GPU issues / formatchaos / previews black

[John Rofrano]

[Lars Schneider] “I got clips from different cameras (sony,GoPro,Canon,iphone4s) = (.mts, mp4 and .mov). “

Your project sounds like it’s a candidate for transcoding. This is what any Final Cut Pro editor would be doing… transcoding all that mess into a common format to make editing easier to edit. Since you have GoPro footage, I would get GoPro Studio (if you don’t already have it) and transcode all of these files into CineForm. This will solve all of your editing problems.

[Lars Schneider] “The .mts and .mp4 are 1920×1080 25fps the .mov 1920×1080 fps 29.970”

Why do you have a mix of PAL and NTCS footage. Did you buy the wrong cameras? or are you just using the wrong frame rates? You need to use the cameras that are native to your country (e.g., NTSC for US and Japan, PAL for everywhere else)

[Lars Schneider] “I tried everything even disabled Norton and reinstalled etc. but no success. Even worse some of the good ones were suddenly shown as media offline despite being not touched.”

Norton is a particularly invasive piece of software that I would never use. It will cause more problems than it solves. I’d get rid of it if I were you.

[Lars Schneider] ” have found a workaround by rendering the . movs clip by clip into SAVC 1920×1080 25fps but likely this causes loss of quality. Is MS really unable to cope with different clip formats in one project or am I just overlooking something obvious here?”

What’s not obvious to you is that there are acquisition formats, editing formats, and delivery formats, and they are not always the same format. So while you CAN drop all sorts of different media on your timeline… it doesn’t mean that you SHOULD. For the best editing experience, edit with a digital intermediary like CineForm.

[Lars Schneider] “Second issue is GPU related. “

Join the long list of people with GPU problems with Sony’s Movie Studio and Vegas Pro software. The simply answer is, “if the GPU doesn’t work, turn it off”. Short of making sure that you have the latest GPU drivers for your card, there isn’t a whole lot that you can do. AMD/ATI GPU’s work better with Movie Studio than NVIDIA cards do. But as I said, you card either works or it doesn’t and if it doesn’t all you can do is not use it.

[Lars Schneider] “The old macbook i7 dualcore 4GB RAM no graphiccard from my wife had no issues with all the different file formats and got the same render time as my brandnew quadcore.”

Mac’s are awesome for video editing. I have a MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro and I have no issues with Vegas Pro and GPU acceleration. Maybe you should buy a Mac. 😉

[Lars Schneider] “Same question here. Do I overlook something obvious or is GPU support just avaiable for specific codes.”

You are correct that GPU support is only available for specific codecs. MPEG2 is not GPU accelerated. AVC is. There is also timeline GPU acceleration. Try turning that off. Go into Options | Preferences | Video and make sure that GPU Acceleration is set to NONE.. Then try and render again with CPU Only and see if that fixes your problems.

[Lars Schneider] “I want to create DVDs or Blurays to display my projects on my 46″ full HD but also on other friends DVD players What are the best rendersettings for me to keep the quality as high as possible, but achieving faster rendertimes.”

For DVD use MainConcept MPEG2 with one of the DVD Architect templates. For Blu-ray use one of the Blu-ray templates. You can also produce Blu-ray using Sony AVC. For both of those render your audio as Dolby Digital AC3. Most professional DVD authoring programs expect a separate video and audio stream as input.

~jr

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

[Lars Schneider]

Hi John,

First of all thanks for the superquick and comprehensive reply.

I am mountaineering and was in the Andes with lots offer people.
.mts. Is from my sony with 25 fps
. mov1 from my iphone 4s with 29.970 fps found nothing in the settings to change that
. Mov2 from a canon from a companero with 29.970 fps
. Mp4 from the gopro from a further companero

As you see there is not much to influence here if you get different sources. However next time I willl try to make sure that all the folks use the same video settings provided they agree. At least I will get my clips in just one format.

I dont own a gopro and consider to get me the sony actioncam as100 or the qx10.
So no I dont own gopro studio. And would like to avoid buying another SW if possible.

Given the previous mentioned facts and the likelyhood that also in the future I am getting different formats is the cineform the best intermediate format you are recommending for my purposes?

Secondly which tool is the best to convert all this mediamess. I used xmedia recode but ghosting effects which I got is not really something I am looking for; again GoPro Studio?

I was haggling between mac and windows. I created in June with iMovie a great film first time and immediately loved it. I was seriously considering buying me the 15″ mac pro in its biggest config with dedicated gpu, but the price here in Germany would have been 3000 Euros. Therefore I decided to go for a win 8.1 machine with the same specs for just Euro 1000 and thougth it would do the trick.

So hearing that the piece of metal I bougth is supercrap is something I expected leat to hear but honour the open words. Am currently circling like the famos fox who tries tobite his own ….

Ok anyhows it is was it is.

So….
a) GPU off thats noted
b) you still recommend for my purposes as intermediate form Cineform ?
c) acq, edit, delivery mode – ok – acknowledged makes perfect sense.
d) anything else I should consider?

Million thanks from Frankfurt
Lars

Lars’s system
i7 4700HQ @2.4GHz 16GB Nvidia GTX 850 (344.75)
Moviestudio 13 Platinum build 932
Quicktime 7.7.6

[John Rofrano]

[Lars Schneider] “So no I dont own gopro studio. And would like to avoid buying another SW if possible.”

GoPro Studio is FREE. No reason not to use it.

