VEGAS 17 (Version 321) keeps freezing and crashing

Fiola wrote on 10/4/2019, 11:39 AM

Hello Magix, long time no see :),

I have to say, this is the first time for a long time I need to express how great improvements you actually did. VEGAS 17 is far better in performance. I can easily edit & finish 4K projects with much ease. I see timeline performance improvements. No major lags between cuts even for H264 files. I cannot be happier about this outcome more.

Except one thing. Which never changed since I uploaded my video dated more than 1 year ago in VEGAS 16 here:

In this specific video, you can see in the end absolutely random crash (freeze of the program), which is now more than doubled in VEGAS 17. So on one hand, VEGAS 17 have great performance, but I need to restart it like 90 times during any project I edit. This behaviour can be replicated on every machine we have in our studio. Even on Trial version of VEGAS 17. AMD systems, Intel systems - always the same thing. It doesn't matter which Windows 10 version we are using. We tried that a lot. Newest drivers, newers codecs, or fresh install, older, newer. It is always the same. It keeps crashing. Not just us, but many users - as I said. Even on Trial and fresh installed PC.

You start edit video.
Cut it for like example 3 minutes.
Then in one out of 20-ish playback preview ... you hit spacebar for playback and you get stuck your image on some frame.
You will see that preview window is freezed (you see dots loading probably next frame - which will never happen) -> (....)
During that time, you can actually save your project. You hear audio. And preview on timeline is still going without any video preview.
Once you will try to stop playback preview - and these dots are still frozen - you get Crash.

We called it in the team "MERCIFUL CRASH", since when you work around that, you can actually learn to hit CTRL+S and then smashing X or Kill software from Task manager and load-up your project to continue work. Problem is, when you need do that every few minutes.

Once again: I strongly believe, this has to be unmanaged exception. It's dated since VEGAS 15, VEGAS 16 intensify that behaviour with "MERCIFUL CRASH" (you can save project before crash!), a then in VEGAS 17 is this behavior upped to the max. I keep telling myself, that at least we have smooth playback now. That's only thing keeping me sane on this... :)

For sake of the argument, I will update here my specification:

Windows 10.0.18362
Intel Core i9-9900K, 3,6GHz
32 GB DDR4 RAM
RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
2TB NVMe + 1 TB NVMe storage

NVIDIA Driver: Studio Driver, 431.86

So, that should be covered... or.. we can even add this AMD build we did for VEGAS to tryout performance:

Windows 10.0.18362
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
32 GB DDR4 RAM
AMD Radeon Nitro RX 5700 XT 8 GB
1 TB NVMe + 2 TB HDD 7200rpm

With newest catalyst drivers.

Same result with random freezing and crashing.

Lastly, but not last, here is the MediaInfo for one of the videos which happen to crash the preview. But it's more like it crashes randomly, it's not only H264. But since I am editing most of the H264 videos, that's keeping to crash most of the time.

Format                      : MPEG-4
Format profile              : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                    : mp42 (isom/mp42)
File size                   : 15.3 GiB
Duration                    : 54 min 31 s
Overall bit rate            : 40.2 Mb/s
Recorded date               : 2019
Encoded date                : UTC 2019-10-04 14:44:26
Tagged date                 : UTC 2019-10-04 14:44:26

Video
ID                          : 1
Format                      : AVC
Format/Info                 : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile              : High@L5.1
Format settings             : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC      : Yes
Format settings, Reference : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP        : M=1, N=30
Codec ID                    : avc1
Codec ID/Info               : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                    : 54 min 31 s
Source duration             : 54 min 31 s
Bit rate                    : 40.0 Mb/s
Width                       : 3 840 pixels
Height                      : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio        : 16:9
Frame rate mode             : Variable
Frame rate                  : 58.845 FPS
Minimum frame rate          : 3.935 FPS
Maximum frame rate          : 63.785 FPS
Original frame rate         : 60.000 FPS
Standard                    : PAL
Color space                 : YUV
Chroma subsampling          : 4:2:0
Bit depth                   : 8 bits
Scan type                   : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)          : 0.082
Stream size                 : 15.2 GiB (100%)
Source stream size          : 15.2 GiB (100%)
Title                       : VideoHandle
Encoded date                : UTC 2019-10-04 14:44:26
Tagged date                 : UTC 2019-10-04 14:44:26
Color range                 : Limited
Color primaries             : BT.601 NTSC
Transfer characteristics    : BT.470 System M
Matrix coefficients         : BT.601
mdhd_Duration               : 3271351
Codec configuration box     : avcC

