Why does Vegas choke on GoPro 1080p60 files

Comments

astar wrote on 3/13/2014, 3:47 AM
Re-encode to AVCHD 60p this plays back fine, and will keep your small file size.

Also as mentioned before XAVC works. HDCAM SR Lite also supports 60p smoothly and scrubs better than the long GOP formats.

When you get the little dots after the frame counter, it was my understanding that Vegas is searching for the nearest I frame and building the P&B frames. Thats why you want an intra frame codec. It could also just indicate that Vegas is slow to perform an action, trying to correct sync, or just waiting for a process to deliver.

One thought I had is, it appears that GoPro uses AAC to encode audio vs AC3 and PCM for AVC and G3 respectively. If you encode the same footage to AVC with AC3 the playback is normal.
wwjd wrote on 3/13/2014, 9:52 AM
12 should improve upon 11, not be LESS featured.

I'll submit a "BUG" report. Maybe you guys should too?
Smells like an overlooked, quick, coding fix to me.
NormanPCN wrote on 3/13/2014, 10:53 AM
Thanks for the additional report everyone.

I submitted a bug report with my example files in a VEG project on 1/16/2014. No reply as yet.

One can hope that means someone is investigating and not just ignoring the report. Our two SCS lurkers in this forum never responded to this thread, but I doubt they would unless they had something definitive to say.

I think the fact that VP11 seems to work well is the only reason SCS might look into this. SCS does not write the software (AVC decoder). Nearly all the decoders and encoders in Vegas are written by Mainconcept so SCS has to talk with them about this.

No doubt this is also sapping precious CPU cycles with 30p GoPro files as well. Maybe not immediate playback issues, but enough CPU sapping that adding some other effect might tip you over the edge to bad playback.
Rich Parry wrote on 3/13/2014, 9:45 PM
Thanks for this post, I've been tearing my hair out over the slow Vegas 12 preview with Hero 3+ video on the timeline. I thought something was wrong with my PC.

I thought I would mention that Preview on my laptop is 10x faster than preview on my desktop which uses a very fast video card. Both previews are still unusable, one is slow, the other ultra slow (1fps). I stumped why the laptop is faster than my PC but I'm not going to spend anymore time on it.

Anyway, thanks for the post.

CPU Intel i9-13900K Raptor Lake

Heat Sink Noctua  NH-D15 chromas, Black

MB ASUS ProArt Z790 Creator WiFi

OS Drive Samsung 990 PRO  NVME M.2 SSD 1TB

Data Drive Samsung 870 EVO SATA 4TB

Backup Drive Samsung 870 EVO SATA 4TB

RAM Corsair Vengeance DDR5 64GB

GPU ASUS NVDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

Case Fractal Torrent Black E-ATX

PSU Corsair HX1000i 80 Plus Platinum

OS MicroSoft Windows 11 Pro

Rich in San Diego, CA

Rob Franks wrote on 3/14/2014, 6:17 PM
Try turning gpu acceleration OFF for your preview.

I get full frame rate with both the above mpeg4 and mov samples with gpu OFF
nlhenry1 wrote on 3/22/2014, 5:16 PM
Work around: right click on clip in timeline -> properties-> set undersample rate to .5

On my machine, it's only necessary to do this on non-slowmo clips, as Vegas seems to be able to keep up if the playback rate is set low (as you would do for slowmo).

Remember that if you're actually rendering the clip to 60fps or have the undersample set on a slowmo clip (again, this is unnecessary on my machine, YMMV), you'll need to set the undersample rate back to 1 before rending - otherwise the clip will act like it was shot at 30 fps and you'll lose the fluid-looking motion associated with 60fps.

It would be nice if Sony could fix the glitch, but this should help with preview performance in the mean time.
musicvid10 wrote on 3/22/2014, 10:43 PM
It's not nice to give general advice based on your system's response. This doesn't sound like either a general workaround or a universal problem.

This is your first post and you have not provided system specs.
Best.
JBBunno wrote on 3/26/2014, 10:42 PM
I mainly work with GoPro's so being able to use the footage in VP is important to me.
I only do this as a hobby so please bare in mind I have no formal training or depth of understanding in codecs etc... (That was my disclaimer lol)

Because I cant always control the length of the shoot ( I use quadcopters) I often end up with a file much larger than I need for the final cut. Trying to deal with large 2.7K files in VP12 has been very frustrating.

