V8 CrashTest.veg

farss wrote on 2/27/2008, 2:26 PM

Many here are trying to get projects to run without crashing. I think what we need is a CrashTest.veg project. Something small enough to email that will reliably crash V8. We might need several versions to highlight different issues.
What I'm hoping could be done is to reduce the number of variables, having just the one veg or set of projects would dramatically reduce the number of variables. If someone can get a CrashTest.veg to run OK that tells us a lot. If no one can get it to run then we really have something solid for SCS to look at.
It shouldn't be that difficult to do, gen media is a one thing to use, the one very short piece of audio can be used a zillion times to create a 1 hour project with 100 audio tracks as could the one (1 second) short mxf or hdv file ( a corrupted one would be good). Unfortunately I can't contribute much to this effort, V8 is so unreliable for me on the one machine that I've got it on I can only conclude it's some hardware issue even though V7 is rock solid on that machine so that tells us next to nothing. Mostly what we need are people who can get it to run most of the time to contribute. It could be some subtle hardware variable, it could be another app running causing grief. We'll only know if there's someone who can get it to run. Then we can looks at what's different between the one system it does run on and all the ones it doesn't.

Bob.

Comments

Cheno wrote on 2/27/2008, 2:48 PM

I think that's a great idea, Bob. Funny is Vegas 3 - 7, I used to love to try to crash and most of the time to no avail. This time around I'm guessing that it may not be something we can replicate using media generated in just Vegas so in some cases may require media that can be released to the forum.

Also, someone may wish to mine and find the most reported problems. Mine are pretty much anything Canon .m2t (Cineform seems to be okay) and large image / sequence imports to the media pool.

I'm strictly back to Vegas 7 right now until I can figure out what's going on. I may not have time to build the crashtest.veg but will gladly participate in testing on two macs / one pc

cheno

farss wrote on 2/27/2008, 3:13 PM

This is good. Could you not shoot a few second clip of a wall and put that into a .veg that crashes?
Then you can zip everything up and it can be emailed around.
It's a pity we don't have anyway to upload files on this forum. We could use DVInfo but at this stage I think we should try to not air our problems in such a public place and I could understand that Chris mightn't be too happy about it either.

I do appreciate that I'm asking people to do some work and yeah it's a pity that SCS don't seem to be raising any sweat fixing these issues however in all fairness to them it's unreasonable to expect them to run out and beg, borrow or buy every camera on the market much less every possible mobo, GPU, HDD, RAM and CPU. If we can narrow down the problem into a set of conditions that they can repo then we're doing something positive. If after all that they still don't do something then and only then should we start putting the boot into them.

Bob.

mekelly wrote on 2/27/2008, 3:44 PM

Great idea.

I don't use Vegas professionally (only for church and home stuff) so I rarely get over about 10-15 tracks but to be honest I've never had Vegas crash.

I am running HDV (.mt2) files through it all the time without any problems (other than slow playback rates) even with a dual core machine. They're coming from a Canon HV20.

So I think it would be interesting if someone comes up with a .veg that reliably crashes Vegas on their machine to have some of us that aren't having any problems test it on our machines to see what happens.

essami wrote on 2/28/2008, 5:38 AM

Im running V8b with HD 1080 and 720p mfx files from my EX1. I havent had any crashes so I can volunteer in testing the veg files as well.

sami

Dan Sherman wrote on 2/28/2008, 5:49 AM

Same as Sami.
V8 is rock solid, and its not the result of some superior technical knowledge as I am a a technical idiot. Not a computer guy.
Just fortunate I guess.

JJKizak wrote on 2/28/2008, 7:14 AM

Great idea. Maybe several levels of stress like level 1, 2, 3, 4 for maximum ball-busting.
JJK

kairosmatt wrote on 2/28/2008, 7:31 AM

My Vegas 8 is about as stable as Vegas 7. Meaning they both crash, but not very often. Usually its if I'm running some other programs at the same time, but not always. I'll start copying all the error messages I get, if that will help.