Audio
ID                          : 2
Format                      : AAC LC
Format/Info                 : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                    : mp4a-40-2
Duration                    : 54 min 31 s
Source duration             : 54 min 31 s
Bit rate mode               : Constant
Bit rate                    : 192 kb/s
Nominal bit rate            : 96.0 kb/s
Channel(s)                  : 2 channels
Channel layout              : L R
Sampling rate               : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                  : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode            : Lossy
Stream size                 : 75.4 MiB (0%)
Source stream size          : 75.4 MiB (0%)
Title                       : SoundHandle / System sounds
Encoded date                : UTC 2019-10-04 14:44:26
Tagged date                 : UTC 2019-10-04 14:44:26
mdhd_Duration               : 3271275

Let me know, if I can help more with debugging.

But I think I pointed out satisfying information for smashing this bug out of the VEGAS once and for all.

Thank you!

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Comments

joseph-desaavedra wrote on 10/8/2019, 3:46 PM

@Fiola We are testing this.

What happens with...

"It sounds strange but could you close your File Explorer in the default layout? Perhaps on some systems there is an interaction between File Explorer and Preview or other internal operations... some internal tests have shown some conflicts. Please give us some feedback. Thx"

I did finish the one video project ... without ANY CRASH ... I dont want to jinx it ... but oh my god! Could it be?!

I will be monitoring this through tomorrow and be back to you ASAP.

was it the file explorer thing that "might" have stabilized you? I am going to be trying a number of things on this weeks project, Ill do that first if there is a possibility..No crash during edit would have me dancing in the street plus it would give developers a threat to pursue.

Fiola wrote on 10/8/2019, 7:07 PM

@Fiola We are testing this.

What happens with...

"It sounds strange but could you close your File Explorer in the default layout? Perhaps on some systems there is an interaction between File Explorer and Preview or other internal operations... some internal tests have shown some conflicts. Please give us some feedback. Thx"

I did finish the one video project ... without ANY CRASH ... I dont want to jinx it ... but oh my god! Could it be?!

I will be monitoring this through tomorrow and be back to you ASAP.

was it the file explorer thing that "might" have stabilized you? I am going to be trying a number of things on this weeks project, Ill do that first if there is a possibility..No crash during edit would have me dancing in the street plus it would give developers a threat to pursue.

Yes. Actually, it could be the file explorer tab, which did it. But I am not sure if I have just pure luck now, or it's placebo effect. We are still testing it. And we will through the day.

joseph-desaavedra wrote on 10/8/2019, 7:27 PM

well going to start an edit in a few and was thinking of what to try next. will give it a shot and record. also want to try proxy.

joseph-desaavedra wrote on 10/9/2019, 1:41 AM

well mine continues to crash, getting rid of the file explorer did nothing.. hope your luck continue mine ran out

Fiola wrote on 10/9/2019, 5:44 AM

well mine continues to crash, getting rid of the file explorer did nothing.. hope your luck continue mine ran out

Close also the Project Media tab ...

joseph-desaavedra wrote on 10/9/2019, 9:06 AM

are you dropping the media directly from your desktop then into the the timeline?

Fiola wrote on 10/10/2019, 4:07 PM

are you dropping the media directly from your desktop then into the the timeline?

Directly from Windows Explorer :)... From one screen into timeline.

joseph-desaavedra wrote on 10/10/2019, 7:45 PM

I remember reading that doing that would destabilize in older versions. Actually I did proxy and was free of crashing last night for the first time since getting version 17.

