Your welcome.

It just bugs me when to tell some application to stop and it doesn't work then it gets stuck in a loop asking if you want to stop over and over. Good thing cars stop when you tell them. Usually anyway. <wink>

Neither. It's your hardware. You have incompatabilities. Post your system configeration.

I have literally never had Vegas crash or hang up on me for any reason and I have run it on a number of different computers over the years. It's the most stable piece of software I have ever had.

I had a friend that was having lock-up issues with Vegas and the problem turned out to be that he was overclocking his system. After he slowed his computer down to it's rated speed, all his problems went away. (Including a few that weren't related to Vegas at all.)

John

BB, just on a hunch, try it again but leave off the side of the computer case, and see if it hangs again. If it's a heat-related h/w issue, it will probably work.

Every 4 months or so, my system begins to do strange things. I go in, vacuum the cpu heatsink, the temps drop 5 degrees according to MotherBoard Monitor, and everything is okay again.

If it's a memory issue, you could swap modules or just leave one out (if you have several).

Like a previous post, Vegas is rock-solid here. Only one crash I can recall.

Vegas isn't really as rock solid as some people think, suggesting its bullet proof or rarely if ever crashes A good stable application it is yes, of course, I've said so many times myself, but try to give it some more unusual video flavors and if or not it opens them without choking is a crap shoot. I'll add this isn't unique to Vegas, every video application I've used, and I've used dozens besides Vegas, can and have shown some kind of "freezing" problem with SOME specific files that otherwise play fine on the same system.

I'm not talking CODEC issues alone. I'm talking files that play fine in Media Player or any one of half a dozen different players I test them on and regardless, Vegas plus other editors will stumble tyring to open them (more accurately decompress them), typically showing the first few minutes or so of video on the timeline normally followed by blank (black) frames and the audio portion either building far slower than usual or failing to complete, with Vegas it typically hangs while building audio peaks.

Perhaps many here are what I'll call fair weather users, ie you only use prestine files straight from a digital camera in some limited file formats Vegas is sweet on. As an experiment, try downloading some more exotic flavors of MPEG's AVI, ASF and WMV you can find all over the net and in newsgorups and try to drag them to the timeline and see what what happens. You'll see errors like I mentioned or exception errors.

No there is nothing wrong with my PC, it doesn't have memory issues or overheating issues. To confrim it doesn't I have swapped out memory and the system runs as cool as a cucumber.

For those that don't know, a CPU doesn't have a "correct" speed. How fast one can "run" any particular system is determed by many factors, the clock frequency the CPU runs at is only one factor. Also important is FSB speed, memory speed, memory timing, BIOS settings, etc..

All that said, I didn't start this thread to beef about Vegas hanging, rather I'm trying to see what opinions are as to why Vegas won't simply stop and free itself from used memory and resources its using when you detect a problem and try to shut it down and instead it freezes or gets stuck in a endless loop where you can't exit and your CPU tries to overcome it by hogging more and more resources.

There's a cute Linux/unix application called xkill that I love. You start it and the mouse Icon turns into a bomb or skull and crossbone ( I forget which). The next app you click on gets killed dead. Of course you have to be able to see it...

Very reliable.

Rob Mack

I've definitely had similar problems with a few codecs, I've seen Vegas act like it had a memory leak while trying to use windows media files on the timeline. The solution was to convert the file to a more usable codec.

That's about the only advice I can give you. Render the problem footage out as something more efficient to Vegas. And if you think Vegas has troubles, try Dreamweaver. It can make Vegas look like the Rock of Gibralter.

