Yeah, don't spend your money on a new machine with hopes of fixing V11. It's just V11 has a major programming issue somewhere that is causing many of us to crash on our perfectly good systems.

Vegas 10e is quite stable and does what you need it to so. Perhaps SCS will refund you V11 or allow an exchange for V10 instead. That's what I would do.

Mike

Makes me wonder if all these reported crashes are related to plug ins like New Blue.

I haven't had a single crash since Vegas 11 came out ( I've never had problems with Vegas in any version ). I don't use any plugins though ( actually I do have spiceMaster thing and sometimes use that ). I use Vegas as a DAW and for editing/cutting video, maybe some basic effects and color correction. Titles, effects or compositing I do in fusion and then import that back into Vegas. Never had any problems with any version of Vegas doing it this way.

These days I use a Panasonic GH2, but older HDV footage imports/plays fine too.
i7-2760QM and nVidia 560m vid.card.
No issues whatsoever.

I think you are onto something.

G

deusx,

Wow! That's absolutely amazing that you haven't had a single crash since Vegas 11 came out. How many hours per day are you editing in Vegas 11?

Absolutely remarkable.

Can we see your system specs?

- Mark

Hulk, I believe deusx is maybe making a valuable point about that not using Plugins has made VP11 stable for him/her. And if this is true, then that certainly points the finger at that.

I'm starting to believe that the virtue of Vegas, doing stuff on the fly, is being put to the test. That, and mixing it up with GPU and OFX is pushing the programmers to solve the issues that many of us are having.

G

Grazie,

I agree 100%. My point is that I believe I have a pretty stable system but I still have my share of Vegas crashes, even with 10e. Not have a single crash for months on end with 11 is quite a feat. I'd love to see his system specs as they'd be a good starting point for many around here I would think.

And you are making a great point about the on the fly nature of Vegas is really being pushed. I did competitive demo for Sony once, and all of the big NLE's had representatives at the event. Vegas could do everything (for the most part) that the other NLE's could do but it would blow people's minds when I would loop a video and drop in effects or make other changes on the fly and Vegas would just keep rolling, with the frame rate getting better with each pass. I also remember that Sony actually shipped me a computer and monitor in a road case to use for the demo. It was rock solid. Anyway that was probably somewhere around version 5 to 8, can't remember exactly.

But besides not having any GPU acceleration we also were NOT dealing with HD temporally compressed video. Just relatively easy to deal with DV. I think that's part of the problem as well. Hopefully Sony can pull back on the reins of big new features for a revision or two and just get this thing solid again.

- Mark

Hopefully Sony can pull back on the reins of big new features for a revision or two and just get this thing solid again.

Nice point Mark.

Now here's the "nice" point, which I and others have mulled over for 4 years: What comes first? The drive for the NEW or establish stability? Or rather, why should one "driver" come before another? What are the company imperative-weightings for these 2, which, on the face of it, appear to be mutually exclusive, targets? Are the engineers and marketers integrated enough to have even this form of communication? Or is the experience of the IT specialists and marketers, here on this Forum, that this is rarely if ever, a happy fruitful marriage? Can/could we envisage a typical day at SCS where the engineers and marketers sit down with each other and share and compare? It would be neat to think so and know. Presently I have no knowledge of these matters.

Until we are privy to this, we are but outsiders looking in. Actually, looking-in assumes we know WHICH window to peer through - and we don't even know that.

G

Yes good musings Grazie.

I guess the legacy/bane of software producers is to have to keep asking them selves "what can we sell 'em next year?"

Microsoft could have finished with Word ten years ago and it wouldn't have bothered me. I am however appreciative of the way Vegas has kept up with many new demands from the video industry, notably HD, but between the continuum from "new demands" to "flashy extras", there is a safe point I'd prefer Vegas to stay below.

For instance, I still use the original Titler practically all the time - it's fine. I don't mind having some of these visual tricks to pull off occasionally, but never at the expense of stability.

I use Vegas mostly as a DAW these days, so I can't say I'm using it all that much for video, but haven't had a single issue so far. I had no issues with previous versions either. I completed one small job ( video work ) with Vegas 11 and I use it for my own experimentation here and there.

Right now I use laptops with i7-2760 QM, nVidia 560m video card, Fireface 800 and RME babyface for audio interfaces. 8GB of RAM on one, 16GB of RAM on the other laptop. They are all Clevo machines http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo.asp?productid=307. The third,old one went 5 years with one crash that I can remember ( PC, not Vegas ).

