Vegas Pro 8.0C on XP hanging on Renders

Studio42 wrote on 4/3/2009, 1:41 PM
OK, here's my deal today, or rather the past 2 weeks:

I'm working off various media, either AVI or imported DVD's from stuff I recorded.

What am I recording? Mostly TV shows. I then have been editing them to remove commercials and then make "finished" DVD's. What are the shows? It varies, but it's mostly Disney-related stuff, stuff to keep the kids entertained. Stuff from FoodTV, Travel Channel, even some History Channel and even Discovery. So far all work has been native NTSC. Some of it is wide-screen, some is not.

How do I record the .AVI stuff? Well, I'm use a Hollywood Dazzle DV Bridge, which Sony Vegas apparently hates with a passion. OK, so be it. I'll use my Nero 7 package to record the stuff right off the broadcast. I then "wash it" by running it through Sony Vegas 8.0C because I don't really trust Nero anymore, but I'm sure many of you are in the same boat. The other stuff is recorded directly to DVD via a DVD-recorder, you know, the table-top kind.

Here's what I am having issues with:
1: Right now, rendering is becoming very sketchy. Doesn't matter what the source is. AVI or MPG from the extracted DVD's. What happens is that it will get to a point and then simply stop. Vegas drops to 50% utilization but isn't actually doing anything. Preview window is black. This is the most freqent issue. The rendering window shows time left/time used.

2: Another variant: it shows that there is no time remaining, yet not at 100%. Playing that rendered file confirms it is not done. Again, Sony at 50% CPU utilization and then not dong any work.

3: More importantly, I'm sending a copy of this material to a friend in the UK, and so I have to do a PAL conversion. Same results. Odd, I did 5 concert videos of shows I did the livesound for and video recording on, and those went through with no problem.

Widescreen stuff:
I usually have to do a simple setting change in the session properties to use the widescreen option to get widescreen.

Right now, it's become impossible to get Sony Vegas to render anything with any sort of reliability. NTSC or PAL

I can't cancel these renders when this happens. I have to invoke the task manager and quit the process or else I can't escape. I find rebooting sometimes allows me to get further, but that's not always true.

Computer specs:
Recently rebuilt home made computer. Let me define "rebuilt": recently reloaded the OS(XP Pro) from scratch due to annual maintenance schedules. Core Duo 2.66Ghz, 2Gig's RAM, ABIT IP35 mobo, loads of hard drives, IDE, SATA, Firewire, SCSI and USB 2.0 attached.

Latest updates from Microsoft, all current.

Other software installed, out of necessity:
Nero 7 Extended or whatever their latest 7.0 series release is.
Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 8.
(both these packages are largely replaced by Vegas 8.0c and DVDA 5.0a)

I also use MacDrive latest, since I also work with Macs a lot and often have a Mac formatted drive attached. But the issue has persisted with or without MacDrive in use or even installed. Even with Nero and Roxio out of the picture, it's not any better.

When I am rendering out the videos, I do the following:
Render to an MPG2 for DVD architect, NTSC or NTSC Widescreen video only, and/or PAL or PAL Widescreen video only. Audio is usually stereo AC3.

At the moment, unless I'm doing one of my concert "preview" type videos that tend to be less than 7 minutes long, I frequently find I can't get this work done anymore.

Any suggestions? Something I am overlooking? Sometimes this goes through fine, but it's never on the first attempt and it often takes up excessive amounts of time to get this accomplished and quite frankly, I have better things I'd like to utlize this time for. Thank goodness I have multiple machines.

Yes, I am a fully registered and licensed Sony Vegas 8.0 and DVDA 5.0a user.

Comments

ushere wrote on 4/3/2009, 3:09 PM
if you convert all your input to vegas friendly formats in the first place i think you'll find the problems disappear.

nearly every project i've ever done that had a lot of mixed content was subject to some form of problem on nearly every nle i've ever worked with.

i've never had a problem feeding vegas straight dv, hdv, png's, etc., or a mixture thereof, nor spitting out pal, ntsc, whathaveyou.

i have no (and don't intend to) any experience with avchd!!!

leslie
Studio42 wrote on 4/3/2009, 3:22 PM
Well said, and having thought of that on my own, let me share some additional information that I left out of the initial posting:

Of the DVD's I imported, I used Nero to import them, mainly due to the fact that if I do this in Sony Vegas Pro 8.0C, it is splitting them up at the 6 minute mark and there is a video and audio gap. This is ENTIRELY due to the fact that I was using auto-chaptering on the standalone DVD recorder. Nero doesn't do this.

Now, let's look at example 1:

2 hour program recorded in one continuous recording, recorded in a squashed widescreen format(16:9 smashed into 4:3, looks OK stretched back out). Ended up with let's say 25 edit points(taking out commercials, and keeping little bumpers and crap like that). It was DVD sourced. Run through Nero to bring it in to the computer, then into Vegas. Worked fairly good. I did need to have Vegas render it with markers as an MainConcept MPG2 NTSC Widescreen file, then re-import it and re-render as a PAL Widescreen. That was the only way to get it done. DVD recorder was set to 2-hour mode in recording.

This one I'm working on now is a 1 hour show, again 16:9 smashed into 4:3 and looks fine stretched back out to 16:9. Recorder set to 1 hour mode for recording. This one only required I remove the lead-in crap(I start recording early) and lead-out crap(I stop recording late), then remove one commercial break and that is it. This one is giving me headaches.

What format does Vegas consider "Vegas Friendly formats?" I don't mind converting to .AVI files, but that isn't giving me any better results either. I'm sort of stuck on my options because of what my soruce is. Converting to .AVI isn't giving me any better results, and it is an option I thought "gee, maybe this would be a better way to go", but unfortunately, it ain't.

I'll keep screwing around. I apparently have nothing else better to do with my time, or so Vegas has deemed. I'm not knocking vegas, it's better than nero crapping out every 30 seconds or edit for no reason(think SAVE LIKE A MANIAC gives you 5% of the nightmares Nero causes).

Let me try getting Vegas to conver the whole thing into .AVI. I can re-edit the entire thing again in 10 minutes. Just wish Sony was a little more "forthcoming" with information. After all, I can import damn near anything into ProTools and it doesn't give me any headaches at all when it comes to final rendering/bouncing, and I've mixed hi-fi and low-fi formats to get things done and never once did ProTools whine at me like this.

The recent concert I did video for, I checked my log notes and while it was all DVD sourced(direct to DVD recorded), it gave me relatively little grief in comparison. But it also wasn't widescreened. At least that one is done, NTSC and PAL.