JG? Are you rendering to AVI or straight to an MPG? - G

Is the file exceptionally large to which your clip refers? Traversing very large files can take lots of time. Many software applications have "watchdog timers" designed into them. That is, if the sw application believes that it is hung, it will take drastic measures to recover such as terminating threads, restarting itself, or exiting. Mind you, this is pure conjecture with regard to Vegas, as I do not know anything about how the software is architected.

If the video file is very large, try to break into several smaller files. It may solve the problem, or it may help localize the problem to a smaller area. Namely, Vegas may be choking on something in the video file itself.

OK, more about the video clips. The videos were shot on a mini dv cam, the files were extracted from the tapes using Microsoft Movie Maker. There are about 100 clips or so that are highlights of a football season.

At most the longest clip is 25 secs. I open the properties on a few of the clips and they are windows media audio/video files, at bit rate of 2079kbps, 640x480. And oh by the way the clips before I put them in the trimmer are no larger than 30mb.

Also, I have tried to render to avi and also mpeg-2, still no luck.

Am I missing something?

Why didn't you use Vegas VidCap? Why movie maker? - G

640x480

While I don't think the 640x480 is causing a problem, it is not the number I would expect for video captured from a DV tape. For NTSC, that resolution should be 720x480. So, something is not quite right with the video, but Vegas should still be able to handle it.

Can you post the VEG file somewhere? You don't have to post any media, but it would be interesting to look at the project structure and see if there is something that might cause a problem. You didn't mention still photos or other non-video media (text events, generated media, etc.).

When vegas is rendering and reaches the vid clips the rendering slows down almost to a standstill. When it rendering the effects, no problem.

"reaches the vid clips" makes me think you have something on the timeline besides video. If so, what?

I didn't read the whole thread, but did you mention which version of Vegas you are using? [edit -- I see you mentioned in your very first post that you are using Vegas 5, but not which version]. I ask because early version of Vegas 6 (and maybe some versions of Vegas 5 -- I can't remember) would definitely slow down and eventually stop when trying to render projects that contained dozens of high-resolution still photos. There were various workarounds (rendering the project in segments and then stitching the results together was one of them). Ultimately, the problem was fixed and does not exist, as far as I know, in Vegas 6.0d.

Anyway, if you can post the VEG file, which should be pretty small, I'll download it and take a look. If you don't want to make it public, send me an email and you can arrange to send it to me privately.

wmv files on the timeline are killer on render times and memory usage, as bad if not worse than HDV m2t in my experience. Also, the quality at 2Mbps at that size is probably much lower than dv avi.

The clips should be captured in dv avi for best Vegas operation and quality.

Grazie

I always use Vegas vid cap but our football coach doesn't have vegas so he used what was available to him, Windows Movie Maker.

JohnMeyer

I will post the veg file, can I do it here in this forum or do I need to send it to you in an email? I also have Vegas 5.0d. I did have one still pic in the project, its a png at about 600kb. I started trying to render in segments, but the first segment, which is only 1 min of the project, took 45 mins to render...talk about slow.

Vegas starts out fine rendering the backgrounds and overlays I used from digital juice but as soon as it gets to the first clip, the frame by frame numbers are way too slow.

Thanks to all for your assistance in the matter.

JG

You can post at this site:

YouSentIt

It is a free signup. You can send files up to 2GB to up to 25 people. The files only stay on the site for seven days. I have used it almost every day for the past two months -- great way to send even relatively small files like pictures without clogging up people's email boxes.

John

I will use usendit but I need your email address as well, don't I?

JG

I will use usendit but I need your email address as well, don't I?

No. Yousendit will give you a URL link to the file you upload to their site. Just copy that link and paste it here in your next post, or if you don't want to post it publicly, just copy it and paste it into an email to me. You can send me an email by clicking on my user name in this post.

For instance, here is a link to a short test file I sent to someone yesterday:

http://beta.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=B83BBC17449E9799

Normally when I post links in this forum, I make them "live" by adding some HTML code. However, you don't have to do that. Just copy and paste, as I did above. If you copy the above link, and then paste it into your browser's address bar, it will take you to the page where you can download my 3 MByte test file from my new film-to-video invention.

JM

Here is the link.

