use for storage before and after my rendering.

Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/30/2005, 8:46 PM

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the setup you are now using.

It does sound like your work-around to the issues you are having are very extreme. I would recommend you call Sony support and activate your free telephone support. Their live support is excellent.

I did not find any prior posts from you about the issues you have been having. Could you provide a little more detail on what transpires to cause your problems... and then how re-installing helps? Do you get lockups of V6 when you startup? Does it freeze when you render to MPEG?

fldave wrote on 6/30/2005, 8:50 PM

Sorry, but one other thing to check.

Your RAID may not be set up or functioning correctly. Double check that.

I don't use raid so sorry I can't provide good info on that.

johnmeyer wrote on 7/1/2005, 9:44 AM

Are you using the Min/Max fX in any of your projects? I did confirm a problem, which I sent to Sony, that caused a crash during render when this fX was used in a project.

TeeJay wrote on 7/1/2005, 7:13 PM

Thanks to all that have replied,

Liam Vegas, the crashing involves the "an exception has ocurred" message. Click on OK and Vegas Closes. The PC doesn't lock up. I have had the occasional lockup in Vegas when editing, rare, but it has happened on 2 or more instances. The render seems to run smoothly after a clean install, and seems to work for a week or two.

flDave, I have used RAID for a couple of years now and it has always been great. The thing with RAID, is that it either works or it doesn't. If one drive in the Array fails, they all fail. It's definately not an issue about whether my RAID is working, but possibly more about whether V6 has any issues dealing with data flow over RAID drives?

JohnMeyer, I haven't used the Min/Max FX and the only 3rd party plugs that I use are Magic Bullet Movie Looks and Pixelan's Spice Filters and Spice Master 2.5. All are registered versions.

Anyhoo, I did a Clean install again yesterday, I have just wrapped up a project so I might re-format, start fresh and see how I go. I'm researching the whole Dual Processor thing at the moment so who knows, may upgrade very soon. i guess I was just interested in knowing if anyone else has had this problem with V6, and if not, then it would certainly seem that it is an internal conflict, driver or app.

Cheers,

T

TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/1/2005, 9:36 PM

try not using the external drive. Put all your meida on your internal ones. Shutdown. disconnect the external. Start back up. Then do what you normally do & see if it crashes.

TeeJay wrote on 7/6/2005, 3:24 AM

3 days after the clean install, finished editing a new clip and tried rendering to MPEG2, with the same result as before. Exception ocurred.
So, as suggested, I moved the entire project and all media pertinent to the project to my RAID Drive, and the render went through seamlessly.
Since then, I have done several other clips and have about a 75% success rate.
Ah well, at least it works most of the time........

Thanks to all for your suggestions and advice.