A few questions re: proxy editing, large video/project, and a weird blac preview screen problem (Windows PC – Vegas Pro 12)

[Blake Gibson]

Ah ok John. I must have already had it somehow. Anyway, update:

I’ve successfully rendered all 240 prores files as Cineform filmscan 2 422 YUV using Aaron’s scripts above in lots of 75. I will purchase you script on the next job John, this job doesn’t pay enough to justify it unfortunately and I wanted to make sure that Cineform was an actual fix/workaround and worked reliably.

So, I dropped 50 cineform files onto the timeline and it was fine, the filesurrogate didn’t even flinch, was sitting happily at around 50-100mb usage in task manager. I tried it with the same 50 prores files and the filesurrogate jumped up to 800mb, so surprises here.

I then proceeded to dump all the cineform files into the timeline as a test, got to the third batch of 75 and vegas crashed, and kept crashing when I kept trying, I imported 25 at a time from then on and still got crashes, I managed to get all 240 files in (i think, is there a way to count/check the amount of files in a timeline? Can’t really find anything on google about this). about 1hr 25m footage, total size is larger due to using filmscan 2 – 147gb vs Prores 116gb. Filesurrogate is happily sitting at around 17mb with everything in the timeline, so that’s no longer the problem.

I haven’t done much at all yet in terms of editing, but vegas seems to be struggling when I hit CTR+Z to undo, it freezes and shows as not responding but eventually comes good.

I read on a forum that increasing the Dynamic Ram preview MAX (MB) in options > preferences > video, might help with crash in general. At the moment its on 200mb our of 7107 available (8gb ram installed on PC)

Any suggestions on this or anything else that might help?

Will proxies help in this case?

Here is the error code I got with one of the crashes (other times it was the generic “vegas has stopped working”)

https://i58.tinypic.com/1zw7x4.jpg

I really appreciate the help I’m getting from you guys, thank you so much

[Blake Gibson]

Also, have you guys heard of “UT Video”? Apparently its a “new” codec for windows and MAC, its been around for a while but the stable version was released Feb this year I think?

[John Rofrano]

[Blake Gibson] “I’ve successfully rendered all 240 prores files as Cineform filmscan 2 422 YUV”

If this project printing back out to film? If not, filmscan2 is way overkill and might be contributing to your problem. The default Vegas Pro template for CineForm used the Medium setting. I have never had a reason to make it higher than that. You might consider using medium or high instead of filmscan 1 or 2.

[Blake Gibson] “Here is the error code I got with one of the crashes (other times it was the generic “vegas has stopped working”)”

That error is a memory heap overflow, probably due to a bug in the code. I see that you are on Vegas Pro 12.0 Build 367 and the latest build is 770. You might want to update your Vegas Pro 12.0 to see if Sony has already fixed this problem.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Aaron Star]

Not sure what would be off about HDCAM conversion. I would be interested in understanding this more. Can you upload comparison examples of the differencessence in the native formats?

HDCAM is what star wars:phantom menace was shot and edited in. Sure they used rgb444 mode of hdcam, but if something is off, you might not be doing a 1:1 conversion maintaining levels.

Cineform uses the avi container and that process will have the same limits as dnxhd in mov container. MXF will not have this issue.

If you really need to edit prores, and deliver in dnxhd, avid would be your best tool.

In vegas, prores to hdcam, edit, render hdcam, ffmpeg to dnxhd in MXF or prores. Ffmpeg can be scripted for batch conversions.

[Norman Black]

[John Rofrano] “[Blake Gibson] “after editing/grading etc: Cineform > handbrake h264 (that would mean I’ve gone from Prores > Cineform > Cineform > Handbrake”
If you want to use Handbreak then that’s the proper sequence. You can render and re-render to CneForm 10 times and not see any degradation in quality. This is what that codec is designed to do (be used in a production pipeline of multiple application transfers).”

Handbrake cannot read the Cineform codec.

[Norman Black]

[Blake Gibson] “So, I dropped 50 cineform files onto the timeline and it was fine, the filesurrogate didn’t even flinch, was sitting happily at around 50-100mb usage in task manager. I tried it with the same 50 prores files and the filesurrogate jumped up to 800mb, so surprises here.”