Thanks

http://download.yousendit.com/82966E3D1921F910

OK ... got the file ... opened in Vegas 6.0d (I could open it in 5.0d, which would be closer to what you have, but this is easier for me) ... here's what I'm finding ...

Project properties are standard NTSC DV (720x480, etc.) ...

I wrote some auditing scripts (which I've posted at VASST) that quickly scan through the entire project and look for things that can be accidentally changed, and which will really screw up render times (and video quality).

First of all, although this won't create your problem, you have a TON of short gaps and overlaps on track 4. I put this list at the end of this post.

Second, most of your video is in WMV format. I did a quick search of the forum, and there have been a few, but not many, reports of hangs or crashes when importing or rendering WMV files. It appears -- although I am not certain of this -- that Vegas may use code that comes with Windows for reading WMV files (although it uses its own code for rendering to this format). Therefore, one possible solution to the problem may be to upgrade to the latest Windows media player. What version are you using (open Media Player and then find the "About" dialog)?

Your music is all in WMA format, but I don't think that is an issue.

You have nothing applied in any of the track headers and all levels are 100%, so there is nothing going on there. No fX on any events, except for a few levels, and only on one or two. A total of four video and two audio tracks, with 206 events in total, most of them on track 4, your main video track.

However, when I try to run one of my auditing scripts, Vegas hangs ... hmmm ...

What's more, I just tried some other scripts and they work on all tracks except track 4 ... where they crash ... wait, they don't crash, they just take a really long time (minutes) ... except they ought to run in under one second ... this has nothing to do with the media itself, because I don't HAVE your media ... none of your events has more than one take ... you do have 30 items that are no longer used in the project ... what happens if I remove them from the project ... nope that didn't help ...

I just tried moving some media on the timeline, and Vegas is responding slowly ... I just selected all media on track 4 and pressed the DEL key ... it is taking over a minute for Vegas to respond ... I tried deleting one event from the beginning of the timeline and that deleted fairly quickly ... I put some of my own media in its place ... it too responds slowly when I grab and move it on the timeline ... I then started deleting events a few at a time until only three were left at the beginning of the timeline ... if I put my own media on the timeline while these three events were still there, it moves sluggishly when I grab and move it. Once I delete these three events, everything moves normally.

So, somehow, this VEG file gets Vegas into a state where, with more than one video event on a timeline, everything slows down.

Hmm ... I have some of my own wmv files ... what happens if I import them into my own project ? No, they import and move around just fine. What if I cut/paste your WMV events into my project? They move around just fine. Sooo ... What if I duplicate the track in your project? Nope ...

Even if I get it down to one track ... one of your text tracks that only has a few events, the timeline is still sluggish until I delete all but one event ... then things speed back up.

OK, something is corrupted, and I can't find it. However, since you have nothing going on in any of the track headers, I can copy/paste all events from each track into tracks in a new project, ripple them to the correct starting points, and create a new project. Try downloading this project:

Fixed Up Version

and see if it works better. If it does, give it a quick run-through to make sure everything is there and lined up correctly. If it is OK, I think you'll find that it will render VERY quickly.

