Vegas 11 New Installl Rendering Problems

Steve Mason wrote on 7/21/2012, 10:11 AM
Hello,

I just had a new PC built with a dual-boot set-up. The primary purpose for this system is to allow me use of my array of older (some irreplaceable) 32 bit programs in Windows XP and Sony Vegas Pro 11 in Windows Pro 7/64 bit. I did some test renders with GPU acceleration activated and the render times are insanely fast compared to Windows XP – an imported Vegas 5.0 .veg (SD: 720x480) which takes nearly 20 minutes in the old O/S takes 1:15 in Vegas 11 – a nearly 20-fold speed improvement!! So far, relatively complex SD .veg projects are rendering at nearly real-time speed!

I within reason put together a fairly powerful system, the basic build of which (relative to Vegas Pro 11) is:

Mobo: Gigabyte 970A-D3
Chipset: AMD 8120-8 Core
24 GB DDR3 1333 G-Skill RAM
Video Card: EVGA 01G-P3-1556-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1GB)
O/S SSD: Crucial M4 SSD (for Windows 7 and Vegas 11 only: set in BIOS for ahci)
Internal storage drive SATA III HGST 2TB (to read and write video files)
External HDD Lacie D2 Quadra 2 TB w/ firewire 3.0 connection (only used to migrate stored data to 64 bit internal 2 TB HDD)
O/S Win 7 Professional

I should add I have a separate HDD for the Windows XP O/S which is not read by my 64 bit set-up.

I have only installed Vegas 11 Pro and DVDA on the new SSD. I did some optimization to minimize disc space consumption and ostensibly maximize performance. I have essentially dedicated this drive to video editing. I understand there is some controversy about SSDs, but I have had no issues with it so far for my Windows 7 O/S drive. I thought it would offer me the fastest possible performance for video editing.

I have migrated a large number of SD video, graphics and Vegas 5.0 .veg files to the Win 7 internal storage HDD and I have opened and re-linked a few of the .veg 5.0 projects in Vegas 11.

This machine is fast enough to allow fluid playback in Best/Full with only minor lag at certain transitions. Playback displays no issues and everything looks as it should.

Importantly however, when I render out these clips in Vegas 11 (I have nearly 75 in total, which will be compiled for DVD) at one point or another in the clip I get a “hiccup” or sticking-point/momentary lag in the video which makes them unusable. I have made every possible adjustment to both project properties and the DVD Architect output settings; it seems one “hiccup” will disappear at one point and reappear at another!! These glitches are not limited to transitions btw. For the record, I ALWAYS render to “BEST.”

I disabled GPU acceleration and that didn’t eliminate the problem. I spent hours overnight trying to remedy this issue to no avail and I have no idea where to begin looking for possible problems as I’m not intimately familiar with Vegas 11 or Windows 7/64.

It seems no matter what I tweak or disable, there will be at least one “hiccup” in the render.

Can anyone help??

Thanks in advance!!

Steve M.

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 7/21/2012, 3:52 PM
Steve,
since hiccups are not real technical jargon - please explain your problem - you gave a lof of info - but I need to know what you are calling a "hiccup". How does a hiccup move from ? to ?.
Steve Mason wrote on 7/21/2012, 5:39 PM
The best way to describe said “hiccup” is that the rendered MPEG-2 clip at a given point seems to stick, freeze or lock-up momentarily, then it resumes playing fluidly – this is not a WM player problem; it’s the rendered clip itself. I’ve never seen this occur in earlier versions of Vegas. I still have V5 on my XP drive. Overnight I rendered out the same clip with which I am having difficulty (render time of 20 minutes!!) and it plays-back fine without said “hiccup(s).”

I thoroughly checked all of the media clips and properties in the .veg file, which were originally assembled in V5 and all of the properties/parameters appear to have been properly transferred to V11. As I’ve previously stated, play-back within V11 is fine; I do not see the above described issue occur in the V11 playback canvas.

I’m using the identical settings in my DVDA MPEG-2 template in both versions of Vegas; I’ve disabled GPU acceleration and fiddled with as many settings as one possibly could – I’m at a loss.

I’m astounded at how unbelievably fast V11 renders out each frame; I mean my God man I’ve never seen the rendered frames count off with such velocity. I wonder if the blinding speed with which V11 renders out clips somehow causes the rendering engine to drop an occasional frame or two in the rendering process? I have the quality vs. speed checkbox selected btw in case you were considering that possibility.

As there are infinite variables with respect to what may be causing this, I figured I’d start here and see if anyone else has had a similar experience and perhaps a remedy. Deductively assessing the potential causes can be daunting in this case. Could it be SSD related…Windows 7…a hardware conflict…a software conflict…a setting…it can theoretically go on forever and swapping out the SSD for another or perhaps a spinner, then re-installing Win 7 and all the drivers, etc. seems a bit excessive to me at this point. Why can’t this thing just work?