For Cineform AVI Vegas bypasses Video for Windows since it uses the Cineform SDK to directly use the Cineform codec. I believe I remember reading Newmann from Cineform state with was around Vegas 10, which is after Vegas stopped including Cineform according to JR.

fileiosurrogate is a 32-bit process of Vegas and is only used by 32-bit codecs in Vegas so most things will not touch/use this process. Really only Quicktime comes into this. Curiously the MP3 decoder is also only 32-bit in Vegas.

To Apple Quicktime on Windows is a video player only. A video player only needs to be 32-bit.

(rant on)
Prores is an issue for one reason and one reason only. Apple wants it to be that way. Prores started as an Apple specific clone of DNxHD which was Avid proprietary. The whole intermediate format is a mess because everyone has created their own proprietary formats over time. HDCAM SR, DNxHD, Cineform, Prores. DNxHD and Cineform have recently become SMPTE standards, but you have to pay buck to SMPTE to get the spec and reference source code, and who knows what licensing restrictions remain.

Everyone wants to protect and build their own special turf. Avid and Apple especially. I just which Cineform/GoPro would have just put the codec into public domain. GoPro has no turf to protect and Cineform is an excellent codec. Arguably technically better than the simplistic DCT JPEG type codecs of DNxHD and Prores.

XAVC Intra is the only thing that has a chance to deal with this mixed stew we have right now. It is just AVC with restricted encoding options. The AVC codec is well known as are the MPEG-LA AVC licensing rules.

Vegas keeps all files open at all times and this causes the problem with Quicktime. It is a porker with RAM and DNxHD or Prores codecs. Hitfilm has the same Quicktime file problems with lots of files. Quicktime is what it is and it is important so people like Vegas should work with it. If you don’t then customers are stopped in their tracks. Really while editing you do not need a file open that is 10 minutes ahead on the timeline or behind. Having a background thread monitoring and maintaining the file open list is not terribly difficult, but such a change is BIG, and thus maybe dangerous, for people like Vegas to do.
(rant off)

[Blake Gibson]

Not printing to film. Going to web, and a larger master on disc. It might just be me be crazy but I tested CF High and it didn’t look as good as Filmscan 2. Notice the top of the bartender’s forearm at 2 seconds till the start of 3 seconds when he’s lowering the bottle, I might be crazy but to me it goes noticeably fuzzier in the CF high test then it does in the CF Filmscan 2 test. I originally though there was more noise and macroblocking in his shirt too but that seems to be equal now. PW for both is pp

Prores HQ> CF Filmscan 2 > H264 30mbps 2 pass:

https://vimeo.com/133827660

Prores HQ > CF High > H264 30mbps 2 pass:

https://vimeo.com/133823315

And a H264 from the original Prores HQ for comparison:

Prores HQ > H264 30mbps 2 pass:

https://vimeo.com/133824540

I’m a bit hesitant to upgrade as I always read horror stories of Vegas randomly crashing for no apparent reason, I believe mine is pretty stable at the moment apart from this crash. Pretty scary espcially since I’m already behind on this project (which is entirely my fault)

[Blake Gibson]

Well, the reason why I prefer DNXHD is because I found I get the best results making a h264 from Handbrake using DNXHD rather than a h264 straight from Vegas, at a smaller file size.

I followed your instructions using floating 32bit levels. Here is a comparison, password is pp for both:

Prores HQ > HDCAM SR Lite > h264 12-14mbps 2 pass:

https://vimeo.com/133643784

Prores HQ > h264 12-14mbps 2 pass:

https://vimeo.com/133643785

I’m sure that the files pre-upload looked noticeably different too, but I’ve done so many tests that I can’t be sure. I’ll have to recheck that when I get home.

[Blake Gibson]

Yeah that sucks 🙁

I could render out from Vegas in Cineform again, then run that through Cliptoolz V2 to DNXHD, then to handbrake, according to what John says, that shouldn’t be a problem quality wise

[John Rofrano]

[Norman Black] “Handbrake cannot read the Cineform codec.”

I’m not sure why you believe this to be true but I can assure you that it works perfectly fine on my Windows 7 64-bit computer so I know for a fact that it works (and I just encoded a CineForm file with Handbreak to prove to myself that it hadn’t broken). 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com