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ProRes 422 files stop working in Vegas Pro
ProRes 422 HQ video stops displaying in Vegas Pro 10 and 13 after I import approximately 27 clips. The video in the timeline goes black and the auto preview displays black as well. The audio plays fine.
Quicktime Player 7.7.8. The videos also playing fine in Quicktime player. Media Info video stream: English, 582 Mbps, 3840*2160 (16:9), at 23.976 fps, ProRes (Version 0)(422 HQ)
The video stops from displaying after I import more than 27 clips. Also if I import more than 20 audio clips the video clips stop working. If I remove the extra audio or video clips the video starts displaying again.
This happens in both Vegas Pro 10 and 13. No issues in Premiere Pro. All on the same system.
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18 Replies
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Yes, Vegas is documented to have limitations when importing numerous
Quicktime files on the timeline at once for most users, i’ve never come
across that limitation in my personal workflow however.
So the best advice i would give you is to simply work and render in increments/segments, then drop them back on the timeline for joining and
final render.Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia -
[Carl Johnson] “This happens in both Vegas Pro 10 and 13. No issues in Premiere Pro. All on the same system.”
If you want to work with QuickTime files, then Vegas Pro is the wrong NLE to use. Vegas Pro uses a 32-bit QuickTime plug-in so it’s limited to 2GB of memory when working with QuickTime. Premiere Pro has native QuickTime support which is why it doesn’t have this problem.
You need to either convert the QuickTime files into a format Vegas Pro can edit easily (like Sony MXF) or use a different NLE.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
John, any good converter that can convert to mxf and maintain the bitrate? Preferably free.
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If you need to edit in 2160p convert to XAVC.mxf, this will eliminate the clip number issue. XAVC will not maintain the 500Mbs bitrate quality of the ProRes HQ. Quicktime in Vegas is only 32bit and so runs out of resources after so many clips are added. Currently Vegas has NO high bit rate 4k codec internal to convert at the same quality levels. XAVC is 600Mbs capable but Sony’s implementation in Vegas auto determines the bitrate based on content and frame rate. 4k60p is up to 600Mbs, 4k24p will be a much lower bitrate since there is less to compress. Converting to DPX or EXR and then editing proxy would be the Vegas way I would try of working at that level. Of course if the XAVC conversion is good enough for the final display then edit in that format. Make sure to convert in 32-bit video levels to XAVC.
You could try the trial of Catalyst Prepare and convert the Prores to XAVC. Catalyst will convert to XAVC at a higher bitrate. Test 4K files I have done, have shown the resultant files at 300Mbs. There is no advanced settings to set the bit rate in Catalyst, but it looks like catalyst will auto determine the bitrate needed, and has access to the full 600Mbs range of XAVC. I would imagine Catalyst Edit has something similar. You can take the resulting converted files back into Vegas for editing or edit in Catalyst Edit. If no color correction is made to the footage in Vegas, Vegas will smart Render the edit or not recompress the media again. Smart Render also means a faster final render of the edit, as only overlays and transitions will be rendered/recompressed.
Convert all your audio to WAV/PCM so it does not use QuickTime.
Vegas is a good batch render tool, using included scripts, search the scripting forum over at Sony’s forum. You would just need to batch in quantities that are lower than the QuickTime limit.
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[Carl Johnson] “any good converter that can convert to mxf and maintain the bitrate? Preferably free.”
Yes… Vegas Pro! 😉
Seriously, the problem is that you can’t have a lot of QuickTime files in the project at the same time but you can certainly place them on the timeline one at a time and render them to Sony MXF. Drop one on the timeline, render to Sony MXF, delete it and drop the next one on the timeline… repeat.
If you had a productivity plug-in like VASST Ultimate S Pro it can do the batch rendering for you (and a whole lot more). You could also drop say 10 QuickTime files on the timeline and then use a combination of VASST Marker Maker to create Regions around the events and then use VASST Render Assistant to render the regions to individual Sony MXF files.
I think the built-in Sony Batch Render script will render regions as well and that’s free!
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
You can use Vegas as a converter!
Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia -
I’ve been having this problem too. We shot 122 very short clips and Vegas 10 was not able to put more than a couple dozen on the timeline at once.
This thread gave me the clue I needed: It’s not about the actual volume of data; it’s about the number of clips. So the trick is to reduce the number of clips losslessly.
I had a hard time finding this answer, so I’ll post it for all.
In the bin folder of ffmpeg, I created mylist.txt with the clips to be concatenated / merged / joined. It looks like this:
file ‘R:\It’\”s my first file!.mov’
file ‘R:\It’\”s my second file!.mov’These are fictitious filenames but that’s the proper way to escape a single quote, I also had to learn.
I generated the list of filenames in Windows using this old trick I had lying around from ages ago; I don’t know that it’s the best way, but it still works in w7, if you run it in a command window in the folder where your movs are:
dir /a:-r /b *.mov >> “mylist.txt”
Then I did find-and-replace to make it look like the above, placed mylist.txt in the ffmpeg bin folder, and ran this:
ffmpeg concat -i mylist.txt -c copy x:\output.mov
If you have mp4s or something else, this should work if you change all my ‘mov’s to ‘mp4’.
The resulting output.mov file is exactly the contents of the individual files, but Vegas has, so far, had no problem working with it!
I didn’t find this solution anywhere online, so here it is.
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I’m sorry, I just noticed an error in my ffmpeg command, and I can’t find a link to edit my post, even though I only just posted it 19 minutes ago. 🙁
Here is the correct syntax:
ffmpeg -f concat -i mylist.txt -c copy “x:\output.mov”
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Yea, I can’t edit my posts either. It started just recently and I thought it was just my browser. Thanks for confirming that others are having this problem too.
It’s interesting that it’s the number of QuickTime files and not the size all added up. Thanks for posting that work-around.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
John,
I hope this is not too late.
When using SVP13 to convert 10-bit ProResHQ to MXF, will it maintain the 10-bit status of the file?
I use a BMCC and shoot in 10-bit ProRes and am looking into how to maintain that 10-bit status by converting the ProRes to Cineform, MXF, or whatever file type can be used natively in SVP13 so as to maintain that 10-bit status. (so, I hear that’s how to do it).
Thank you for you time.
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