I guess the legacy/bane of software producers is to have to keep asking them selves "what can we sell 'em next year?"

i will happily buy vegas 12 IF it is just a solid, reliable, crash free version of 11 ;-)

i WONT be buying 12 for ANY new gimmicks - other than perhaps edl i/o.

You can replace the "Beatles" (programmers) but you will never get the same product again. The chances are 98% that the rock solid stability of Vegas will never return.
JJK

In my opinion the only road to a super stable Vegas is for Sony to take a fresh look at their Beta testing program. I have been a beta tester for a few different video editing programs and the best, most fruitful of these testing periods included a wide range of users with good communication between the beta team leader (and the programmers). On one of these programs we went from a program that would crash just about every time you moved the mouse to a leading edge (feature-wise) and solid application. We had a bug list that was very organized and specific and it was updated by the testers almost daily. Fixed bugs were noted as such and moved to the bottom of the list. The more important ones were at the top of the list. Heck, we even got small changes made to the interface late in the beta it went so well. Eventually I even got direct contact e-mails from the programmers asking me for more specific information or explaining to me why something was not possible.

There are so many extremely smart, literate, and willing Vegas Pro users here that Sony is really missing a huge opportunity by not giving them the ability to take some ownership of this application. The point is you need all types on the beta. Some novice users, intermediate users, and advanced users. Some should be picked for the sheer number of hours they use Vegas, others should be picked for their writing and/or diplomacy skills which I believe it important to keep the beta team on a productive course, and others just because they seem to be able to crash Vegas at will, or because it never crashes for them. The one thing they need to have in common is a love for Vegas and a willingness to donate their time to make it better.

Internal testing can only do so much. And when a closed bunch of beta testers become "your guys" it can turn into a cheer leading session and not an efficient and productive beta run. The risk for Sony is that they are going to have users who will have very difficult problems with their systems, some may be strictly Vegas issues, others may be due to other hardware/software in their rigs. It is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears for the engineers to tackle such a beta effort. But in the end all of those issues much be tackled head on and diagnosed and fixed if possible. Some will be the result of other software/hardware. That's fine. Sony can send a message to that manufacturer with specific information. At that point they done their due diligence for the user.

As for marketing, I'm not sure they fully understand what the "word on the street" would do for sales if they got even 100 people from this forum out there (again) touting what an amazing and solid piece of software Vegas Pro is. I used to be a much bigger advertiser for Vegas when it was that lean, mean, and super stable NLE of years ago. Now I recommend it but not so heartily. It's more of a "you should check out Vegas Pro and see if it works for you" instead of "you MUST download and try the Vegas Pro trial, I'll help you get started with it, it's an AMAZING piece of software and you won't regret it!" The last person I "sold" MovieStudio to was my brother. It's still my first recommendation to friends that want to get into editing but I don't push as hard as I used to for fear of hearing crash stories.

Sony shouldn't be concerned with taking a feature breather with V12. If the Beta program is going well they could add a few features along the way so they could be ironed out quickly in the beta. The biggest and best feature I think most here would agree is the ability to have long crash free editing sessions. And there is nothing wrong with advertising the fact that Vegas has undergone a "rigorous stability enhancing overhaul!" NLE users will understand and appreciate that.

Finally, when a super stable version comes out the previous "not so stable" version is quickly forgotten by users. A lot of bad can be erased quickly with one new version.

- Mark

Since this is all speculation, I'll toss mine in. I've only been in two beta testing programs, one for a company that invested in major code rewrites with full support of its marketing department to only release when ready and another that layered new upon old code and was pressured to meet annual release dates. Guess which was a satisfying experience and which was a terrible one. One company no longer exists.

I also have not experienced the level of crashing that some have with Vegas 11. It's now the version I'm using for paying work. I have never installed the New Blue titler on my system, and the crashes I have seen all involved multiple instances of OFX plug ins. I will further speculate that many of the problems began with the addition of code for GPU acceleration in rendering in V10 and increased with the addition of preview acceleration in 11. The fact that so many point to version 9 as a fall-back is evidence to me. It was still my favorite editing experience with Vegas. I wonder if somewhere there is a (non-programmer) voice saying, "The new features are working for a lot of users, let's just keep pushing forward and we'll sort it out eventually."