Recently I have been importing my GP files into GP Studio (Free from the GoPro site).
In GP Studio I have been selecting the clip I need from the larger file and converting them to a AVI file source quality.

When I work with the shorter AVI clips in VP I have two advantages.

1 The first cuts have already been dealt with (No more large/Long files)
2 The AVI remains at source quality and works very smooth in VP for further editing

I also only convert in GP Studio to save time as I prefer to Edit and create in VP

This has only been my personal experience and I am happy with the results thus far.
As a layman I find this process satisfies my requirements.
musicvid10 wrote on 3/27/2014, 4:45 PM
+1
OldSmoke wrote on 4/3/2014, 5:16 PM
@Norman

I had a bit of time today to look into what is going on. Some users noted that these 1080-60p GoPro files play well in VP11. I got both VP11 32&64bit versions, reinstalled it on my Win7x64 machine and yes, the file plaid well; 59.94fps at Best/Full. I then used a program to monitor the API interface and dll that is called upon when playing the file back. The dll in question is "mc_dec_avc.dll" at this location "C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 12.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\compoundplug" I then copied the file from VP11 64bit over to VP12 and voila it plays at 59.94fps Best/Full!
if you don't have VP11 64bit here is a link to the dll https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39278380/mc_dec_avc.dll Do not delete or overwrite the original VP12 dll but rather rename it; just in case. I haven't done any further studies but I did render it out and that worked well too.

I hope that helps.

Proud owner of Sony Vegas Pro 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13 and now Magix VP15&16.

System Spec.:
Motherboard: ASUS X299 Prime-A

Ram: G.Skill 4x8GB DDR4 2666 XMP

CPU: i7-9800x @ 4.6GHz (custom water cooling system)
GPU: 1x AMD Vega Pro Frontier Edition (water cooled)
Hard drives: System Samsung 970Pro NVME, AV-Projects 1TB (4x Intel P7600 512GB VROC), 4x 2.5" Hotswap bays, 1x 3.5" Hotswap Bay, 1x LG BluRay Burner

PSU: Corsair 1200W
Monitor: 2x Dell Ultrasharp U2713HM (2560x1440)

Rob Franks wrote on 4/3/2014, 5:35 PM
"I had a bit of time today to look into what is going on. Some users noted that these 1080-60p GoPro files play well in VP11. I got both VP11 32&64bit versions, reinstalled it on my Win7x64 machine and yes, the file plaid well; 59.94fps at Best/Full. I then used a program to monitor the API interface and dll that is called upon when playing the file back. The dll in question is "mc_dec_avc.dll" at this location "C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 12.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\compoundplug" I then copied the file from VP11 64bit over to VP12 and voila it plays at 59.94fps Best/Full!

Good find. But it has to be something more than that because it doesn't explain why my vp12 has no issues as compared to Norman's.
OldSmoke wrote on 4/3/2014, 5:50 PM
Not just Norman's, it doesn't play well on my machine and VP12 either. Did you install any codec packs or other applications that may have overwritten the Sony's own VP12 codec. It doesn't have to be a direct overwrite but a redirect in the Windows Registry to a different dll would do it. Hardware maybe?

Proud owner of Sony Vegas Pro 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13 and now Magix VP15&16.

System Spec.:
Motherboard: ASUS X299 Prime-A

Ram: G.Skill 4x8GB DDR4 2666 XMP

CPU: i7-9800x @ 4.6GHz (custom water cooling system)
GPU: 1x AMD Vega Pro Frontier Edition (water cooled)
Hard drives: System Samsung 970Pro NVME, AV-Projects 1TB (4x Intel P7600 512GB VROC), 4x 2.5" Hotswap bays, 1x 3.5" Hotswap Bay, 1x LG BluRay Burner

PSU: Corsair 1200W
Monitor: 2x Dell Ultrasharp U2713HM (2560x1440)

wwjd wrote on 4/3/2014, 6:26 PM
holy, crap, way to GO, old smoke! Why couldn't Sony peeps take 30 minutes to figure this out instead of you? I plan to try the DLL update very soon.
NormanPCN wrote on 4/3/2014, 7:45 PM
@OldSmoke

Wow, Thank you very much for looking into this. Kudos to your efforts and thanks for the DLL file. I should have copied that file when I installed a VP11 trial to test to GoPro issue. It is a reasonably safe bet that Vegas has not changed their codec API interface between app and codec from VP11 to VP12. You never know but obviously it does work from your test. Kudos for trying this.