Thanks!!
videoITguy wrote on 7/21/2012, 5:53 PM
Steve,
if you believe you are seeing frames or seconds of video render being skipped (as you state the render zips by very fast) -this would seem to be the problem of your system combo - cpu /board etc - and interestingly not suspect the SSD drive. WHY? because the way a render works an SSD drive really does not make things faster than a regular HDD. BUT the SSD drive does take a toll on your bus to the main board - so indirectly it can be part of the hardware equation.

I would never install a current model SSD drive for the rendering side of video editor and in fact forget about the advantages touted for the boot drive - it just doesn't add up.

Now, if this is a frame that freezes and holds for a period of video run-time - a little bit different problem - likely the timeline origin for cause.

Here is how you check that issue - choose to randomly render small sections of the timeline where your previous total render selection had failure.
Say a fail is at 10:00 min into runtime - then just render the section of timeline from 7:00 min to 12:00 min - then examine that render.
Steve Mason wrote on 7/21/2012, 6:31 PM
Actually, I didn’t say I saw frames or seconds being skipped; I stated that I was floored by the speed at which the frames clocked off on the new system compared to any previous experience I’ve had rendering video. I only surmised that the breakneck speed could have to do with possible frames being skipped over. Is a near real-time render a sign of a system problem: 1 minute of SD video with approx 30 combined audio/video tracks in 1:15 with the system I specified?

I was able to render a full segment devoid of the “hiccup” by tweaking a text fly-out that coincided with a crossfade; evidently V11 or at least V11 as it is set up on my system doesn’t like competing transitions. I’ll learn more as I open additional clips for this DVD.
mikkie wrote on 7/22/2012, 1:50 PM
"when I render out these clips in Vegas 11 ... at one point or another in the clip I get a “hiccup” or sticking-point/momentary lag in the video which makes them unusable"

My initial *guess* would be something happening with Windows or one of the apps/processes you've got running. Maybe something's checking your network, or checking for updates, or initialing some sort of scan, or maybe a drive's waking & whatever can't proceed until it does.

The only other time I've seen this sort of thing, & then the problem wasn't Vegas, was with source video that had indexing issues... you *might* want to check what Vegas is using to decode the video you put on the timeline in case it's using external DS files for example. Sysinternals Process Explorer can be instructive.

As far as tweaking the crossfade, if you can cause or eliminate the problem every time, that's a good clue -- if not it very well might be coincidental.

Good Luck :)
Steve Mason wrote on 7/22/2012, 3:29 PM
<<<My initial *guess* would be something happening with Windows or one of the apps/processes you've got running. Maybe something's checking your network, or checking for updates, or initialing some sort of scan, or maybe a drive's waking & whatever can't proceed until it does.>>

Thanks for the reply, but how do I determine which, if any Windows process is the problem?

<<The only other time I've seen this sort of thing, & then the problem wasn't Vegas, was with source video that had indexing issues... you *might* want to check what Vegas is using to decode the video you put on the timeline in case it's using external DS files for example. Sysinternals Process Explorer can be instructive.>>

Forgive my lack of tech savvy, but how do I check which decoding process/processes Vegas is using?

I'm wondering if uninstalling V11 from my O/S drive and installing it on my internal spinner would help determine whether the SSD is the problem? Can I install V11 on my 'D" drive??

Thanks!
cspvideo wrote on 7/22/2012, 4:35 PM
Check the output codec to see if it is defaulting to proressive field order when you want either Upper for Interlaced HD or Lower for SD.

Sounds like a problem I chased for about 4 months.
Steve Mason wrote on 7/22/2012, 5:45 PM
<<Check the output codec to see if it is defaulting to proressive field order when you want either Upper for Interlaced HD or Lower for SD.>>

By this you mean the MPEG-2 render template I assume? I have the MPEG-2 DVD Architect template tweaked for my project using CBR (8K) and I have lower field first selected. Wow, you had this issue for 4 months??? What was your remedy??

The plot thickens however...I uninstalled V11 from my "C" SSD drive and reinstalled it on my "D" (spinner) drive to rule out the SSD as the culprit. I rendered out the project and found the same glitches in Windows Media Player 12 in Win 7x64. Just to rule out a WMP issue, I played the same clip in WMP 11 on my Win XP drive and the glitches did not appear.

I am now assuming that the problem is not Vegas or the SSD, but WMP in Windows 7x64. The question now is whether this is a codec issue or a WMP or Windows problem. I want to install VLC player on the Win 7x64 drive, but the 64 bit version is only experimental.

Does anyone know if the VLC player for 64 bit works properly?

As well, does anyone know how I can diagnose the WMP codec issue?

Thanks!