Mike, apart from perhaps mentioning the lack of documentation of one of the V8 features I don't recall saying anything negative about Vegas over there. If I recall correctly I was consistantly saying I couldn't find anything wrong, so long as the time was taken to read what Glenn was saying.

Now that I'm here it's a different matter. Yes I don't feel that V8 is rock solid, I've had it wink out a few times so I just use it when I have to. V4,5,6 & 7 have been rock solid for me and apart from mxf V8 brings nothing to the tabel that I need so even if it was perfect why should I rush into using something that I don't need. I still run Win2K and Office 2K for that matter. Yes I've got XP, Office '03 and '07 but I'm strictly of the If It Ain't Broke brigade. Truth be told I could do much of my paying work with V4 but there's a few features in V7 that I've kind of fallen for.

Bob.

Hi Bob,

I like the multicam feature in V8 a lot, that's is the main reason for me to use V8 instead of V7d, when I have such projects.

Do you use multicam, and perhaps you use the Ultimate S for this?

Thanks.

/Ulf

Presently V8b is throwing its hands in the air at very frequent intervals. I'm rendering with the "sorry" message displayed, so I'll discover to what extent it's possible to keep working. If this continues then another NLE will become attractive. At this stage I haven't put in a ticket, but obviously I'll have to do so. I don't have the option of going back to V7. Is a re-install of V8 likely to help?

When I've needed multicam I've used Ultimate S.

Thanks, Bob.

/Ulf

"Is a re-install of V8 likely to help?"

Seems to be supports standard response so one can only assume it's fixed something once. However they seem to recommend more than just an uninstall and install. From what they've said fragments might remain in the registry and continue to mess things up so they've suggested deleting all references to SCS products that might linger. Never done it and every problem I've had was finally found to be a "known problem" so it could waste a lot of time trying this approach. More worrying, how often are you going to keep re-installing to keep Vegas running.

However if you're suffering gradual decrease in reliability something must be decaying somewhere unless your projects are getting more complex and exposing weaknesses, is memory usage going up?
Do you have nested projects?
I recently noticed a problem with nested projects. If the nested project hits a snag like media offline or a plug it cannot find the whole show can stall.
Other suggestion, if it's a large HD project try turning off Waveforms and Thumbnails, they use up a lot of RAM and can bring Vegas to its knees.
Another suggestion, do you have another PC you could try the same project on?

Bob.

I too have more exception errors in 3 months than in many years (I started using Vegas at release2). 8 Is disappointing but the multicam is the best!!

Here are 2 problems other than exception errors I have had :-

1) Appaulling render times on SD projects. 3 times longer than version7. The workaround I have is to initialise the project in v7 & then start it in v8. I have looked hard and long at Preferences but if there is an option to click cant find it.

2) loss of registration of audio plugins -- they go in v7 when this happens. Reinstalling v8 solved this in 7 and 8.

The rendering problem is big enough to make fall back on v7 quite often and use excalibur again.

I'll just keep sitting on the sidelines waiting for the V8 beta testing to be complete. It could be awhile.

I was having all sorts of Vegas crashes with Vegas 8 in Vista 64 until I removed "AJACaptureFilter.ax" from the Cineform directory. It seems that this file will cause crashes sometimes if you don't have the AJA hardware. Strangely, a lot of the crashing before I removed this file seemed unrelated to Cineform. For instance, I couldn't even start DVD Architect until I removed that file. I was also getting some crashes in non-video related programs which seem to disappear after removing that file.

After experiencing frequent crashes while working on a pretty simple one hour project consisting of hd clips and stills, I've pretty much given up on 8.0b. Fortunately after several days of working on the project I was able to cut and paste it minus the titles into 7.0d. No problems using same clips and stills in 7.0d. I submitted a ticket to Sony. I sure hope Sony comes back with something other than a suggestion that I reinstall the software.

Don't cut and past into 7.0d, use the Vegas EDL export from 8 and import that into 7! Vegas's implementation of the EDL might not play that nicely with other video editors, but it works really well for transferring projects to earlier versions of Vegas.

I have had Vegas 8 for a long time, but never installed it because it is pretty clear that it has problems, and also because it was yet another upgrade that provided mostly "plumbing" features that were under the hood and not immediately visible (and usable) by people like me.

However, while I therefore cannot provide specific advice on how to stop the crashing, I have noted -- not only with V8 but also previous versions -- that most problems like this are related to the poor interface between Vegas and third-party programs and that these, therefore, can cause Vegas to misbehave.

Someone already mentioned Cineform, and that has definitely been a running problem off and on for the past eighteen months, spanning both Vegas 7 & 8. The issue seems to be both version incompatibility as well as a poor programming job, either by Sony or by Cineform, or both, as to how versions interact with each other. If you use Cineform, therefore, you need to contact them and obtain an exact uninstall and re-install procedure.

The other thing is plugins. While I don't mind being critical of Sony because they are big and can take it, I hate to beat up on some of the small players that produce plugins. However, there is at least one of these that I can tell you for certain will make your computer crash. Therefore, if you have ANY third party software (transitions, scripts, fX, etc.) that you use with Vegas, you need to uninstall those and make sure that they are COMPLETELY gone.