Rob Mack

I've stated that Vegas has never crashed on me, in the past. But then it crashed on me, just about a week ago and when it did, I remembered that it had happened before and under the same conditions. Those conditions were that I got on a long editing jag, for perhaps 5 to 7 hours straight and completely forgetting to "Save" anything during that time. Suddenly, it crashes. The good news is that when you restart everything, you can rename it and save it anyway.
This has nothing to do with BB's problem, but it has crashed on me a couple of times. So I guess it doesn't run a smoothly as the "MW Snap". But it does a pretty darn good job compared to that Ulead program I had originally. That thing would crash if you coughed while facing the computer. (over-exaggeration)

To answer the original question about WHY windows always hsa trouble shutting things down. Well from limited understanding Windoz asks politely and waits for a response, for all Windoz knows the app might be at the end of updating an application critical file. Of course if the app fails to respond is where things get tricky, what would you like Windoz to do, how long should it wait. There's a whole heap of very difficult questions that any operating systems have to deal with and Windoz is not alone in having problems in that area.
I used to work on a variety of real time control systems, bit more mission critical than a NLE, one system we designed was the level 2 ESD system for for reactors, not the sort of thigs you want having a BSD! Anyway the OS used there was incredicbly strict with apps, if your app went 1 byte over allocated memory, tried to write direct to hardware, failed to release resources etc it was killed in a few cycles. Result of course is super reliable code that costs a fortune to write and debug.
I think this is the real core of the problem (no pun intended), we don't want to pay anything like what it costs to write good code, let alone what it costs to properly test it.

As to the specifics about codecs. I used to drop a 2 hour WMV downloaded from the net to copy to VHS (yes it was legit) into Vegas. Problem was it was just a pure stream, only one I frame at the start and maybe one every 5 minutes or so. The kind Vegas engineers explained the problem to me and a very simple fix, restream it using WME (free from uStuff) with key frames every 2 seconds keeping all else the same. Thing ran as smooth as silk, file about doubled in size though.

"not the sort of thigs you want having a BSD"

Ok, farss, maybe I'm dense, but, could you please tell me what a BSD is?
Thanks.

Caruso

BSD = "Blue Screen of Death" ... a fortunately fading Windows phenomenon.

BSD, aka BSOD = Blue Screen of Death, a charming reference to the equally charming screen display of software/system crashes frequently encountered with older versions of Windows...

Ooops -- Kelly beat me to the punch...

Yes. There needs to be a "sticky page" here, that just explains abbreviations for us Vegas users. I like listening to some of you guys, but it kind of ticks me off that you already write enough to surpass "War & Peace" every other week but you keep insisting on using initials for everything. That just leaves us numbskulls in the dark. Yeah, I have links to some web-pages that explain various abbreviations, but that's still a hassle. I have enough problems remembering what an NLE is. When the flow of thought is interrupted, it takes a lot longer for the discussion to sink in. Not that I don't appreciate it anyway.
It's too bad there's not a "script" that would let you type in the initials, but it would automatically spell out the whole words.

HEY!!! I *like* my TLAs :)

I don't want to get too sticky crazy. :)

This is a great site for decrypting acronyms though:
http://www.acronymfinder.com/

I like Rob Mack's bomb idea. Got to drop Billy G. a note. To further quantify what bugs me (I can't be the only one) and the actual topic of the thread isn't that Vegas or any other application hangs, rather once YOU know that its hanging and we're pass the issue of waiting for Windows on its own for some application to finish doing whatever its trying to do and you take measures in your own hands and from TaskManager TELL WINDOWS shut down the #%#(#%$ application that's hanging, Windows just sits there and sits there and does nothing for a long time.

Windows really needs a off button then really works as a off button. So do applicaitons.

Again, not talking about a total lock up when you can't use your keyboard or mouse. Vegas, like other applications can hang, but you still have limited control. So you try to tell it, using various key presses or clicks, to STOP what its doing, and the applicaiton doesn't listen, rather its just tells you its doing this or that and won't let you stop it, and then you're stuck with the sledge hammer shut down method which itself takes too long and doesn't works right from TaskManager either. Cute, that Windows asks if you want to 'tell us about the problem" afterwards.

BB,

Xkill must be at least 12 years old by now. Maybe there's a freeware hack of it for Windows as well.

Linux and Unix has had a lot of playfull work done on the 20 or so desktop interfaces available. Most of the features available in Windows were available first in Linux desktop managers. Some seem like they were lifted directly from those sources.

The biggest hang offenders I know of are DreamWeaver, Outlook, and acrobat reader.

Rob Mack