R0cky wrote on 2/28/2008, 11:30 AM

I can create a project with a single still in it that crashes every time it trys to render an interpolated event pan keyframe. A "hold" key frame in the same event works fine, but every type of interpolation crashes every time. Very repeatable. For sure when I try to render HDV, don't remember if it does going to DV.

kairosmatt wrote on 2/28/2008, 12:40 PM

Bastinado,

I just tried that and it didn't crash. I used a single still photo, and put two keyframes in. Then I panned across the photo using fast and rendered. Then used slow and rendered. I rendered out to HDV 1080 60i template.
What setting are you using? Does it happen with every still? Does it crash if you only have a still, or is it a part of a larger project?

R0cky wrote on 2/28/2008, 12:49 PM

It is a project with 2 video tracks with 2 versions of the same still one above one another. I am key framing bezier masks and panning to do a "map line reveal" as was the subject of a thread a couple of weeks ago.

The still is either a single layer photoshop image or a jpeg, I forget which version was crashing. Maybe it was both. This is one of the variables I intend to test when I get back to that project.

The image dimensions are large as I need to pan it in both vertical and horizontal directions quite a ways. Again I forget but they're something like 2k vertical by 5 or 7K horizontal. Only 960 vertical and 1400 horiz. are in the video window at a time (2x480 x 2x720).

ddm wrote on 2/28/2008, 1:05 PM

I have had zero crashes with V8. I've been working on a feature lenth documentary for over a year now and I was casuiously optimistic at first when moving it to V8, not wanting to get too far from a good veg file that could be opened in 7 if there were problems, so I was, for a time, doing changes in 7 and then opening that veg in 8 and then saving a new veg is 8's format. I have since stopped doing that as I have had zero problems with 8.

The doc I'm working on has quite a bit of stuff in it, too. Lot's of stills with moves, several Magic Bullit effect sequences, 5.1 sound, quicktime reference files from an avid media composer edit and all in two flavors, sd and hd (two separate edits at this point, don't ask why). The hd version required outputting an hdv file from the avid since there is no hd quicktime reference file as of yet.

I did experience the black frame problem while outputting an hdv print to tape, but that was for viewing purposes only so it didn't affect me as much as it might have. An HD render to AVC and mpeg2 hd both seem to be fine. (don't have a bd burner yet)

I am concerned with all the problems I've been reading here about V8 and I am sympathetic to all who are suffering, I know what that can be like.

I would be happy to participate in a crash test to try and get to the bottom of these problems.

DJPadre wrote on 2/28/2008, 6:22 PM

i beleive there ar etoo many variables which cause v8 to fall over at this time.. in saying this pinpointing a problem will be much more difficult.

If however SCS had a list of known problems, then we, as users, could take this lit onboard and see what happens when we try to replicate the problem.

Its with THIS information that SCS could verify and recitfy whether a crash is a global problem, or individual system/driver problem

R0cky wrote on 2/29/2008, 8:34 AM

It is true there are many variables of hardware and drivers that can cause different results. That said, I have these repeatable crash scenarios:

(Vegas 8.0b does not install external monitor drivers same as the issue with DVDA - I copied them from another partition's 8.0a install - I triple boot my machine for various reasons - cheap big hard drives are nice).

1 . Hangs always after using external monitoring for a while. My interface is a Canopus ADVC-300. This never happened in 5, 6, or 7.

2. Using search in help frequently hangs

3. A single still 5000x3750 with interpolating keyframe event panning. Crashes on render to mpg in both 7d and 8b if the file is a flat psd or tif. Previews fine. If it is png it appears to be working in 7d but I need to test more. The image needs to be this big because I'm panning a long ways over it in both vertical and horizontal. The nature of the crashes are different. In 7d it just keeps on rendering at 0% forever and you need to kill Vegas in task manager. In 8b you get an exception error.

4. Many things in 32 bit but we all knew this already. When 32 bit works I've noticed substantial improvement in image quality when rendering to an HD format so let's please fix it.

