What is your method of importing footage?

SnarfConsortium wrote on 6/7/2024, 7:53 PM

How do you import your footage from your PC into Vegas Pro? I've been opening the folder where I have my raw footage saved and just drag and drop. Since updating to VP21 315, this has been getting quite sluggish. When I drag any footage in, Vegas seems to stall. As long as I don't click on it though, it unfreezes itself after around 1-2 minutes. If I use larger media files the hang time will extend. From what I've determined, if I keep the file under 10gb its just the "small" freeze. If I have anything larger than 20gb, it will stall for around 10minutes before resuming itself like normal.

If I use the explorer though, when I locate the footage and right click to add to project media, it will still hang up for a minute or two.

Once the footage is in the project media list I can add it just fine to my timeline though and edit as usual, but adding any new media results in the program stalling out for a minute.

Does anyone have a better way to add media to a project? Is just this normal behavior to expect using Vegas?

Comments

mark-y wrote on 6/7/2024, 9:12 PM

You have not given us any description of your media which, depending on its format and parameters, can take from a few seconds to a few minutes to load. This is because of the nature of decoding compressed media for nonlinear editing.

To provide such details in order for others to be of help, start here:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

RogerS wrote on 6/7/2024, 11:44 PM

VEGAS Pro 21 from version 300 up is using new technology to read media which has advantages but it seems slower reading file metadata, creating waveforms, etc. I'd just let it finish and edit normally.

Otherwise depending on what the media is (MediaInfo is essential here) you could try the legacy decoders which are "legacy AVC" and "experimental HEVC" in options, preferences, file io. There may be downsides to using them though (depends on the system hardware, media, etc.)

set wrote on 6/8/2024, 3:10 AM

I used to drag and drop, and it is 'tiring' to hold the mouse button just to wait the VEGAS Pro to 'recognize' the whole media and finally able to 'add' to timeline, so right now I prefer from VEGAS Explorer tab, browse to your media location, select, then right click > Add to Project Media. There's still a freezing time, but feels shorther and you don't feel tired to just hold that mouse button.

Dexcon wrote on 6/8/2024, 7:16 AM

I used to drag and drop, and it is 'tiring' to hold the mouse button just to wait the VEGAS Pro to 'recognize' the whole media and finally able to 'add' to timeline,

With dragging and dropping from either Windows' Explorer window or Vegas' Explorer window, I've not held down the mouse button after the drop - I just let go of the mouse and the media import eventually works even though there may be a delay.

3d87c4 wrote on 6/8/2024, 11:43 AM

FWIW: I've recently gotten into the habit of using import media for several reasons:

I spent a year creating timelapse videos from images captured by a Gopro H3+B and import media makes it easy to load a folder full of images as an image sequence you can treat the same as a video clip.

After posting the timelapses to YouTube I discovered no one actually wants to watch them, LOL. I noticed Youtube "shorts" get lots of views so am re-releasing them as shorts and speeding them up 2x by importing the 30fps originals then adding them to a 60fps project using "Add at project frame rate". (Most are getting gobs of views now...for a couple of days...)

Finally, I recently got a pair of Gopro H12's for shooting 3D video & a forum member helped me out with a pair of scripts that aid in synchronizing the left and right camera clips using the timecode metadata---one of which is run on the clips within the project media folder.