Interestingly my install of VP12 has mc_dec_avc and mc_dec_avc_old. Who knows when Vegas selects one or the other, if they ever select "old".
Current = 9.6.8.2473
old = 9.1.0.59454

For nearly everything Vegas does not use installable codec subsystems. Except for AVI (Video for Windows) and Quicktime. It make sense for Sony to do this. It eliminates, codec hell, since they always use their own stuff for stuff they know about.

I will test this DLL copy and update my "bug" report to Sony with this additional information. Of course I reported this to them on 1/16/2014, with VEG and samples, and they have not replied as yet. It seems very reproducible from online reports from others, but not necessarily fixable. Mainconcept is the developer of the decoder so Sony has to get MC to fix the performance "problem". Maybe MC does not think it is a problem.
NormanPCN wrote on 4/3/2014, 8:08 PM
I can confirm that using the VP11 AVC decoder I get smooth playback in VP12 without any changes to anything else. Same project file, same computer. So that is two of us.

This is decode only and will to effect encoding. Different DLL used for encoding.

Who knows if we have given up any performance elsewhere, but for 1080 high frame rate GoPro this is the ticket.

Again, Kudos to OldSmoke for trying this. I am loath to copy binaries from one system to another, so I would never think of trying this, but this test is damning evidence to the VP12 AVC decoder.
skeeter123 wrote on 4/3/2014, 8:56 PM
Nice! On my laptop it works! Wait. My preview setting automatically "downshifts" from "Best Full" to "Best Half" on preview or full. Never noticed that before and it does it with both the V11 and V12 .dlls..

What setting am I missing?

thx..
OldSmoke wrote on 4/3/2014, 9:27 PM
You may have "Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback" checked.

Can someone else try a multicam project with either GoPro files or any AVCHD files that are 1080 60p? I don't have any of those.

Proud owner of Sony Vegas Pro 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13 and now Magix VP15&16.

System Spec.:
Motherboard: ASUS X299 Prime-A

Ram: G.Skill 4x8GB DDR4 2666 XMP

CPU: i7-9800x @ 4.6GHz (custom water cooling system)
GPU: 1x AMD Vega Pro Frontier Edition (water cooled)
Hard drives: System Samsung 970Pro NVME, AV-Projects 1TB (4x Intel P7600 512GB VROC), 4x 2.5" Hotswap bays, 1x 3.5" Hotswap Bay, 1x LG BluRay Burner

PSU: Corsair 1200W
Monitor: 2x Dell Ultrasharp U2713HM (2560x1440)

skeeter123 wrote on 4/3/2014, 9:48 PM
Thanks, OldSmoke...nailed it..

When I add a second GoPro track, it cuts my framerate (Preview Full) to about 30-45fps using PIP....fwiw

The V12 dll will not maintain 59.97 fps, single track on my laptop. It runs about 33-40 fps. All of these were with color levels and white balance. V11 dll will handle 2 PIP tracks at 30-45fps.

Will test the desktop tomorrow with the same project...


edit: spelling
edit 2: details
NormanPCN wrote on 4/3/2014, 10:19 PM
Can someone else try a multicam project with either GoPro files or any AVCHD files that are 1080 60p?

I took the GoPro file from my example ZIP, this thread, and duplicated it onto 4 tracks and then enabled VP12 multi camera editing and created a multi-camera track from the four tracks and then played back.

It played back at full fps with the VP11 decoder. At the very start for maybe a second it was below but quickly stabilized and stayed at full. This was at Good Auto for the preview window.