I haven't banged on 11 a lot but one thing I did test on the Win8 preview was whether my crashing problems with Vegas still existed. Same computer, new fresh hard drive with new fresh OS and Newest build of Vegas but without any other plugins. And no history of other applications (no Vegas 10, no external codec packs, but I did install an adobe suite). And, yes, the crashing of OFX plugin dialogs has gone away. This is on an I5-2500 with 8GB RAM and basic Intel integrated graphics.

What I assume from this is that a super clean system will work. I hadn't yet installed the NB titler, and no virus scanners. Just a very clean win8 OS, VP11-64 b595, and the adobe CS5 production premium suite. I think that Win7-64 would be just the same but haven't gone down that hole yet.

Rob

I do not understand why an OS has to be clean. If you write foolproof code how can any other code interfere unless hacked? I can see how the third party stuff can be a problem.
JJK

JJKizak,

I'm with you 100% on that. One of the biggest advantage, if not the biggest with x64 OS is the ability to reserve an area of memory for a specific application, no page swapping, no sharing of resources. Just a specific space for Vegas to run. And this is why x32 applications rarely brought down the house (OS) like the old 16 bit OS. And applications are even less likely to crash the OS with a 64bit OS. Sure, calls to other apps outside of Vegas can cause problems but that should be the same with an old install or a fresh one.

I think there are a lot of "dead ends" in the Vegas code. And that is what causes the lock up. Basically you do something to which the program commands run down a black hole. And there is no coming back.

- Mark

I'm curious what everyone's dynamic ram preview is set to?

I've stayed away from Vegas 11 because of my experience with the early days of Vegas 10 but one thing thing I noticed though on a recent large project in Vegas 10 was that high dynamic ram preview made Vegas crash like crazy. I dropped it to 256 and it works fine now.

Vegas Pro 10e. 16GB RAM total, dynamic preview sweet spot performance-wise for me seems to be about 1500MB.

I'm not getting many crashes in 10e but of course they do seem to come at bad times. Perhaps I'll back it down to 1000MB.

I have 12 GB on my system.

I have a 6-core 980X. With 10e Vegas uses 100% of the CPU during renders. However, with 9e and 11.595 it only reaches about 60% rendering the exact same project using the exact same render settings. Anyone know why this is so?

I have tried different RAM settings & thread settings but the max I get is about 60% which almost doubles my render times. With 9e I can render-out two projects in the background while I am editing another. I never get black frames and 9e rarely crashes. However, with 10e and 11.595 I sometimes get black frames (regardless of what I do...) but if I have two Vegas windows open it gets even worse.

After spending a week using Vegas 11.595 I found that I do not like the new interface for accessing FX. It takes me longer to do color correction because of the new layout and smaller sliders.

I see what y'all are saying. To be honest... I'm no IT professional and I'm certainly not interested in paying good money to waste my time being THEIR beta tester. I've used Sony Vegas for 6 years and upgraded about every other version (7,9,11)... and sold several other producers on their product because of it's intuitive and relatively simple nature.
That's obviously becoming less and less true as they throw this garbage out with soooo many problems and glitches. People pay me good money for my services and I do this as a career... so to pay Sony and have them expect me to dump hours and hours of my time navigating their lack of planning and testing is obviously bass ackwards.
They also went to the stupid concept of hiding a bunch of the tools that used to be in plain sight and forcing me to play hide and seek and cost me countless additional clicks of the mouse to do that same old tasks that used to be automatic and simple. (like hiding the "center" tool in the cookie cutter... and also forcing me to click an "animate button" just to be able to make timeline movement changes that used to just be there.)

Now I'm trying to work with 11 and they want me to pay them even more money just to be able to talk to someone and get it fixed in a timely manor... or play patty-cake back and forth with their "support" department as they waste more of my time on wild goose - hunt and peck - back and forth attempts to see what's wrong with THEIR software.

AAAArrrrggghhhh!!!

I do not understand why an OS has to be clean.

It doesn't. The problem I was pursuing was the crashing of all OFX filter dialogs after one or two FX adjustments. It happens on one computer using VP11 and VP10. Doesn't happen when I uninstall both and then reinstall only VP10. And doesn't happen on another system. My assumption is that there's some sort of errant file or library or configuration related to Vegas that I can't get at and can't quite remove from the system.

It *seems* like a fresh virgin install of the OS and then Vegas might have solved it, but since I've only tried Win8 I can't be sure.

Rob