[Lars Schneider] “Given the previous mentioned facts and the likelyhood that also in the future I am getting different formats is the cineform the best intermediate format you are recommending for my purposes?”

If you need a format that you can get your footage into before you use it in Vegas Pro then I would say that CineForm is your best choice. If the video works in Vegas Pro then you can use Vegas to render it all to Sony MXF. But that assumes that Vegas can render the video properly. You said that you were getting “just green or reddish brown rectangles” so I assume you need a tool outside of Vegas Pro to convert your footage which is why I recommended GoPro Studio.

[Lars Schneider] “I was haggling between mac and windows. I created in June with iMovie a great film first time and immediately loved it. I was seriously considering buying me the 15″ mac pro in its biggest config with dedicated gpu, but the price here in Germany would have been 3000 Euros. Therefore I decided to go for a win 8.1 machine with the same specs for just Euro 1000 and thougth it would do the trick.”

The advantage that the Mac has is that you can use ProRes 422 which is an excellent digital intermediary from Apple. You could have bought a used Mac Pro on eBay for a lot less. A while back I picked up a 2008 Mac Pro 2.8Ghz 8-core, 16GB Memory, 256 SSD, 2TB RAID, w/ATI Radeon HD 5870 for only $740 USD on eBay and it performs really well.

It’s important to note that your project is in a single format. Throwing multiple formats on the timeline means that Vegas Pro must conform the video to match the project format on-the-fly. This can be very taxing on your computer depending on what those formats are. Transcoding to a common format before you edit will put much less strain on your computer.

I think you may also see a good improvement with the GPU off because your Nvidia GTX 850 may actually be slowing you down because of it’s poor OpenCL performance. I think that one change along with transcoding your media to CineForm may be all you need to get good performance with your existing system.

~jr

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

[Lars Schneider]

Million Thanks John that helped a lot. Short salient to the point with all info needed.

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome Lars. Glad I could help.

~jr

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

[Lars Schneider]

Hi John,
Me again. Tool installed, but doesnt work at all. Imported clip is shown, but when I start to play it nothing happens.
If I click the timeline to 10 sec or so then the video plays bur no sound.
If I then wind back to start and click play again a screeching mono frequencey sound is audible like in the old modem times. Clicking to a more progressed section video runs normal but again no sound.

For this project I will live with the recoded . mov files as this seems to work and for the future stay lightyears away from any quicktime crap. Just wonder why the cineform tool doesnt work. Checked their homepage and FAQ and hints but nothing.

Found another tool called V1 Mov2mp4 that does not do a transcoding just a re-containering into mp4.
Any view on this ?
Lars

[John Rofrano]

[Lars Schneider] “Just wonder why the cineform tool doesnt work. Checked their homepage and FAQ and hints but nothing.”

Are you saying it didn’t work on the GoPro footage? I would have expected that to work. I could see other formats not working but the GoPro footage should have at least worked.

[Lars Schneider] “Found another tool called V1 Mov2mp4 that does not do a transcoding just a re-containering into mp4.”

It’s worth a try. At least you won’t loose any quality. Let’s us know how to works.

~jr

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

[Demetris Christodoulides]

Ok, chimed-in to post my solution after a whole day of reading all the relevant topics i could find and struggling with re-installing vegas, quicktime, codecs, etc.

Here’s what finally worked for me, and it was very simple.

1. don’t have shitty codec packs in your computer. Install all the regular, ‘pro’ codecs you want with no problem, but no shitty codec packs. Remove them all with iobitunistaller and search for leftovers.

Just only leave legit stuff like:

(some of those are purchases, but all very well known and needed)

AvidCodecsLESetup.exe
cinemartin Cinec 2.7.5 Gold CE.msi
DNGCodec_2_0_Installer.exe
DNxHDProResQTSetup_CE.exe
LagarithSetup_1327.exe
m3jpegv3.exe
Xvid-1.3.2-20110601.exe
Adobe DNG Codec 2.0 (especially if you’re working canon dlsr’s and magic lantern) , get it from here: https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=5495&fileID=5491)

2. Install latest itunes (x64 or x86 depending on your system) and quicktime (x86 only at the time of writing this).
Open those two software programmes afterwards and make sure they open and work ok.

3.MAKE SURE THAT QUICKTIME PRO ALWAYS RUNS AS ADMIN. It’s very important. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime
right click on QuickTimePlayer.exe, go to ‘compatibility’, ‘change settings for all users’, tick/check: “run this program as administrator”, ok

4. MAKE SURE THAT SONY VEGAS.EXE DOES ALWAYS NOT (AND I REPEAT NOT!!) RUN AS ADMININSTRATOR AND DOES NOT (NOT!!) RUN IN ANY COMPATIBILITY MODE

5. Open the problematic project in vegas and go to:

tools
clean up pre-rendered video -> all prerendered video
clean project media
rebuild offline nested audio

– Go to program’s preferences and restore all defaults, especially video tab
– check your sony vegas project settings, that it matches the media properties in it
– make sure you don’t have any corrupt video files in the project (i.e. green thumbnails)
– disable and enable again your VFX in the corresponding video channel that has the black previews to
check whether one of your effects causes the black previews

6. download ccleaner and install it from here https://filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/download/3344dcbbf178985fed4ce8b94003a161/
and run everything in it, i.e. RUN CLEANER – yes to all
and REGISTRY, SCAN FOR ISSUES, FIX SELECTED ISSUES

Restart computer, open vegas again, you should be ok

cheers