Then I did the same thing with 2 GoPro, 1 GH3 and 1 XAVC-S file (rendered from VP12). Same performance as above.
NormanPCN wrote on 4/3/2014, 11:44 PM
I then used a program to monitor the API interface and dll that is called upon when playing the file back.

Curious. Which API logger did you use?
Sunflux wrote on 4/4/2014, 3:25 AM
Wow.

I've been doing a lot of GoPro footage editing using native 2.7k 30fps files, and most of the time I'll get maybe 1-2 frames per second on extended playback in either "preview" or "best" qualities (which made no sense to me). Please note, I am NOT exaggerating that low framerate, and quite often it will be even less than a frame a second. This is on a 6-core system, too!

If I play the same segment a few times over, sometimes I can "trick" it into playing for a while at perhaps 10fps, so I can at least see what in the world I'm trying to do, but if I jump around it drops back to slideshow mode.

I just tried the V11 DLL as suggested... and instantly, I now get a rock-solid 29.970fps at even "best" quality in 1080p resolution... and that's after sharpness and color correction! The only time it seems to slow down is on complex pans/zooms across the 2.7k frame. Certainly a million times more useful than how it was before.

Also, I tried renaming the _old DLL to active to see if it worked any better, but I saw no different in playback performance from the new/bad one.

Clearly, the V12 DLL has a bug or a serious regression that needs to be addressed. Considering how it's 1/3rd the size of the V11 DLL, I wouldn't doubt that some kind of performance optimization was implemented (by removing "unneeded code") that completely destroys playback of certain encoding types.

Considering how insanely popular GoPros are in the industry, I think ensuring optimum playback of their native files should be a priority (even if Sony does make their own action cams), especially when it's now clear that is - and WAS - possible!
OldSmoke wrote on 4/4/2014, 10:36 AM
Well there had to be a downside somewhere. While the GoPro 1080 60p file plays well with the old VP11 dll my AVHCD and MP4 files from my Canon HF-G30 are not running smooth anymore. For me it's back to the VP12 dll but I guess for those of you that are working with those GoPro files there is at least a workaround.

Proud owner of Sony Vegas Pro 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13 and now Magix VP15&16.

System Spec.:
Motherboard: ASUS X299 Prime-A

Ram: G.Skill 4x8GB DDR4 2666 XMP

CPU: i7-9800x @ 4.6GHz (custom water cooling system)
GPU: 1x AMD Vega Pro Frontier Edition (water cooled)
Hard drives: System Samsung 970Pro NVME, AV-Projects 1TB (4x Intel P7600 512GB VROC), 4x 2.5" Hotswap bays, 1x 3.5" Hotswap Bay, 1x LG BluRay Burner

PSU: Corsair 1200W
Monitor: 2x Dell Ultrasharp U2713HM (2560x1440)

skeeter123 wrote on 4/4/2014, 1:05 PM
Happiness, i.e., improvement, on the desktop system as well. And AVCHD files from Sony RX100 MK II don't seem to be affected....all is good here...

I wonder why the Canon files aren't playing (as) nice....
OldSmoke wrote on 4/4/2014, 1:23 PM
Vp11 32bit is also chocking on the Canon files. It seems while improvement where made to include new avc type files in the VP12.dll the GoPro type was either overlooked or a compromise was made. I wonder how GoPro Hero 3+ 1080 50p files play back in VP12 with the shipped dll.

The dll is made in Germany and maybe the didn't implement the 60p properly but did for the 50p files?

You can actually change the Hero 3+ to PAL and try, I just don't have one. I only got an old Hero :-(

Proud owner of Sony Vegas Pro 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13 and now Magix VP15&16.

System Spec.:
Motherboard: ASUS X299 Prime-A

Ram: G.Skill 4x8GB DDR4 2666 XMP

CPU: i7-9800x @ 4.6GHz (custom water cooling system)
GPU: 1x AMD Vega Pro Frontier Edition (water cooled)
Hard drives: System Samsung 970Pro NVME, AV-Projects 1TB (4x Intel P7600 512GB VROC), 4x 2.5" Hotswap bays, 1x 3.5" Hotswap Bay, 1x LG BluRay Burner

PSU: Corsair 1200W
Monitor: 2x Dell Ultrasharp U2713HM (2560x1440)