Vegas freezes when rendering to MPEG-2

jpottenger wrote on 1/4/2010, 8:35 AM

I have a 3 camera multi-cam edit completed in Vegas using the raw AVCHD files from 3 Panasonic HMC150 cameras. 2 cameras were set for 24p 720 and one was set for 24p 1080 (by accident). However the edit went smoothly and is ready to render out for SD DVD delivery. However when rendering to MPEG-2 Vegas crashes.

It seems to be doing this at different frames each time I try to render out... so I don't think its a problem with my source footage. I'm using a BRAND NEW (less than a week old) Windows 7 Professional 64-bit system with screaming fast intel i7 processors running off a raid-0 from 2 solid state hard drives with 6 GB of RAM so It shouldn't be my computer. Running Vegas 9.0c for 64-bit.

I've tried both constant and variable bit rates both with audio and without audio and all result in a crash.

Anyone know what I should try to fix this? Is it a bug, or something I should check in my settings somewhere?

Comments

xberk wrote on 1/4/2010, 10:05 AM

Tell us more.
Are you new to Vegas? Have you done this workflow before with success?
Can you render other projects to mpeg without a problem? How long is this piece? Were things working and then suddenly stopped working?

One thing to try is to do a fresh download of 9.0c - then de-install and re-install Vegas. This gives you a clean start in case anything in Vegas is corrupted.

If you are sure the Vegas install is OK then try rendering out sections. You may find some problem media somewhere by doing this. It can even be audio.

IT could also be some system conflict (drivers or codec) or registry problem. I've had to completely redo my OS to fix certain Vegas problems. But since your system is new this is less likely but also since it is new it might be easy to redo before you get it fully loaded up. This is, of course, a last resort but something everyone should be prepared to do.

jpottenger wrote on 1/4/2010, 11:03 AM

I'm been with Vegas since version 5.0... in the past it was a bug related thing with constant vs. variable bit rates.

The Install should be good since I literally installed windows 7, and then Vegas 9.0c and 1 day later ran into this problem.

I have rendered out using this same work flow before so I know it works from a workflow standpoint (I did it on my other Windows 7 system yesterday).

The video is 1 hour and 41 minutes long. I tried rendering out the first half, and then the 2nd half, same problem. I tried rendering it on my other computer that worked for the other video render and it crashed it there too. I would assume that means I have a corrupt file some where?

Since posting my first post I was able to render out a "NTSC DV" file in 29.97p and make a DVD from that, so at least I found a temporary work around, but I'd love to know what the problem could have been or report the bug if I found one.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/4/2010, 11:16 AM

Hi Jpottenger,

I've experienced similar problems, and my solution was to do the memory flag mod for the Vegas exe file. You can read more about it here. and disregard the whole dll stuff, because that shouldn't actually make any difference, just the vegas exe.

memory mod thread

Dave

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/4/2010, 11:27 AM

also, you're shooting yourself in the foot a bit there, when rendering to NTSC DV file - you're cutting out a lot of color information because you're making a file that's 4:2:0 out of one that's been rendered to a file that's 4:1:1.

So effectively you're ending up with a file that has a color resolution of 4:1:0

A better workaround would be to region out your project and render by region with a small amount of overlap. to the desired MPEG2 settings, etc... then take all those MPEG2 files and put them sequentially on your T/L and do a no recompress render by using the same setting you used to render those and you should end up with a stitched mpeg2 file that isn't so crippled. The key for the no re-compress render is that you need to be sure to make it exactly the same bitrate, framerate, resolution, etc... settings as the files that you rendered out, and then make sure that 2 pass encoding is disabled for the no-recompress render.

Also, no reason that I can imagine why you would render to 29.97 if you're shooting all 24p. You're just going to make a file that's more work to encode. make sure you match your project settings to your media ( can be done from a small folder icon next to presets in your project properties ).

Dave

jpottenger wrote on 1/5/2010, 5:50 AM

Thanks Dave,

I've been using Vegas for a long time but never knew about the stitching option. I'll have to try that! Yeah the 29 frame rate and DV file were major compromises but at the time I didn't know what else to do. : / Thanks for the tips.

FrigidNDEditing - I'll check you're link ... thanks too for the tip.

ChipGallo wrote on 1/5/2010, 6:18 AM

The memory mod to vegas90.exe fixed my render problem last night. Last week I activated my new platinum support in order to troubleshoot a similar render issue, so I wish I had done my research then.

If this >2GB switch can resolve render difficulties, why doesn't Sony support staff give it out? For those of us on project deadlines, it allows us to get past the emergency.

Anyway, thanks to Dave for sharing. Some of the results will be posted to vimeo/chipgallo in the near future.