Vegas stuffs up a project file again.

farss wrote on 5/18/2010, 12:23 AM

This is getting way beyond a joke.
I'm on and off working on mixing a 90 minute narrative drama with around 2,000 audio clips. I just went to check through it all again before the producer calls around tomorrow and find that at least one audio event is now pointing at the wrong friggin file. I've had to go back many project revisions to get back a non mangled project file. Needless to say with a project of this size and complexity picking up that a few seconds of SFX that I added a month ago has been replaced with 'something' from 'somewhere' that includes the director giving directions is not easy, thankfully I picked it up when I did.
I'm now forced to try to recall all the other changes that were made to the mix, bits of ADR, SFX etc added. levels changed, music mixed etc. Not a trivial task at all. Maybe, just maybe, I can fix the problem without all that.

This issue has been reported here by several users. I've had it happen to me before but not with such a serious impact. This problem seems to have existed in Vegas for a number of years. Perhaps it's been fixed in V9.0e, hard to know when it's never been acknowledged as it's an almost impossible problem to reproduce or detect.

To me at least this is by orders of magnitude the most serious problem facing Vegas. If a render crashes, we know about it. If Vegas runs out of memory and winks out, we know about it. If we cannot trust that what we've done will not be mangled in some subtle way that cannot be recovered what are we left with. Backups are no insurance against this happening.

Bob.

Comments

Lavoll wrote on 5/18/2010, 1:14 AM

had the same thing happen to me doing sfx for an animated tv show. had to switch to a different program, because its a bug that can be very costly for us.

we also have gone through lots of pains with some of the episodes done in vegas because volume automation over a clip fade in doenst render out properly.

Grazie wrote on 5/18/2010, 1:18 AM

I'm on SKYPE . .. g

Mahesh wrote on 5/18/2010, 2:41 AM

Bob,
I feel for you. It has happened to me a few times. Unfortunately, no one has come forward with an explanation.
My first was with V4 - My first edit in Vegas in Octoner 2003.
Here's link to my posting
http://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/24/424748

I am confident that, as its you persuing it, an explanation will emerge.

( edit typos)

farss wrote on 5/18/2010, 3:35 AM

Thanks to a Skype session with Grazie we may have an explaination.
As Grazie has posted about before:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=706976
Vegas saves its Undo and Redos in files. It seems likely that after a crash Vegas may restore these and get itself in some huge muddle.
I did a search and found no files in the Vegas 9 folder but found 10 quite old ones in the Vegas 8 folder. These files were found on my system in C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Grant\Local Settings\Application Data\Sony\Vegas Pro\8.0

It seems to me that if Vegas were to crash and then restore an old undo / redo tmp file it would be deleted when Vegas was normally closed so the evidence trail would be deleted. Perhaps the best advice would be to check for the presence of any such files after a crash and to delete them.

For the minute my No1 priority is restoring my project. I've since found at least one more incorrect audio file being referenced, grrr. Regardless a big thank you to Grazie, I at least now have what could be an explaination of how this mess happened and will keep a watchful eye open going forward.

Bob

Grazie wrote on 5/18/2010, 4:05 AM

Well, Bob, if you DIDN'T find any "smelly" ole UN/RE-dos in V9 folder then I can't see how the V8 folder would have an effect? Unless . . . .

Grazie

Andy_L wrote on 5/18/2010, 7:02 AM

I never let vegas restore to an autosaved project when it crashes (which of course it does constantly), because you never know what changes will be lost if you do that.

I just close the program, restart, and reload the file I was working on. Vegas' crashes don't seem to corrupt my working project files, at least.

And I also save and create my own backups at a frequency that would be absurd with any other application. It's what Vegas has taught me to do in order to work with it.

farss wrote on 5/18/2010, 4:19 PM

"And I also save and create my own backups at a frequency that would be absurd with any other application."

So do I. The considerable issue with this bug is that all you may have is a large number of equally corrupted backups.

Bob.

farss wrote on 5/18/2010, 5:45 PM

Sadly again I must point out that this will not save your butt.

Work on a project. This is saved as a ,veg file. Make backups every minute. Due to the nature of this problem the corruption may very easily not be noticed for a considerable period of time, The result is that all the backups that you have so carefully made from the time the corruption occured until you discovered the problem are largely useless.

Perhaps my one mistake in my workflow from the get go was to merge the previous editors 5 reels into one project. There seemed to be good reasons for doing this at the time. Where the joins in the reels were made there were issues in the flow of the mix.

Bob.

apit34356 wrote on 5/18/2010, 6:13 PM

Bob, I'm a big fan of aged changes. A similar approach like PS. But really for big jobs, a linked data base, showing changes per event and by timelines,...etc... but also being able to scan for changes...etc... would help management big jobs.

farss wrote on 5/18/2010, 10:40 PM

Here's what does NOT work. I found this out the hard way :(

Delete the wrong event and replace it with the correct. All looks good until you save the project, close it and open it again because (drum roll please) Vegas puts back the wrong clip. This would be incredibly frustating if you've fixed a lot of Vegas stuff ups and next day found they are all back again.

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This is the only bullet proof way I've found to fix the mess:

1) Find wrong event. Note down the Start, In and Out Timecode and Track Number. If a volume envelope's nodes are inside the media deselect Lock Nodes to Events otherwise you're about to mangle your volume settings.
2) From Project Media identify the correct file. Note it down.
3) Delete the incorrect event from the timeline
4) Zap (the lightning bolt icon) the project's Project Media.
5) Save the project. Close Vegas and open the project you just saved.
6) Position the T/L playhead at the Start TC value noted in 1) Make certain the same Track is selected as noted in 1)
7) In Explorer find the correct file, open in the trimmer and mark in/out points as noted in 1). Check it seems correct. Press "A" to add to T/L
8) Save project as new version.
9) Repeat for every messed up event on the T/L.

If the one clip / file is used more than once on the T/L you may have to make a note of each instance of it as detailed in 1) and add each instance back as in steps 6) and 7).

I hope I have this correct. Proceed with caution and keep notes.

Bob.

trynot4563 wrote on 6/24/2010, 6:28 AM

This is the first time I've had this particular problem with Vegas and I just upgraded to 9e. I'm almost certain the file was correct yesterday because the last thing I was working on was the section that now has a changed media file. I even looked at the .bak file, still corrupted. And replacing the event with the correct one doesn't work! Now I'll have to look at your procedure to try to fix it. I didn't even have a crash (as far as I know).

The offending event is being replaced with a video file that's not even in my project. It may have been at one time, but it has since been deleted from the project.

This is a MAJOR problem, and this is only a 4-minute video. I upgraded from 7e so I could use m2t files more efficiently, but some of the problems I have encountered make me wonder if that was such a good idea.