VMS 10 crashes when rendering with Sony AVC format

pmcb wrote on 6/9/2010, 7:36 AM
Hi,

Just upgraded to version 10 from version 9 and I'm having a problem rendering MP4 videos using the Sony AVC format. I can render to m2ts fine, but if I try to render a 10mb MP4, it stops rendering a handful of frames in. The elapsed time and estimated time remaining keep counting ever higher but no actual progress is made. If I try to cancel it, the program stops responding.

I was able to do this just fine in version 9. Is anyone else having this issue? I submitted a ticket to support but thought I'd check here too.

Comments

LR2003 wrote on 6/10/2010, 4:30 AM
The first time that I tried to render to a m2ts format with Ver. 10, it crashed.I thought that it was likely the same bug as ver. 9 had with 64 bit systems. I have since rendered the same project successfully 4 times in a row. So maybe the bug is fixed and some other error caused the first crash.

I am now going to quickly make a much longer project and let it render while I am at work and see what happens.
pmcb wrote on 6/10/2010, 2:59 PM
I've been playing with this more and it's somewhat erratic. Rendering to m2ts never has an issue, but 99% of the time I try an MP4 it hangs or outright crashes. Two clips that I had tried that worked, no longer work. It also doesn't seem to matter what length the project is.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit but didn't have any issues with version 9.
LR2003 wrote on 6/10/2010, 3:24 PM
My quick project rendered successfully. Total length was about an hour with rendering time of several hours.

I still have the lip-sync issue though running the files through tsMuxeR fixes that.
pmcb wrote on 6/10/2010, 4:46 PM
Well, I may have solved the issue. I decided to uninstall everything - Vegas 9, 10, Soundforge 9, 10, etc. and reinstall 10. When I launched 10 it complained that a project hadn't closed properly from the last time it crashed (so much for a clean uninstall) and the custom rendering templates I had created were still there, so I manually deleted them and created a new one. I've since rendered 3 projects to MP4 with the Sony AVC encoder just fine.

Perhaps the templates get corrupted when version 10 "imports" them from version 9. I'm not sure where it saves them because each application/version has its own folder in Program Files, and there isn't a Sony or Vegas folder in Common Files.

Whatever, the reason, I"m glad it's working, and it would appear that the nVidia hardware acceleration does shave some time off the rendering, so I'm a happy camper again.
Eugenia wrote on 6/10/2010, 8:24 PM
With VMS10 you don't have to use Sony AVC anymore for MP4. The best solution is to use MainConcept, which now allows you to customize it. MainConcept has greater quality, since it's overall a better codec, and more stable, AND it supports VBR.
pmcb wrote on 6/10/2010, 9:09 PM
Hi Eugenia,

I think I read another post somewhere where you mentioned this. I got used to using the Sony AVC encoder because of the limitations on the Main Concept encoder in v9. I hadn't noticed that it's customizable now.

I was also keen to use the Sony AVC codec because of the nVidia support. I've been looking for ways to cut rendering time down without spending a bundle on a new PC, but I can sacrifice time for quality.
Ivan Lietaert wrote on 6/10/2010, 11:38 PM
Eugenia, your information doesn't match my findings: the highest resolution for Mainconcept mp4 is 640x480 on my system. Customization is very limited.
Sony Avc mp4 has many more templates and allows customization, but when customized, it crashes.
Eugenia wrote on 6/11/2010, 8:12 AM
I haven't tried VMS10 so far, but I heard that MC is customizable now. If not, yeah, not too good.
dalemccl wrote on 6/11/2010, 9:12 AM
In VMS 10, rendering with MC mp4 is limited to 640 x 480 as Ivan123 mentioned. It is the MC mpeg2 format that allows much more customization than in VMS 9 and allows for high resolutions and high bitrates.
pmcb wrote on 6/11/2010, 7:49 PM
If I use the MainConcept AVC/AAC encoder, I can customize it to render pretty much anything - including the 1440x1080 video I just did, at 10mbps. There's a custom frame size option enabling you to enter your own width and height.

The only issue is that motion makes the video look wavy, so unless I'm setting something wrong, I'm not sure how this is better than the Sony AVC encoder.
Ivan Lietaert wrote on 6/11/2010, 9:13 PM
Make sure that on you timeline, every video event has the switch with 'disable resampling'.