Vegas pro 17. Import file : No audio track on most, no video on one

Marty111 wrote on 10/3/2019, 6:08 PM

Good evening Gentlemen!
I'm using Vegas pro 17 now, on Windows 10, and it doesn't properly import files to the timeline. For most imported files, it doesn't display a audio track (that is a minor problem because I won't be using the audio from these tracks, but that's just strange). More importantly, I have a file for which the video track is present, but black, both in the preview window and in the timeline. This particular file reads well on mpchc in my windows 10 computer, and in Vegas 15 on my windows 7 computer. Here are the file's properties :

Video Xvid 704x400 25fps 1125kbps [V mpeg4 advanced simple profile, yuv420p, 704x400, 1125 kbs]
Audio Dolby AC3 48000Hz stereo 192kbps [A ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 192 kbs]

(Last xvid codec is installed and the other imported xvid files don't have this problem)

Has anyone encountered this problem before?
Thanks if you can help.

Edit : That's weird, I tried with another installation of the exact same windows 10 and Vegas pro 17 I have on another ssd, and this time I can read the file. Still no audio track though...

Edit 2 : The absence of soundtrack concerns only *.avi files and *.ts files Mp4 are fine.

Edit 3 : What are these colored squares preview bugs ? Never had them in windows 7 with Vegas pro 15 :

The bugs appear when you zoom in and out with the mouse scrolling button on the timeline, they are everywhere, make it pretty annoying to edit. CPU, GPU, Disk and Ram aren't even overloaded, they work at 3 % or something.
They even appear with preview/half settings!

Edit 4 : I think I know why. Before i used only mp4 files downloaded from youtube, but the files I am using now are from documentaries, they are avi files that I got from torrents. Damned it's not going to be fun, I have to learn to use xmedia recode properly, and that's provided it's any good at converting these avi (all xvid I think) files to mp4 files that are suitable for the capricious Vegas preview.
That it also explain the absence of audio track when importing too the timeline ?

Edit 5 : I 'm sure I'm gonna miss something out in the settings somewhere if I use xmedia recode to convert the files. i'm such an ass when it comes to that. I won't even be able to tell if I damaged the videos because some of them already contain some ghosting.
Edit 6 : Why is Vegas so commercially oriented ? What if I want to edit something else than my last holidays files from my recent Sony camera ? These old avi files are all over the place. Where am I going to find some original footage from last century ? Spending a lifetime and money to ask archive centers all over the world ? That is if they give you anything even if you know the title and then you'll have to sign whatever agreement not to use or edit the footage. And they sure won't let you sit and browse their precious collection of footage that was paid for long ago with your parents' taxes' money.

Comments

Sylk wrote on 10/3/2019, 9:31 PM

First, EDIT all your posts into ONE ! Otherwise you'll just fill pages alone and lengthen your thread for nothing... It's annoying to read and follow the content if it contains 25 pages of soliloquy.

Next, you don't give hardware and drivers. The best way is add your system in your signature.

Third, AVI is just the container, NOT the Codec. The Codec is more useful to know than the container.

Marty111 wrote on 10/3/2019, 9:35 PM

This is a lot more scandalous than the 11-9 hologram planes that didn't crashed into the buildings that were actually stuffed with explosives by the illuminati shadow government.

Edit : alright I'm going to edit it all.
The codec is xvid, checked on all of them, but I'm pretty sure it's xvid for each file. As for the computer hardware it's not the issue, It's very powerfull : Good cpu frequency, a ton of ram and threads, and I allowed Vegas to take advantage of that in the settings. Besides the videos are small, resample is disabled, and preview is set to preview/half.

I'm now 99% sure the xvid codec is the issue. So I have to find the cleanest and easiest way to convert my bunch of files to suitable files for smooth Vegas previewing.
As for the audio track not showing up, I have no clue but it seems to be also related with xvid because the few mp4 files (h264 codec) I use on this project are showing up with their audio track. But anyway I don't need the audio on these track so it's not an immediate issue.

I think the easiest and cleanest way would be to select the extracts I need on these one hours source videos, put them all into a single track, then render the track as a h264 mp4 file (or something else even better), then start the real editing on this new track.
So long for talking to myself and find the answer by myself :-)
But if you have any other suggestions I'll be happy to listen.

Edit 2 : Only problem is I don't know what settings I should use for this intermediate render.

I never knew what settings to use to render my videos. Once I saw a youtube video, called something like "Render a high quality video with reasonable size on Vegas pro". I entered the same values as the guy did on his video, tickled the same boxes as him. The result looked sharp enough, and it became my render template since ever.

I have no understanding or appreciation whatsoever on what result I will get by setting somewhere a specific value or a value ten time smaller of bigger. And that is a big problem because it's only after that you discover that something wasn't actually that good. The eye (and the ear for audio) doesn't always tell you when something is wrong, especially when you are deep into artistic thoughts assuming the strictly basic technical part is secured.