Can I render Vegas in H.264?

[Norman Willis]

Hi Brett.

>>If I were going to reinstall the OS I’d probably go for Windows 7 in any case, and frankly, I don’t like wasting my time living on the bleeding edge any more. 😉

I hear that. I think I am just arriving at that conclusion myself. like right now.

>>Also, please confirm to me that you have rendered with the Main Concept AVC presets (at least the built-in preset templates?)

Yes, I can render in Main Concept AVC; but not in Sony AVC. It seems I have the opposite problem that you have. I can get mine to work with Main Concept AVC/AAC with the iPod 640×480 preset, but not with anything else. I am dissatisfied with that, because it gives me letterboxing.

What I really want to use is the Sony AVC, Internet HD 1920 x 1080 30p preset, but every time I try to run that, it gets to about 4-5% progress on the render, and then tells me I am out of memory. That is interesting, because I’ve got 8GB of RAM, 4GB of ReadyBoost RAM and a 12 GB swap file. On top of that, Windows Task Manager tells me that physical RAM usage averages about 3.3GB, and I never saw it exceed 3.5GB, on Vista 64 Ultimate (so I know it can use all of that RAM). The problem persists on rebooting. I did have AVG Internet Security running in the background (and maybe I should shut that down), but that was about all.

>>Also, I wouldn’t even try to run Vegas Pro 8.0 or 9.0 on a laptop myself. Their video drivers are never that stable and they run way too hot for my taste usually with very inadequate ventilation and cooling though I suppose you might put one on one of those cooling devices and see if you could keep it stable, for me, the adventure would be too much… I don’t like losing any more work than I have to, given other options.

I hear that also. I use my laptop mostly for correspondence and ‘test bed’ stuff. I tried using the video card hard a couple of weeks back, and the machine got so hot it started failing to respond to the keypad properly. It lives on a cooling pad, and never comes off of it.

I think part of the problem is that the machine housing seems to be part plastic (Dell Inspiron E1720). I might try to use it if I had a metal bodied laptop housing (like MacBook Pro’s have), and an external G-RAID device with Cineform codec running…but I am starting to think that all of my serious machines will forever be desktop models.

I have a Dell T3400 Workstation. I bought a spare side-panel on EBay for ten bucks, cut the meat out of it, and glued bug mesh in its place. Then I also added a superquiet fan to the back of the case, and the thing really, really vents. No more problems with heat! If only I could figure out something for the laptop…..

I have considered cutting into the case bigtime, and installing similar kinds of mesh, but then with a mobile device that might get exposed to outdoor environments, it really just is not worth it.

I will be very interested to see if we can solve the MainConcept issue for you, because I might learn something about using the Sony AVC codec myself (which is what I really want to use).

John, are you saying I should report this to Sony?

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org
servant@nazareneisrael.org

[John Rofrano]

> every time I try to run that, it gets to about 4-5% progress on the render, and then tells me I am out of memory.

Just curious… what is your Dynamic RAM Preview max set to in Vegas under Options| Preferences | Video? Try setting it to zero (0) before you render and see if that helps.

~jr

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

[Norman Willis]

OK, it’s rendering (currently at 24%).

When I just set Dynamic RAM Preview to Zero it still conked out. But when I left Dynamic RAM Preview at zero, rebooted, and also set Audio in the render to 44,100, it works (it had been at 48,000).

So I am using Sony AVC, Internet 16:9 Widescreen HD 30p preset.

CPU and RAM usage is much lower than with the Main Concept/iPod 640×480 template. Right now, CPU usage is hovering between 55 and 62%, Memory usage is hovering at about 2.62GB.

Windows Task Manager reads:
Physical Memory (MB)
Total: 8124
Cached: @6000
Free: @ 66

Kernel Memory (MB)
Total 498
Paged 325
Nonpaged 174

I guess I am still curious why I would ‘run low on memory’ before, when I have 8GB of RAM plus 4GB ReadyBoost RAM installed, and a 12GB paging file?

And what, if anything, should I report to Sony?

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org
servant@nazareneisrael.org

[Brett Underberg-davis]

I realize this advice was meant for Norman, but on the off chance that it might also help with my issue I did try it. Unlike past attempts it did seems that a very tiny bit of progress was made before crashing. Still, the crash reporter is suggesting that the issue is with the mcmp???.dll plugin that I think was listed in the crash report I posted before.

Actually, after resetting the reserved memory for prerendering to 0, then closing Vegas, restarting it and confirming the setting change had registered I did get the program to “pretend” to render using the MCMP4 fileIO plug-in, but considering I was using a “roll my own” preset that should have used very little memory (360×180 resolution, 30fps) and there the estimated rendering time just kept on multiplying the longer I let it run, I cancelled that process after a few minutes had passed and estimated rendering time was well in excess of what it took Sony AVC to render the same project at 720-30p. But it was interesting that the MainConcept IO plugin did NOT simply cause the crash I’d had in all cases before this.

Thanks for the input!

[Brett Underberg-davis]

Update: Boosting the value back up to 256MB (less than what the setting had been before) seems to have enabled the render to progress, or at least to get started, at least using one of the sub-HD presets installed with Pro 9.0 thanks for pointing me in what seems to have been a helpful direction!

Here are the specs for my one successful render so far:

General
Complete name : M:\Vid\albe09\littlelight01mcX1.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42
File size : 19.3 MiB
Duration : 4mn 28s
Overall bit rate : 604 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2009-07-19 21:41:43
Tagged date : UTC 2009-07-19 21:41:43

Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Baseline@L1.3
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 4mn 28s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 473 Kbps
Width : 368 pixels
Height : 208 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.206
Stream size : 15.1 MiB (78%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2009-07-19 21:41:43
Tagged date : UTC 2009-07-19 21:41:43

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : No
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 4mn 28s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 4.10 MiB (21%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2009-07-19 21:41:43
Tagged date : UTC 2009-07-19 21:41:43

However, when I tried to do a new render at something closer to 720p 30fps I still got the same crash. (I have rendered at least 50 videos for YouTube/vimeo using similar profiles under Vegas 8.0c, using the MCMP4 plugin or its equivalent in 8.0c, fwiw).

Perhaps I just don’t have the RAM and processing power needed for doing it in 9.0? I only have 4GB RAM, not counting video RAM (512MB) on my NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT card. CPU is an Intel Core2 Quad Q6600.

[Brett Underberg-davis]

Looks like I posted my question just a few days too early. At least in my case, it seems that the first patch (9.0a) took care of the issues I was having with the MCMP4plug.dll… namely what was listed on the bugfix report as a crash related to dualpass rendering. For me, at least in the 32bit version just installed, the problem seems to have gone away and I just finished a 720-30p render (2-pass) a few hours ago with no obvious problems.

Thanks for all the helpful hints though. Some of them proved useful anyway and probably helped to further stabilize things for me. Mad props as always to the knowledgeable crew here!

I’m mainly adding this bit for reference for anyone who may come along who is not aware of the patch and is having similar issues. Would love to hear from Norman whether this patch addressed some of the problem’s he’s experiencing with the Sony AVC/AAC package.

[Norman Willis]

Hi Brett.

I saw the update, and am looking forward to installing it.

I am finishing a project, and hope to install it just after that (in about two days). I will try to let you know how it goes.

Glad to hear you got your problem solved! It is very encouraging.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org
servant@nazareneisrael.org

[Brett Underberg-davis]

Norman,

Usually I expect a new release to be full of nasty bugs, so that was my first assumption in this case as well. Wishing you well with completing your project! (If anything I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how relatively minor most of the bugs have been, and glad to see a maintenance release coming out so soon with such a list of fixes).