Apparently problems with NVDEC (NVIDIA video decoder) when too many video streams are being decoded simultaneously. I have only done one video with proxy so I will need to make a few more to be sure. The downside is that it takes my machine a couple hours to pre-render all source files before I start my edit. I spent a lot of money on this machine just to NOT have to do that but at least it is looking like I got a temp fix till that work the issue out. I usually have three primary video stream besides text when I do an edit.

So you are still stable dumping your files like you do?

j.razz wrote on 10/22/2019, 5:49 PM

I too am having this issue. I've tried removing the explorer and project files windows, setting so4 plugins to FALSE, and throwing salt over my shoulder. The only two workarounds I found is to go back to 16 or render proxy files. I hope this is fixed soon!

joseph-desaavedra wrote on 10/24/2019, 5:51 PM

I too am having this issue. I've tried removing the explorer and project files windows, setting so4 plugins to FALSE, and throwing salt over my shoulder. The only two workarounds I found is to go back to 16 or render proxy files. I hope this is fixed soon!

well they are working on it, proxy is the only thing that has given results, it would even crash a little in 16, proxy brings it down to almost nothing. As far as the file explorer mentioned he is made no difference. Crashing is pretty random too, tried all the vodo fixes and worked through the trouble shooting guide too. good luck.

NickHope wrote on 12/2/2019, 10:47 AM

@Fiola How is VP17 stability for you now? Is it still helping to close the Vegas Explorer and/or Project Media window?

There's another thread here about VP17 crashes that is worth reading along with this one.

Fiola wrote on 12/2/2019, 11:40 AM

Hello @NickHope... unfortunately no. It's slightly better. I am trying to get together report with usage. It seems to be true, that crashes are less often when these are off. But they are still happening the same way. For example: editing H264 4K video... pushing spacebar ... and playback freezes with dots as neverending loading... :/ I am trying to stop "arguing" here... and just make it work somehow. But I will try to provide more data on that.

Also: I have newest VEGAS version. And the stability is almost the same as previous one.

Grazie wrote on 12/2/2019, 11:58 AM

@Fiola - Are you running any Anti Virus S/w when in a VP17 session?

Fiola wrote on 12/2/2019, 12:14 PM

@Grazie Nope. Just nice and clear Windows 10 and its Defender :).

Grazie wrote on 12/2/2019, 12:39 PM

@Fiola - Hmm... Can you watch Windows Task Manager and see what’s drawing POWER?

FelixTomtom wrote on 12/4/2019, 2:09 AM

I had this in Vegas 15, updated to Vegas 17 this weekend and Saturday i almost thought the random crashes were gone. The first 4 hours of editing were fine. Then it crashed, working on the same project, the same files (multicamera, so nothing about file formats changed during editing), the same FX etc.
This happens on my machine at home (Intel i7, nVidia GTX1050, 16 Gig, very clean Win 10, Windows Antivirus) and on my Dell Notebook at work (i7, Intel Onboard Graphics, 16 Gig, Win10, Sophos).

With 15 i tried a lot of different solutions and settings i found in this forum, older and newer drivers, they all didn't help.
I got used to pressing Ctrl+S after every action i do in Vegas and sometimes the crash is merciful to me as well :)

I will close the Explorer and Project Media windows and let you know if it still happens.

Grazie wrote on 12/4/2019, 2:21 AM

@Fiola and @FelixTomtom - I've been having this on one Project that I'd allowed five 30p Events into the 60p Project. Whilst high speed scrubbing I noticed some Frame confusion, almost like INTERLACE frames trying to catch up . . hmmm... I then did a FPS search and there they were five 30p Events. A quick CONFORM/render to 60p cured the whiteout/crashing. I'm just saying this to see if this could help you guys. Yes, I know VP SHOULD gulp down mix FPS, but why not get in front of the BUS! 😉

FelixTomtom wrote on 12/4/2019, 3:12 AM

@Grazie - Thanks for mentioning that, i tend to have different framerates in my projects (slomo-events) and in this weekends case framerates were not identical too, will check that.