Position	Name

00:00:25.02	GAP********

00:00:34.10	GAP********

00:00:51.08	GAP********

00:01:04.17	OVERLAP****

00:01:09.08	GAP********

00:01:27.13	OVERLAP****

00:01:42.21	GAP********

00:01:47.06	GAP********

00:01:59.18	GAP********

00:02:10.28	GAP********

00:02:20.27	GAP********

00:02:37.00	GAP********

00:02:55.09	OVERLAP****

00:03:16.04	GAP********

00:03:28.03	GAP********

00:03:35.16	GAP********

00:03:50.27	GAP********

00:04:04.21	GAP********

00:04:19.14	GAP********

00:04:28.11	GAP********

00:04:44.03	OVERLAP****

00:04:48.03	GAP********

00:05:06.29	GAP********

00:05:24.14	GAP********

00:05:28.12	GAP********

00:05:53.19	GAP********

00:05:59.02	GAP********

00:06:03.28	GAP********

00:06:10.14	GAP********

00:06:59.23	GAP********

00:07:10.21	GAP********

00:07:15.18	GAP********

00:07:36.29	GAP********

00:08:08.11	GAP********

00:08:52.00	GAP********

00:08:56.03	GAP********

00:09:00.07	GAP********

00:09:05.26	GAP********

00:09:11.06	GAP********

00:09:27.05	GAP********

00:09:36.07	GAP********

00:09:44.19	GAP********

00:09:52.11	OVERLAP****

00:10:01.06	GAP********

00:10:05.15	GAP********

00:10:24.26	OVERLAP****

00:10:34.05	GAP********

00:10:40.21	GAP********

00:10:46.26	OVERLAP****

00:10:55.13	GAP********

00:11:01.11	GAP********

00:11:13.08	GAP********

00:11:19.12	GAP********

00:11:34.07	GAP********

00:12:02.15	GAP********

00:12:15.18	GAP********

00:12:19.20	GAP********

00:12:23.28	GAP********

00:12:31.03	GAP********

00:12:36.19	GAP********

00:13:04.26	OVERLAP****

00:13:20.23	GAP********

00:13:31.15	OVERLAP****

00:13:38.16	GAP********

00:13:50.16	GAP********

00:13:56.06	GAP********

00:14:34.09	GAP********

00:14:52.06	GAP********

00:14:57.01	GAP********

00:15:03.11	GAP********

00:15:11.19	GAP********

00:15:21.25	GAP********

00:15:34.27	OVERLAP****

00:15:42.27	GAP********

00:16:09.19	GAP********

00:16:21.03	GAP********

00:16:33.09	GAP********

00:16:42.06	GAP********

00:16:46.03	GAP********

00:16:56.10	GAP********

00:17:03.10	GAP********

00:17:09.15	GAP********

00:17:22.18	GAP********

00:17:29.22	GAP********

00:17:39.22	GAP********

00:17:48.24	GAP********

00:18:03.09	GAP********

Wow John! I am very impressed by you methodical approach, knowledge, diagnostic tools, and your willingness to help. You are a great resource to this forum.

I am very impressed by you methodical approach, knowledge, diagnostic tools, and your willingness to help.

Thanks. Now lets see if the new VEG works ...

Vegas will crash or just disappear if you load too many m2t files. It can handle about 80 m2ts before it does crazy stuff like just disappearing from your screen.

No m2t files here; just WMV, WMA, and a few AVIs.

I've also seen a VEG file that exhibits this exact same symptom. I run a script on it and it finished in many minutes. Copied everything to a new project, run the same script, and it finished in a few seconds.

I run a script on it and it finished in many minutes. Copied everything to a new project, run the same script, and it finished in a few seconds.

Yup, that's exactly it. Also, it only seems to affect the video tracks, not the audio tracks. I've enlisted a few other people to look into this. In the meantime, I hope JazzyG has a chance to try out my "fixed" file. I'll bet his render absolutely flies -- there is pretty much nothing going on in the project -- just cuts-only, so all it has to do is read wmv and then encode to the appropriate format.

JM

I am at work, pulling a double, and won't be able to get to this until Sunday. I really appreciate what you (and others) are doing to help resolve my problem. As soon as I have an opportunity to check this out I will get back to let you know the results, more to follow...

JG

P.S. Did I say thanks?

John, I've used Copy/Paste into a new project and had to re-invoke 16:9 flags within Pan/Crop to eradicate an issue with 16:9 recognition flags. And as a consequence of what I've experienced, I'm just wondering that maybe some WMV errors/flags are now being "ignored" by Vegas when you copy/paste?

MSMM lets you capture in many formats. The Capture wizard gives the the initial options of:

#1 - WMV - paraphrasing here it says the best way to edit

#2 - DV-AVI - paraphrasing again it says for storage and printing back out. Nothing about editing!

#3 - Now this IS a drop down menu where there is a whole plethora of options.

John I'm starting to think that the WMV captured by the "coach", although nice and small, is responsible too. Maybe there IS something that has been "set" within the capture, and is making Vegas fall over, and you doing the Copy/Paste has released/removed, but at the very least is making Vegas ignore this flag/setting?

John, when you get a chance to see, just exactly what are the Media Properties of this stuff? What does the MEdProps Vegas Menu say - the second tab. And more to the point, do they change WHEN you copy/paste?

Only a thought ..

Grazie

JG . . sorry, but you could try and edit in MSMM? See if that flies? If ti doesn't then back to the drawing board! G

JG . . sorry, but you could try and edit in MSMM? See if that flies? If ti doesn't then back to the drawing board! G