V14 crashes during mp4 -> mpeg2 encode

john-beale wrote on 4/24/2017, 12:53 PM

I have Vegas Pro 14.0 (Build 252) 64-bit running on Windows 7 Pro SP1. My PC is i5-4310M @ 2.70GHz, 8 GB, 64-bit.

Vegas was running in the background, encoding a 70-minute 1080p .mp4 file (this mp4 was itself written earlier by Vegas) down to 720x480 30p MPEG2. It started out OK, but then crashed at 30% complete. I still have 136 GB free space on my HDD. I've had other crashes during editing which I assumed was some glitch due to some unique sequence of edit operations, but simply transcoding a file is a simple project and I do not expect a crash at this time. How do I avoid this?

Comments

john-beale wrote on 4/24/2017, 2:58 PM

Thanks for the tip. Meanwhile I tried Vegas again, and this time it ran to 100% and completed OK. Maybe I have a hardware problem?

Normally I use Handbrake for any transcoding, but I want to author a DVD with chapter points that start exactly on the specified frame, for which I need the MPEG2 encoder to generate an I-frame at each frame having a chapter marker. Can Handbrake do that? Maybe if I figure out "Import/Export chapter markers" ? Also, ideally Vegas would not crash :-).

gpsmikey wrote on 4/24/2017, 4:11 PM

One consideration for random crashes when doing things like video rendering is cooling. Make sure both the CPU and video card are not clogged with dust and/or pet hair. I have to clean mine regularly. I even found a bug in it the other day ... a moth was stuck in the cooling fins of my CPU. Random crashes can often be a heat issue.

mikey