Vegas 8.0c crashes on 2 different computers

marcel-vossen wrote on 2/25/2009, 3:47 PM

Hey there.

I have prepared a marvelous video that previews the way I want it to look in Vegas 8.0c on a vista 64 bit system. I also use magic bullet and some Newblue plugins in it.

I can say I use pretty complex projects with sometimes 10 layers on top of each other , but they are all only 640x480 sources really.

My problem is that Vegas 8.0c is totally instable , not only on one computer but on 2 different computers! I used to work with 7 and that never had any issues. My PCs both run Vista 64 bits. During editing sometimes when i drag and drop something Vegas 8.0 crashes, or I get all kinds of weird errors like "the undo buffer could not be written, or something like that. This particular error didnt kill the program right away, but after I got it I felt something was wrong because I sometimes got a red preview window instead of a proper preview and after I saved my project, it keeps crashing Vegas with everything I do. I saved the entire project and opened it on the other computer and I have the same issues there, crashes after opening or when editing in the timeline, crashes when I render with 'Unknown error' etc
I also see something completely different in the preview window when i start rendering, effects that are not showing in the final movie that are there in the preview etc.

I worked the entire day on this and I'm getting pretty worried about vegas 8.0, it just doesnt seem to be a stable product, or maybe i am using it in the wrong way, but all i know is that 7 was a dream compared to this nightmare.

Does anyone have the same experience with crashes and other issues? This is not the first time I have trouble like this with 8.0c, I cant imagine others are working problem-free?

Is there a way to repair a corrupt project?

I did make a few replacements of media files because I found out they were on a network drive, I copied them to the local disk and replaced the link in the project media, could that be an issue?

Thanks a lot!
Marcel

Comments

srode wrote on 2/25/2009, 6:30 PM

I only have problems with crashing when rendering some formats - AVCHD 1920x1080 is one of those I can't reneder with - putting together a project I have never had it crash - but I'm running XP64 - don't have any experience with Vista OS

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/25/2009, 7:07 PM

I normally don't have any crashes in Vegas 8 on XP & on my wife's vista home premium laptop.

But it could be the 64bit version. How does 8.1 work?

xberk wrote on 2/26/2009, 1:56 AM

The issue is very likely some media that Vegas cannot handle. You may lack the proper codex for that media or the media itself may be corrupt. Narrow down the problem. Section off the project to try to locate the problem. I once had weird behavior like this and found it was an "audio" file (mp3) that I'd downloaded from an internet source. It played fine in Window Media Player but it caused really weird behaviors in Vegas. .

For me, 8.0c is every bit as stable as 7.0 -- even more so and I run on Vista 64.

farss wrote on 2/26/2009, 2:24 AM

"Does anyone have the same experience with crashes and other issues? This is not the first time I have trouble like this with 8.0c, I cant imagine others are working problem-free?"

Yes,
try reducing the complexity of your project. For example MB seems to be a real hog. Try removing it, render the whole project without it to a simple file and then apply your MB FXs to that. You could also try splitting up your 10 layers and rendering groups of those to codec that supports transparency and then compositing those files in a new project.

I don't have many problems with V8.0b but I think I've learned to avoid the things that bring it to its knees. I have seen a very large project with 100s of tracks that are just crash and lockup central so you're not alone.

"Is there a way to repair a corrupt project?"

Try Save As. Try the various variants that has to offer.

Bob.

marcel-vossen wrote on 2/26/2009, 2:50 AM

Thanks a lot for all your help!

I've now taken all the files into one single directory , replaced them in the project, downsized the stills to smaller versions (1280x720 max) , re-installed the entire Vegas software and all plugins, rebooted my system several times etc.

It still tends to crash when I scroll to fast through the media pool , and rendering will get me to 25% .
When I render at least it doesnt crash immediately now, so that is a small progress. :(

I will try some different variations in rendering outputs and see if i can finish this project for now but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to learn how Adobe AE and PP work, for I have NEVER witnessed Photoshop or Illustrator crashing on me like this. Instability is just evidence of buggy software if you ask me....why not produce a message that says, this media file is corrupt , please use another one?

xberk wrote on 2/26/2009, 9:48 AM

I'm gonna have to learn how Adobe AE and PP work, for I have NEVER witnessed Photoshop or Illustrator crashing on me like this.

Oh. Believe me Photoshop can crash. I have yet to meet a bullet proof application that deals with images. The quote below comes from Adobe's website.

"Different factors can cause system errors, including conflicts among device drivers, software, and hardware, and corrupt elements in specific files. Although a system error may occur only when you work with Photoshop, Photoshop may not necessarily be the cause--it may be the only application that uses enough memory or processor cycles to expose the problem."

marcel-vossen wrote on 2/26/2009, 2:08 PM

Yeah I know, all software can crash, but I can't even remember if Photoshop ever crashed on me, it's that stable. And what I am experiencing now is so severe, I have to be careful which button I push inside of Vegas 8.0 not to crash it...I hope that it's something I did wrong or maybe its my particular combination of Vegas, Vista 64 and projects with a lot of greenscreen layers. But the stories I read on this forum do not comfort me at all...hearing of people that have to render projects 2 minutes at a time in order to have LESS crashes? Maybe I am expecting too much but shouldnt you be able to render at least a 10 minute video without having to built in extra anti-crash policies into your workstream? It just sounds silly to me...I never had that with Vegas 7.

