Could My Graphics Card Be Causing Vegas to Creash?

[Norman Willis]

>>I have a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card, driver version is 8.17.12.5721 dated 6/7/2010.

Ken, when did the problems begin?

And can you roll back to a different driver, to test?

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Jeff Schroeder]

I had the same problem… Twice. It was solved after a fresh install and soon went back to crashing. With my problem the crashes got progressively sooner after starting on a project. I’m using 9.0e on Windows 7 64 bit, and had no problems when I had other versions of Vegas under Vista64 and XP64. After my first fresh install of Win7 everything worked until Windows update got all caught up. On my second fresh install I disabled windows update before connecting to the internet. I have not had a problem since. I have gobs of storage (6.5 TB) and my system drive is a small SSD, so every once in a while I will make an image of it just in case something goes wrong. I hope this helps,

Jeff

http://www.narrowroadmedia.com

[Norman Willis]

Now that you mention it, I did learn the hard way that Windows wants to replace the factory video card driver with their own version, and it is not always good.

Windows loaded their version of my driver (BFG GTX260) about two weeks after I installed the card, and I ended up having to restore the machine with an earlier disk image. Then I put Windows Update on manual, and watched for the driver to come in. When it came in I right-clicked it and hid it, and then I put Windows Update back on automatic, and had no more problems with it.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Ken Bennett]

Going back to the graphics card, is my GeForce 8800GT sub-par for WIN 7 64-bit? I’m looking at GTX485 and Quadros FX3800 right now. What graphics cards are working in WIN 7 64-bit and Vegas 9.0x?

Thanks,

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!

[Norman Willis]

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/mastersuite

Sony is recommending the Quadro FX580 on their boxes. That is not a very hot card, but they are probably recommending that one because Vegas is all CPU. You are probably wanting something for AE?

I have never heard of anyone having an issue with the gaming cards, but I am also sure that there is a reason they sell them. Given that you have a feature film to cut I would imagine that the Quadro is a much safer bet. My $0.02.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Ken Bennett]

Norm- The Supermicro Extreme is the same box I have. Though they don’t tell you the model number of the MOBO. I wonder if the Quadros FX3800 is an over kill?

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!

[Norman Willis]

>>The Supermicro Extreme is the same box I have.

I’d love to have that box. Did you toss the supplied FX580? Or can you put that card back in and test? That might help you isolate the issue, to see if it really is the graphics card.

>>I wonder if the Quadros FX3800 is an over kill?

That I cannot answer for you. If it was me I would first try a test with the FX580. If that worked and I wanted more juice I might try a GTX 460 for $210.00 before I dropped $800.00 on an FX3800: but again that is completely up to you.

If a GTX 460 or 485 does not play nice with your system can you send it back within the 15 day window? (It is just a question.)

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Al Bergstein]

Ken, a few thoughts. After decades in high tech, and working on dozens of computers in my day, I would not guess that the graphics card is to blame here. I am not Sony, so I can’t have access to their internal database of bugs and problems, but from what I’ve read of your problem, I would doubt the graphics, because usually it would either totally take down your machine, or throw some hardware error, maybe a BSOD.

Does Vegas exit gracefully, meaning it simply end the program and in 9.e give you a box to enter extra information about what you were doing when the program stopped functioning?

If I had to suspect anything, it would be your RAID controller. It *sounds* like a bad clip with some kind of corruption. It is odd that another Windows program can pick it up fine. Maybe Vegas lacks some kind of error checking or handling of corruption in the file or data messed by the controller. You didn’t state whether your clip was actually brought up on the exact same machine using that other package, and with the same hardware and RAID controller. I assume it was. Could you bypass the RAID controller to isolate the problem further?

But you are right, it *could* be a bug or other known issue to Sony internally. Given your frustration, the $150 to get direct Sony support seems reasonable, and you have probably wasted more than that up to this point, given whatever you charge by the hour. By paying it you likely could at least convince yourself you gave Sony every opportunity to help you and if some other package does the job without the crash, well what could I or anyone say?

I have had some problems crop up since loading some third party addons in to Windows 7 w/Vegas 9.e. Vegas was loading everything I threw at it, then I loaded some add ons, and pow, a few clips started failing, usually after I had loaded a couple of clips ahead of them. But I suspect it was memory corruption. I’ve backed them out and the problems have cleared. But I’m very suspicious of 9.e and what appears to be some kind of memory corruption with very large AVCHD files I’m dealing with. I’ve tried converting to AVI with Neoscene. It *seems* to make the matter worse, so that leads me to suspect the file size loading into memory. (I have 8GBs of RAM). I also don’t know how well Sony vets it’s third party add ons. I suspect not at all. Given this, I am making sure I have complete backups of non crashing systems, set a restore point in Windows before loading new software thus giving me a rollback plan in the event of problems showing up that didn’t before. I do this on the Mac already, though they don’t support restore points, that I’m aware of.

Anyway, I would bite the bullet and pay Sony tech support. You are going to spend a lot to relearn something else. $150 is not much money given the hours you will spend doing that. I don’t guarantee you a thing, but it’s what I would do. And I might if this problem keeps popping up as I add third party add ons. For some reason I have not seen that happen on my “other” platform I use for work occassionally. The other editor is a more difficult editor, but it doesn’t crash loading files. I’ve changed to that other platform for the last two days, just to hit a deadline, but intend to try and replicate the problem over the next few days and see if I can get it isolated. Then I’ll call Sony and pay them to answer a few pointed questions. Or I’ll call the third party.

Hope this helps save you some time.

Alf

[Norman Willis]

>>$150 is not much money given the hours you will spend doing that. I don’t guarantee you a thing, but it’s what I would do.

Absolutely right. But it should only be a single-incident (no matter how many times you have to call back), so that should be no more than $29.95 (especially since it is a Sony-approved machine).

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/support/technicalsupport.asp

And I also suspect the Rocket Raid card. Did Sony supply that? It gets quite a few ‘non-compatible’ reviews on NewEgg. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115056

If you slip the FX580 (or some other card) in and that does not solve the issue, can you try a different RAID controller card?

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Ken Bennett]

I will give Sony a call and give them a chance to save one customer. I’ll also try uninstalling the RAID card and see if that makes any difference. Most of my drive are Seagates and there was an issues with 1.5GB drives which I have 4 in the external RAID which is the only RAID I’m using right now.

So before I look into switching a graphics card, we’ll make sure it’s not the RAID.

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!