Vegas 12 Hangs or Crashes during Renders

jdatpslp wrote on 10/26/2012, 3:12 PM

I have a 1 1/2 hour long project, nothing too complex, about a dozen vid tracks, most of which are PSD graphic overlays. One is animated. Another contains a five minute 1080p uncompressed .mov file. One more is legacy text track (captions). Very few effects, mainly some HSL adjust, unsharp mask here or there, etc...that's it..About a half dozen audio tracks too, but they are rendered separately and muted.

At first, renders just stopped at some point from 10 percent to 60 percent, black preview screen, progress bar stopped, and the app hung. The only way out was task manager and force close. This happened with AVCHD (MC and Sony), so I turned GPU acceleration off. No harm there since CUDA made no render time diff anyway. Nothing changed. Now it is happening even trying to render the vid as an uncompressed .avi. GPU preview is off too. Plenty of temp file space, tried something other than 3 TB drive to render to, stopped all non essential processes via msconfig, and I am still getting these hangs. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't take three hours to waste into the render before the hang and trying again....and again...and again - for three or four days now.

I have had successful renders once or twice, and I have tried splitting into parts (still get hangs). I have latest OS updates and graphics drivers, etc. I reinstalled the app too.

Any ideas? I'm getting close to a deadline and stand to lose THOUSANDS if I miss it. Never had anything like this in version 9, which I upgraded from, and have used Vegas for 10 years now. All my recent changes to the project were in 12, so no going back. I also have a Mac Pro, so how much of the project could I export from Vegas to FCX to do the final render? It would be worth the expense if all I had to do was a few mouse clicks.

Comments

Laurence wrote on 10/26/2012, 3:40 PM

Try lowering your RAM preview memory to 0. Even if you have plenty of RAM (I have 16GB) this seems to make a big difference.

jdatpslp wrote on 10/26/2012, 3:52 PM

I only have it at the default one gig and when looking at various performance monitors, when in full render mode and no other apps running, above 3.5 gigs are still free. Also, haven't a few guys said taking it to zero can cause other issues? Avg. CPU usage on all 12 cores is only 52%.

FYI if it helps...System - 5.1 (2010) Mac Pro with custom installed W3690 6 core Xeon at 3.47 GHZ (3.73 Turbo), 12 gig ECC 1333 MHz RAM, Evga GTX 670 SC with 4 GB VRAM, tons of HD's ranging from Vertex 2 and 4 to WD Black Caviars, a USB 3.0 card going to a WD 3 TB HD and a 128 GB SSD, a Velociraptor via firewire too. Motu external Ultralite Mk 3 for audio with JBL studio monitors. Windows 7 Pro running natively via Boot Camp. Latest Nvidia driver and CUDA app. All my other Windows apps FLY like crazy on this beast, especially X-Plane Professional, so it isn't the hardware. Geekbenches at 16,400 and Unique Heaven, CUDA-Z etc. are all also in the top 10 percent for stock machines (no crazy hacks, overclocking, nitro cooling etc.). Windows exp. score is 7.0.

Laurence wrote on 10/26/2012, 7:19 PM

Mine gets unstable if I use any preview memory at all. I only tried this after reading of someone elses experience with the same issue. All I'm saying is just try it and see if it works for you. It did for me.

jdatpslp wrote on 10/26/2012, 7:28 PM

OK, will try it. Makes no sense though does it? What's the point of having preview memory of it causes crashes even on a well equipped machine? IF this is the culprit, I guess they'll figure it out by version 17 or so.

Laurence wrote on 10/26/2012, 9:52 PM

It makes about as much sense as washing in the River Jordan seven times, I know. Just try it. It worked for me. This problem lasted all through V11 and is now still there into the initial release of V12. It has something to do with the way it allocates memory I imagine.

ritsmer wrote on 10/27/2012, 8:03 AM

@ jdatpslp: several users have seen that the CPU usage increases (and rendering gets faster) if you lower the Preview Ram - to a certain level, that is.
The outcome seems to depend on the hardware - but somewhere around 100 MB seems to be a good number for some.

But if it gets your system more stable then set it to 0 as Laurence proposes - and trade some rendering speed for better stability.

musicvid10 wrote on 10/27/2012, 8:43 AM

CPU overheating?

cjcook wrote on 10/27/2012, 12:31 PM

Laurence, your suggestion worked for me. I have been searching for an answer to this problem since Vegas Pro 11, and yours is the first one that worked! I have 32GB of ram, so I had set my preview memory to 512MB and thought I had more than enough memory since I never consume more than about 30% of system memory. Anyway, I was just trying to render a very short clip (about 13 minutes) and Vegas would crash no matter what settings I tried. That's when I googled the topic, came across your post and tried it. First, I set the Preview Memory as you stated and the project rendered successfully, but it was pretty slow. Next I set the Preview RAM to 64MB and it still rendered, but now much faster...about 1/3 the time it took with 0 Preview RAM. As you said, it doesn't make sense, but it works. I would encourage anyone with this problem to try your suggestion. Thanks!

jdatpslp wrote on 10/27/2012, 1:43 PM

If you mean mine, not even close. I have all sorts of temp monitors. Mac Pro's just don't overheat. Mine is running 10 deg. cooler with the W3690 than it was with the 3540. Ditto for the GPU. GTX 670 is cool and quiet, even under load.

I tried all the tricks here and from tech support. I finally got a render. The few times it was successful before, it took around five hours for a 1 1/2 hour project. Now it takes over eight.

