Vegas crashing during renders...

Flicko.s in Cary wrote on 3/20/2014, 10:39 AM
I've been running Vegas for years and have a new problem. Vegas has been crashing when I render mpeg files. This machine has been running fine for almost a year...running Vegas Pro 11. Started crashing a few weeks ago. I've deleted and reinstalled Vegas and am now using the newest build (I think it's build 701).

I do 8mm film restorations and I'm editing quicktime files that come off my film capture device. I am using the mainconcept mpeg template but with the bitrate dialed back to 4 mbps. Does not always crash in the same point in the timeline either...

I rendered a quicktime 7 file last night and it rendered just fine...

I'm running an I7 machine with 16 GB ram...and a blackmagic intensity card...any ideas how to start troubleshooting this problem?

Comments

Flicko.s in Cary wrote on 3/20/2014, 11:12 PM
My file rendered a quicktime 7 fine...it also rendered a windows wmv file fine. will not render mpeg 2 or mp4 without crashing. Put the whole project on my other editing system and it rendered a mpeg2 fine....

Could it just be a problem with the codec on this sytem? Is there a way to replace/repair the main concept codec?
larry-peter wrote on 3/21/2014, 10:41 AM
Anytime a system (software/hardware) works and then stops working, I first look at what might have changed. Automatic updates, driver installations, etc. I would always attempt a system restore or reinstalling a working boot drive image before changing anything else or reinstalling particular software, but that's just me.

Other changes that can happen over time - excessive fragmentation of a drive, bad sector on render drive or a failing drive. Have you checked your Windows event logs to see if there are any new persistent errors or warnings? And a basic question - have you attempted your renders with GPU acceleration disabled?
Laurence wrote on 3/21/2014, 11:05 AM
Have you tried rendering to a different name or location? Sometimes there can be a file system error that needs a fresh start.
riredale wrote on 3/21/2014, 1:04 PM
My first instinct is excessive temperature. Rendering MPEG2 or AVCHD really pushes the limits for the processor chip, and I am always amazed how quickly the heat sink attracts dust. Almost as bad as a vacuum cleaner.

It's also the easiest thing to check. Just remove one of the side panels of the PC so that inside temps are considerably cooler, then render again and see if it makes it. If so, get out the vacuum.
Flicko.s in Cary wrote on 3/21/2014, 3:50 PM
"And a basic question - have you attempted your renders with GPU acceleration disabled? "

Sometimes basic is best with me....I shut off the GPU acceleration and my render completed. Did two different renders so far this afternoon! Maybe that was the problem.

Thanks for the tip....
larry-peter wrote on 3/21/2014, 5:48 PM
Glad it worked, but it's a sad solution. Especially if it was working for you previously. If you had been rendering MPEG2/4 with GPU accel. on, then something still must have changed. Possibly that mysterious Heisenberg module buried somewhere in Vegas' code that occasionally throws quantum uncertainty into workflows.

Maybe it will be sorted out in 13.
ushere wrote on 3/21/2014, 8:49 PM
@ atom12 - and maybe it wont ;-(

it appears that various 'quirks', and i call them quirks simply because they happen to some people (or rather setups), but not to everyone, so really can't be classified as bugs, rear their ugly heads time and time again yet scs seem to gaily ignore them and work on giving us more useless and unwanted gimmicks rather than fixing what's known to be broken, and what's known to be amiss.

whilst this might appear to be trashing vegas it really isn't intended that way - i have, like many people, been using vegas from it's earliest inception, and commercially since 4, but with every release, and every growth in capability, vegas has lost some of its reliability, stability and robustness. i'm sure this has a lot to do with scs having to keep up with the never ending stream of codecs being released, etc., however, one feels that all that has really only ever been tacked on to a very old code base, not to mention an outdated vfw engine.

if vegas is to survive, and i hope it does, it really needs to stop looking for gimmicks, whether it be 3d, cloud, etc., and FIX its core components so that they actually work as they should.

though i still use vegas commercially i no longer recommend it to people -if asked, and i regularly am, i simply say download the trial versions and see which ACTUALLY works for you - i no longer want to be an apologist for vegas's foibles....
Laurence wrote on 3/21/2014, 8:50 PM
For what it's worth, you take a slight but noticeable quality hit with GPU acceleration and most of us see very little speed improvement. My GPU acceleration would stay off all the time even if it wasn't more stable for the quality difference alone.
larry-peter wrote on 3/22/2014, 12:53 PM
@Laurence,
I have seen the same, and wasn't sure if it was universal. I notice quite a difference especially in text and generated media. I have one system that handles GPU acceleration well, and one that doesn't. I leave it off in both because of those differences.
VMP wrote on 3/22/2014, 1:36 PM
These are the things that I came across when Vegas halted on renders:

- Too many audio events with Fx applied to them.
- Images with too high resolution.
- Broken audio files
- Some other media that Vegas is not happy with.
- Hardware error (overheating CPU) which caused the system just to shut down during renders (very scary!).

Solutions what fixed the problem.

- This is something that I usually do. First render all audio tracks to one track (call it master audio) then solo it and then render the scene. This also speeds up Vegas.

This way Vegas doesn't need to read and render the separate audio events. This is also good to monitor the waveforms of your final audio on the timeline and check
the volume level.

- Hardware overheating issue: I have cleaned and re-pasted the cooling fan on the CPU and placed two extra fans in the case.

- Faulty events & media: Save project in another name and remove the media or events on the timeline one by one and check if it renders then.
- Disabling the Ram preview also helps.

- Tweaking the GPU render options.
- Try another render codec.
- If no codec works and you can't render at all. You could render out the timeline as an image sequence (highest quality) render the audio separately then merge them using another Vegas project timeline to create your intended file.

- The most difficult option would be (depending on your project and track FX's used) transferring all the track by track media events and instances one by one to a new Vegas project file. Then saving all the FX chains as preset and re-creating the timeline and structure on a new Vegas project.

VMP