Xander wrote on 2/26/2009, 2:26 PM

I use Vegas 8c on Vista 64 HP SP1. I never have crashes whilst editing. I will have crashes whilst rendering though.

Once you save the project, close it and create a new project with the same project settings. Drop your saved project as a nested veg and then render. This will take double to triple the time to render, but it probably won't crash Vegas. This is the method I use on troublesome projects and have always got a successful render.

Also, if you are using .m2t's, be very aware of errors within the stream. I had one, which I had rendered to a Cineform AVI, and even though the render didn't crash, I ended up with a long period of black in the rendered output even though Vegas preview of the Cineform was fine. There was one frame of black in the Cineform avi file at the place of .m2t error. Anyways, I ran the .m2t through MPEGrepair and produced a new Cineform intermediate. No black frames during the new render.
Edit: The above error wasted 70 hours of rendering time!

cliff_622 wrote on 2/26/2009, 7:33 PM

Going through these same frustrations right now. My project previws fine. I have 2 AVCHD tracks and 3 HDV tracks. 5.1 sound and 32 bit color.

Tried tried rendering the same exact project 7 sererate time with various core thread and RAM configs. (I got a Q6600 quad)

Final fix was killing my quad in my BIOS and making it look like a dual core and setting my RAM prieview to 512megs.

Thank God it worked,....nothing else would work.

This constant wrestling with Vegas 8C is making me want to claw my face off.

This is a regular issue for me whem I render AVCHD.

Is 8D out there in the works?

CT

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/26/2009, 8:06 PM

if you scroll through media pool & it crashes, do you have thumbnails on? It really sounds to me like xberk is right. I've done some relatively heavy stuff with vegas 8 in HD & DV & never had it crash like you're saying EXCEPT when I had a bad piece of media. Always crashed when that was involved. Much more then 10 layers and normally mixing media.

i c e wrote on 2/26/2009, 8:23 PM

Hey I didn't read everything but I thought I woudl just chime in.

I did have many of the same infurrriating errrors, hanging and crashes. I felt like i was driving a car with three wheels down mount everest. After doing like a million things to fix it I think the one that nailed it was the fact that i was using Mpeg2 files that, I guess ,it simply cannot , in any way, handle.

I now use peachrocks sweet program to render all my files to AVI and now am running seemlessly on all my projects that are quite large and complex becuase I have no idea what I am doing. hehehehehe.

Best wishes with all your lovely errors, hope you can nail em,

Josh

Oh and, I use Vista 64 bit. adn 8.0c (gave up on 8.1) and to be honest i kinda dig it.

marcel-vossen wrote on 2/28/2009, 3:11 AM

Thanks all you guys for your input, at the moment I was successfull rendering this project, stripped from all cool Magic Bullet and Newblue effects on the 8.1 version ....which I would love to use if I wouldnt have extremely slow previewing on there.

Can ANYONE tell me with which (compressed) format you get fast results on a 8.1 version? Did you guys install any third party 64 bit codecs or is that included in 8.1 for some formats?

I wouldnt mind just converting my material to another format if that would solve my problems with the crashes because that is seriously making my Mojo disappear...

I read your comment ICE, this could be the case with my Canon EOS 5D mark II files, which is a known error, so I guess I will have to covert those with proxy stream to a better format, but which one should I pick? And is it better to use another batchconverter for that purpose?

But anyway in this project, the one that is killing me , all files are coming from a cheap Canon photocamera and are 640x480 WMV, I am pretty sure this material is not the issue here because I have been using it for a year, with my friend Stevie Riks from Youtube, you can all check out what stuff I am using it for at :

www.youtube.com/caroline372

Hopefully you'll all have a laugh!

Cheers!

farss wrote on 2/28/2009, 3:44 AM

WMV is a really bad codec to have on the timeline. How bad it is depends on how it was encoded e.g. interval between keyframes. If this is from some camera recording it then probably the interval is not so great as to cause horrendous problems.

I've generally found the Sony YUV codec to be very good. Chroma sampling is 4:2:2 so quality is high without file sizes getting too large. The 8bit version is all you need use. It is free, it comes with Vegas.

Bob.

marcel-vossen wrote on 2/28/2009, 2:28 PM

Thanks Bob,

Do you mean 'bad' in the sense that it can crash your system, or just bad in quality ? I am now working with Canon EOS 5D mark II footage and I rendered all the files into 1280x720 WMV , put them on the timeline but this is again causing my Vegas 8.0 to crash.
My Vegas 8.1 works but is extremely slow in previewing.

I will take your advice and try to convert to Sony YUV, lets hope this doesnt crash my system at the converting stage already... :(

I also think I'm gonna try Vista 32 bits even if I have 6 Gigabytes installed, stability is the main thing until they get it all right with the software...