The keyframe panning crash is easy to zip up a veg and media if Sony wanted a test case.

Rocky

R0cky wrote on 4/26/2008, 8:18 PM

3. in my post above: There seems to be a limit to how many keyframed bezier masks you can have. If I cross the line, vegas (7d or 8b) will hang during render when it gets to the first key frame for a bezier mask. This has hosed my project, I just can't do what I want.

I could easily supply a veg and media if someone wanted to reproduce it.

For the other issues I mentioned.

1. Complete uninstall and reinstall of all Sony creative apps including editing the registry to clean it (as instructed by tech support) has fixed the install of the external monitor driver and it seems to be working.

2. I multiboot and my system drive is never "C". According to technical support this causes search in help to crash in 8b. This does not happen in 7 or earlier versions. I was advised to create a shortcut directly to the help file rather than launch from inside Vegas. Hmm.

musicvid10 wrote on 4/26/2008, 9:17 PM

Since I always am 2 - 3 years behind the technology / price curve by choice, I cannot participate in this project.

However, one observation offered as a frequent and casual viewer of "crash" posts on this forum: The overwhelming majority relate to Vegas 8.0x with HD, and/or Quad Core, and/or Vista, and/or 64, and/or . . .

Since I have upgraded my system to XP Pro SP2 and Vegas 8 using SD media within the last two years, I cannot comment further because everything for me has been solid and mostly predictable sofar, so I'll get back to you on this in a couple of years, OK
;?)

Serena wrote on 4/26/2008, 10:39 PM

V8 works OK for me using NEO HDV, mxf and NEO HD, but I do get the "sorry" notice at various times. I don't know enough to interpret the detail in the message, but I've found that just putting the notice to one side (off the edge of the screen) and continuing seems to be without problems. I continue all processes, including rendering, and just make sure to do manual saves (my normal practice anyway). If I exit from V8 the notice remains (kill that separately). If I say OK to the notice (at least before exiting V8) and restart, then I get the "restore" action and that file will be as at the appearance of the sorry notice. But opening the version I saved is fine.
So my query is: when you get a crash, is it of this form? Do you accept this as a fatal notice and reload? If so, V8 would be largely unusable.

ushere wrote on 4/26/2008, 11:53 PM

v8b has been almost rock solid for me - other than recently on one job where i'd keep getting the 'sorry' notice during a render, which, unlike serena's experience, actually froze the render. restarting would bring up the 'restore' veg...

i simply tried rendering the whole 40min program back to an m2t (with no recomp' OFF) and all went fine....

i really don't know enough to comment. other than it would seem to me that there's a fair few 'problems' with hdv / m2t files that need clearing up - from black frames through to failure to ptt when no-recomp' is on....

still, for all that i really couldn't see myself using anything else, even though i have everything else (well, no fcp, but having used it for a while, still with vegas)

leslie

Serena wrote on 4/27/2008, 12:03 AM

Not all fatal errors are likely to arise from the same problem (although that would be nice). I haven't had any during render and my interpretation of my error message is that it relates to RAM allocation (but that's probably way off the mark); this seems to be self correcting (since I can carry on) but sets flags relevant to restoration when restarted. But really I have no idea what's going on.

rmack350 wrote on 4/27/2008, 12:29 AM

More fishing! Less cutting bait!

People can host their own files for others to download, or someone could kindly provide a place to post files for others.

As to what people could provide? How about zipping up a project file, the assets, and a readme file with your contact info and any special notes or instructions.

What's a reasonable size for the zip file? 100 MB? 500 MB?

Rob

R0cky wrote on 4/28/2008, 1:15 PM

Answering Serena's question: I don't get the exception error, just a complete hang with the modal "rendering" dialog box open. You have to kill Vegas in task manager.

If you hit the cancel button the dialog says "cancelling" but it continues to be hung for as long as you want to wait. I left it overnight once to see what would happen. Stayed hung all night.