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Thoughts on crashes and ways to minimize them
Well, I’ve had to do a lot of multicamera editing lately, and have also been forced to edit in two different geographical areas, so I am editing on a desktop system and a laptop (both are very modern i7 workstations with lots of RAM). After experiencing numerous crashes with my desktop configuration I’ve come to some beliefs about crashes, especially in multicamera mode.
First off, my desktop unit has had a single Nvidia card driving two monitors. I’m now convinced that Vegas does not adequately support that configuration, or at least the Nvidia drivers don’t with Vegas. I’ve had no problems *other than with Vegas* on this same machine.
Last week, I finally, almost by accident, turned off the second monitor and worked with a single monitor on the desktop unit. Surprisingly, my crashes stopped. I have been able to get through three multicam videos since then with not one crash happening in Vegas Pro 11. I did experience a couple of crashes on exiting Vegas, but it was not destructive to my timeline, as were others previously.
Interestingly enough, my work on my Dell laptop (i7, 8GBs RAM Nvdia GT525M) with only an external monitor mirrored out, has had no crashes in multicamera mode. Both systems use W7 Ulimate, 64 bit and Vegas Pro 11 64 bit.
This is leading me to believe that by sticking with single monitors you can minimize crashing. When I get some spare time I’m going to buy matching video cards for the desktop unit and see if that helps lower the crashes.
Anyone else have thoughts on this? Are those of you with dual monitor cards experiencing lots of crashes as well, especially as it may relate to multicamera or other video intensive tasks?
Al
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7 Replies
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Al, do you use nested veg files or other .veg files inside
of your projects? -
No. I don’t. Never have. Master audio track. four or five tracks of video.
Al
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Al
That’s an interesting observation. Are you using Vegas’ own multicam editor, or a 3rd party plug-in?
I will give that a go, although not having a external monitor will make for a very busy desktop. I regularly shoot with 4 cameras.
I have to colour grade a project that has 6 cameras that was constantly crashing on the editor friend of mine (about every 10-20 minutes).
I’ll see if this ‘tip’ rings true. If it does, I wonder who is at fault to restore stable dual monitor support: Sony, Microsoft or maker of the video driver?
My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6
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Nigel, you might only have to do this for a few weeks while you see if it actually changes anything. Or if you have a second, identical card you can insert in your system, try that.
As to your question, I’ve been only using the built in multicamera editor. i didn’t want to change too many variables at once.
If this actually is an issue, and I’m not yet saying it for sure, then it normally means that Sony needs to figure out. Usually, they will need to actually reproduce this in their labs, and then take the results and find out who’s code is actually causing it.
It might be that the nvidia software isn’t meant to drive two monitors at once under these conditions, and if so, maybe it’s just as simple as Sony saying that the proper configuration for two monitors is two graphics cards, both the same make and model.
But to be clear, Apple handles this just fine in their OS, and I bet other software vendors (anyone having this happen on the same machine with Premiere?) also do.
It does make sense to use two graphics cards to drive two monitors. I just never thought that it was an issue as my card happily supports all the other functions of my dual monitors without crashes, for over a year now.
Al
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I have two nVidia cards driving four monitors.
No problem.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
This is a totally different application (no vidio or animation).
I’m a mechanical CAD engineer running an nVidia Quadro 5000M on an HP EliteBook 8740w Notebook computer. For several weeks I have had a problem with my system crashing. The computer totally shuts down–it completely powers-down instantaneously with no warning. I doesn’t only happen while running a CAD application. Sometimes I’m using a single Microsoft Office application when it happens, sometimes I’m just online with Internet Explorer.
At first I tried reducing the resolution on my monitors, but that didn’t seem to help. Then, like another writer above, almost by accident, I narrowed the problem down by observing that it only occured whenever I was driving two monitors (which, until this problem surfaced, I usually did). If I only drive one monitor, there’s no problem. It doesn’t even have to be the notebook’s own mobile monitor–I can drive another, larger, higher-resolution monitor, but just not two monitors at once.
Jack Strandquist, P.E.
Need M.E. CAD design?
http://www.linkedin.com/in/strandquist -
[Jack Strandquist] “The computer totally shuts down–it completely powers-down instantaneously with no warning.”
That is almost ALWAYS a case of overheating. Open the computer up and clean out the dust bunnies. You can run CoreTemp to see how hot your CPU is getting.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com
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