VV4 Upgrade Side Effects

bwarshaw wrote on 3/14/2003, 2:55 PM
Hi,

I just upgraded to VV4a from VV3c and am experiencing a strange side effect; MPEG files no longer seem to be recognized by VV3. I cannot preview them from the Explorer Pane, and when trying to drag a .MPG or .MPEG file to the timeline I get a circle with a line through it cursor. I've unregistered/registered the .dll's from the MCMPEG folder by dragging them to the timeline, as directed by tech support, but this doesn't help.

I've tried debugging this on my 3 machines, and two that are running Windows XP Pro are exhibiting the problem, but the one running Win2K appears to have not been affected by the upgrade (MPEG files play and can be dragged to the timeline). Maybe a hint as to where the problem exists?

Any suggestions?

/BILLW

Comments

FuTz wrote on 3/14/2003, 4:42 PM
I think when you edit a clip taken from VV3 into V4, you can't go back to VV3.
Somebody knows?
SonyTSW wrote on 3/14/2003, 4:48 PM
Do you see MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 as format options in the File | Render As dialog or the File | Open dialog? If not, you'll need to re-register mcplug.dll by dropping it into Vegas, then exit and restart Vegas. If you've registered/unregistered any of the other DLLs in the MPEG folder you'd probably be better off to do a repair install of Vegas 4.0.

You'll also need an MPEG license. You can either drag and drop an MPEG file into the time line or you can attempt to render to MPEG. If you don't have a license, there will be a dialog which prompts you to register for one.

Please note that Vegas cannot read MPEG files that are elementary streams.

By any chance do you have any other third-party video editing applications installed on your WinXP systems, and do you have SP1 installed? Premiere 6.5 installs its MainConcept supporting DLLs in the Windows system folder and this causes problems for our applications that use the MPEG plugin on WinXP SP1 systems. Vegas 4.0 works around this problem, but will be an issue with Vegas 3.0. If this is the case, please contact SF Customer Support for a workaround.
bwarshaw wrote on 3/14/2003, 6:18 PM
I started Vegas Video 3 and checked the File/Open dialog. Both "MainConcept MPEG-1" & "Main Concept MPEG-2" are listed under "Files of type:" in the dialog.
When I open an .mpg file I get the dialog:

"Warning: An error occurred while opening one or more files.
The file is an unsupported format".

As far as other editing apps go, I do have Premiere 6.5 installed on both XP systems, and they both have SP1 installed. However, the only thing that has changed has been that I've installed VV4, and now VV3 won't recognize MPEG files. In other words, VV3 used to coexist with Premiere 6.5 ok.....

Also, my Win2K system has Premiere 6.5 installed as well (along with VV3 & VV4), and VV3 seems happy in that instance as well.

Can you explain the workaround?

/BILLW


SonyTSW wrote on 3/14/2003, 10:35 PM
The problem is that XP SP1 changed the default behavior for how Windows searches for DLLs needed at runtime. As a result, when an application like Premiere 6.5 installs the MainConcept DLLs in the Windows system folder, they are used in preference to the DLLs that are in the MPEG plugin's folder used by Vegas. Other Windows versions (Win2K, ME, Win98SE, and XP without SP1) always use the MainConcept DLLs for MPEG from the plugin's folder (which is what we want), even if the same files exist in the system folder.

What this means is that MPEG on XP SP1 can end up using the wrong DLLs, which can result in mysterious hangups and crashes. This problem was identified before Vegas 4 was released, so the released Vegas 4.0 contains code to preload the MainConcept DLLs from the plugin's folder. This ensures the MPEG plugin will always use the correct DLLs. However, Vegas 3 does not contain this code.

The MPEG plugin does validate the path of the MainConcept DLLs it is using and if it detects they are not from the same path as the plugin itself, it will not allow an application to use it. That is probably what is causing the "unsupported format" message you are seeing.

Most likely, your VV3 worked fine with Premiere 6.5 on WinXP until you installed SP1. Perhaps both VV3 and Premiere used the same version of the MainConcept DLLs (I have no idea if this is true or not). Installing Vegas 4.0 updated the MPEG plugin and MainConcept DLLs, so now you started having problems.

The workaround is a registry change that overrides the default behavior Windows uses in searching for DLLs at runtime. Customer Support can assist you with making this change.