Vegas can't handle lots of m2t clips at once!

Laurence wrote on 4/18/2006, 10:42 AM

If I wasn't already bald I would be pulling my hair out in frustration over this one:

Vegas can't seem to handle lots of small m2t clips on a timeline all at once.

Thus my approach of capturing with HDVSplit, generating proxies with Gearshift, editing these proxies, then "shifting gears" back for the final render simply won't work.

If I was capturing one or two large m2t files with Vegas rather than multiple scene separated m2t clips with HDVSplit this wouldn't be a problem so I can see why it hasn't been pointed out before.

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what to do right now. My 3.06 P4 isn't really up to editing with Cineform and for a current project I have five or six hours worth of scene separated m2t footage and Gearshift proxies sitting on a hard drive ready to edit. It looks like the approach I planned on isn't going to work!

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johnmeyer wrote on 4/19/2006, 4:04 PM

I never did get an answer on what version of Vegas is being used. I know from something I read several months back that Sony has improved the handling of "native" HDV files (m2t) since Vegas 6 was first introduced. If you are not already using 6.0d, I'd definitely suggest that you upgrade.

riredale wrote on 4/19/2006, 4:09 PM

John, 6d.

So I guess my best bet is to capture to disk using HDVSplit. Then I GearShift render into widescreenDV and Cineform. At that point I can just throw the original m2t clips away.

Laurence wrote on 4/19/2006, 6:57 PM

I have been using Vegas 6d since it came out.

Laurence wrote on 4/20/2006, 4:18 PM

Just an update:

I have two current open projects. One is a local art piece with about six hours of footage and one is the short and sweet wedding of my best friend. I just converted all the footage on the longer piece to Cineform AVIs, but when I got to the shorter piece, I noticed it was only about 45 clips and it will work just fine (being less than 90) with the Gearshift/HDVSplit short m2t clips approach so I left it alone. Now at least I know what parameters I'm dealing with. I know not to put more than around 80 m2t clips on a Vegas timeline at once.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/23/2006, 7:33 AM

Unfortunately, the whole story is not new at all. Anly some month after the launch of Vega 6, this problem was reported in our German spoken Vegas forum. The limit was identified somewhere between 60 to 80 m2t files - then the page file climbs up dramatically, until Vegas crashes. Where the limit is,depends on your machine and your RAM.

With Vegas 6d it has become a little bit better - but even here the NLE crashes at 100 or 150 m2t files.

Well, we have reported that to the Medision team 10 month ago. But it became clear that the recommendation is to work with the intermediate codec (Cineform is fine, but also the Canopus HQ works fine with Vegas). When you do so, you avoid the issue with the page file - and these codecs allow better preview capabilities.

In addition, it is not true that you will loose significant quality when you use the Intermediate instead of the native m2t file. I have tested that in some detail. The opposit is true. If you have to render m2t files more then one time, the quality drop is higher, compard with the workflow where you render m2t -> intermediate -> final product.

Originally, I have published the results here:
http://videotreffpunkt.com/tutorials/Intermediates/Intermediates%20Part%201.html

I think that Vegas7 will be better here. But in the meantime one possible way is to use Gearshift (or other tools) to render to the intermediates - and cut the intermediates.