Vegas is probably not blameless in the problem you are having, but the goal here is not so much to assess blame (although that ultimately does need to be done) and instead try to get you running again. Therefore, uninstall all this third-party stuff (if you have any) and see if that doesn't solve your problem.

Oh, and I always recommend doing a scandisk check on your system and capture drives to make sure that there isn't some corruption from past crashes. Your computer can still operate just fine, but if you have missing or cross-linked clusters (actually I don't think that can happen with NTFS), bad things can happen.

Hi Laurence, thanks for the reminder about the EDL feature. I had to use it a while back on a project that absolutely would not render past a certain point. Used the EDL to go back to V7b and aside from lost track motion, finished the project as it should have in 8.

While I haven't completely given up on V8, any time I have a project with lots of layers and graphics (which is fairly often for us) I find myself more comfy in V7.

Mike

Laurence,

Thank you for bringing a much more efficient way to transfer a project from 8 to 7 to the attention of myself and others on the forum. Apprehensive that 7.0d might also crash, I painstakingly cut and pasted each section of the project from 8 to 7, saving it to a different name after each cut and paste. It sure will be easier to use the Vegas EDL export from 8 and import to 7 next time...though I'm hoping there isn't a crash-related next time. Thanks again for you helpful advice.

thanks for the edl tip give me a useable way of getting out of v8 until c,d,e.....fixes it. Happy to let you guys worry about it till then!!

Hello Serena et al,

I've been having major problems with V8 and have been working overtime trying to find workarounds. Exceptions, sorry message while rendering ... and more!

Thanks for the hint about the EDL Laurence ... I'm outta Vegas 8 and hopefully back to work in Vegas 7.0

Darren Powell
Sydney Australia

I'm finding Vegas 8 to generally be very good, as long as I don't need to access certain plugins. For example, looking at my recent "crash/failure" history in Vista - every instance of Vegas crashing has been caused by 'mcplug.dll' except 1.

And Cineform is a PIA of course..

Thanks John and everyone. The odd thing about the "sorry" notice is that it isn't fatal, and if you put it off the desktop (to get it out of the way) you can keep right on working. The render I set going last night completed correctly and I could save and close V8 down normally (which didn't close the sorry window - I had to click its OK). I've run System Mechanic and Registry Mechanic and for the few minutes I've worked it hasn't got around to apologising. Yet.
I am using Cineform and I was going to say that the problem began when I attempted to cut some mxf clips into an HDV (Cineform) project. I had to render those into 1440x1080 50i, which didn't surprise me.
However the sorry notice began to appear just closing an HDV project and opening a DV project, and got steadily more frequent until almost any action said "sorry".
I'll let you know whether I've "fixed" the problem. If not, I'll be working through John's recommendations and probably going the EDL route back to V7.

Yeh, I've just started rebuilding my project via the EDL path to V7 ... awesome ... if this works (ie: if V7 performs the same as it used to) I'll be moving forward again.

I'm trying to get my title sequence out of V8 to 7 ... of course 7 can't do the protype thing ... does anybody know of a way to render just the protype title sequences from V8 with a transparent background for use over the top of the project tracks in 7?

It's probably easy but my brain is full. Don't want to ChromaKey it ...

Maybe I'll start a new post ... good luck Serena

Cheers,

Darren Powell
Sydney Australia

Please don't discount my comments about deleting the AJACaptureFilter.ax from the Cineform directory. I was having horrible Vegas 8 crashing problems until I deleted that file. The problem is that Cineform can use the AJA capture card and has this file in there just in case you have that hardware installed. If you do, everything is just fine, but if you don't you will have seemingly random crashes, most of which will seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with Cineform. If you don't have the AJA hardware, you don't need this file and you'll be a whole lot better off without it.

Aside from this one issue, Cineform is running really well and works perfectly with Vegas, but that one issue: boy is it a bad one.

I would venture a guess that probably over half of the problems people are reporting are because of this issue. You just don't know it.

All you need to do is remove any instance of AJACaptureFilter.ax from your system, then reboot. After I did this, I got one or two crashes and then everything just sort of cleared itself up.

Also, don't be surprised if you find that other unrelated programs that have nothing to do with Video start working better as well.

Also, if you are using a version of Cineform Neo, get the latest version from Cineform. If you aren't, get and install the latest version of the free Neo Player here:

http://cineform.com/products/Downloads/DownloadNEOPlayerStart.htm

Install either the commercial version of Neo or the free Neo Player, then do a search for "AJACaptureFilter.ax" and delete any instance of it.

Also, any time you reinstall Vegas or any Cineform product, it can reinstall the dreaded AJACaptureFilter.ax. Look for it and get rid of it.

Trust me on this one. I really believe that it is the culprit for most of you.

>> every instance of Vegas crashing has been caused by 'mcplug.dll' except 1 <<

Same here. When 8.0b first came out I couldn't get any HDV work done because my program stream HDV files were being handled by mcplug.dll which was causing crashes. I went back to 8.0a, smart-rendered them to transport stream HDV files, and now they get handled by Sony's m2tsplug.dll and things are stable again.

mcplug.dll is presumably the Main Concept MPEG decoder and something got broken with regards to this between 8.0a and 8.0b.