Also, killing a lot of processes via msconfig per tech support has introduced a new issue. When I split the long vid into a condensed version less than 30 minutes long, I'm getting a loud burst of static on every audio track before every cut. That raw wav files are pristine, It's Vegas. Never had that before in ten years either.

Any ideas on the audio issue? Audio is just as important as the vid, if not more so.

Ver 12 is really screwed up, buggy, etc. Turned all these options on and off just to get a render that should be a few clicks is ABSURD.

Marc S wrote on 10/27/2012, 6:05 PM

I just edited my first project in V12 and things went fairly well except for the rendering. Something is definitely wrong.

daddysbrotherband wrote on 1/13/2013, 9:38 AM

For better or worse, this worked for me in conjunction with disabling GPU acceleration. It's just sad, we've been through three basically crippled versions of Vegas. I have a $8000 workstation - dual RAID1 SSD, 32gb Ram, 4+TB of RAID5 storage, 2x8way I7's at 3.3ghz, dual GTX580's and a CUDA card and I can only use about 10% of that capability. Honestly, I'd trade it all for a version of Vegas as stable as version 9.

Please, Sony, don't lose me as a customer. We've invested so much in one another.

jrobbins wrote on 1/16/2013, 9:01 AM

Just in case this might help someone....

I finally got around to using 12 and doing a VERY small 1 minute "trailer" type vid for work.... went to render it....and the audio was just all over the place... cutting out, playing audio in the wrong places.... all kinds of weirdness....

I set my dynamic preview RAM to 0 as suggested here... and turned of GPU Acceleration and everything rendered perfectly fine.....

Just wanted to share my experience in case it helps someone....

Thank you guys for the suggestions.... it save me LOTS of time trying to figure out why this was so messed up!

Laurence wrote on 1/16/2013, 9:53 AM

I just deleted this somewhat angry post. Basically what happened is I replaced a temp VO with the final pro one and Vegas 12 wouldn't render it. GPU was off and RAM preview memory was set to zero. Three reboots and 12 Vegas restarts later, I finally got off a successful render by switching to another project, getting to the first render screen on that, canceling out of it, reloading the problem project and at this point I could finally render it.

The next time I will do this process earlier. I sure do wish Vegas was more stable though.

mx1497 wrote on 1/17/2013, 9:09 AM

I had a project solely comprised of media generators on different tracks. It would hang @ 15% for a long time, but eventually render after a couple of hours. This doesn't happen with regular video clips.

Just wondering, for people who are getting hanging renders, how many of those have projects that use one or media generators. Maybe it's related or not - just wondering.

brant wrote on 1/21/2013, 2:43 PM

I was in the middle of a Render, 6%, and realized that I should have rendered the project to a different HD. (A faster one)
Clicked on "Cancel" button, (in the render window), and it hangs V12. In the Task manager, vegas120.exe shows no CPU usage.
What the heck???
"Cancel" doesn't work?
Now I have to End Task on Vegas. Not tried it more than once yet.

wslagter1 wrote on 3/21/2013, 10:49 PM

same render hanging problems with me
when does Sony listen and come up with a fix ???

Powerup777 wrote on 9/21/2013, 9:15 PM

The fix recommended above did work for me. From the main options under the video tab, I set the preview memory to zero AND turned of GPU acceleration. I can't believe (like others on this post) that I upgraded from 10 to 12 in order to address this problem and Sony did not. Yo- Sony- what's up?

Byron K wrote on 9/21/2013, 11:55 PM

What V12 build versions are you using?
I haven't upgraded to the latest build yet but version 12.670 seem to be working OK.

I can render w/ 12 multi-threads and for the heck of it cranked up my preview RAM to 10Gigs.

If you're using the latest build maybe try rolling back?

NickHope wrote on 9/22/2013, 12:18 AM

Some things for you to try jdatpslp...

1. As you have a .mov file in your project, roll back Quicktime to good old 7.6.2.
2. Experiment with the internal memory preferences, accessed by holding down <SHIFT> while opening the preferences.
3. Try using Debugmode Frameserver to frameserve to MeGUI and rendering there instead of using Sony's internal codecs. Help here (ignore all the stuff about AviSynth and deinterlacing).

sging1 wrote on 11/18/2013, 6:52 AM

I have just come over to Vegas and 12 was the first one I have ever used. I just spent a few weeks pulling together a project for a client and learning the program at the same time and to be fair I'm getting some really good quality work done.
However today was the day I was to render this first project and low and behold am getting the same issues. It froze after 8% then after a restart it froze after 26% then again it just froze after 76%. Then as a poster said below, the cancel button does not work and I have to crash out of it. I am going to try the tips below and will come back and update my post on the results.

wideseen wrote on 4/21/2014, 10:40 AM

I had Vegas crash as clockwork when rendering. I tried all the tricks and fixes posted. None worked. But then it dawned on me - what makes a computer halt inherently? Heat!

FIX:
I put a small block under my Thinkpad lifting up the left side where the cooler fan exhausts to maximize air currents ... and I have never had a crash since.

I installed a CPU temperature app and surely enough, upon rendering all 4 CPU's maxed out raising the temperature over the limit and a shutdown was inevitable. I contemplated something with an ice block and an external fan but heck, I stayed with the any-item-within-reach block as I don't use the PC anyway when it's fully occupied rendering.

dxdy wrote on 4/21/2014, 12:09 PM

And don't forget about dust. I just vacuumed out my desktop (take the covers off, clean all the filters, make sure the water-cooling radiator is clean) and was, as always, surprised at just how much the machine had accumulated over the winter.