Numerous crashes

[Stephen Mann]

You may not be able to use the on-board graphics. Intel is not too responsive to updating their driver software. They really only make motherboards as evaluation hardware to sell chips, so if they play “Doom 9” they consider their job finished.

Get an nVidia Geforce card with CUDA cores – it should cost less than $100 – and install it with the latest beta drivers from nVidia. Make sure you disable the on-board graphics chip and delete the driver software from Intel.

Let us know if it works now.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Derek Green]

Many thanks Stephen for your very quick response. I had already had BSODs when trying to play BluRay discs and had to get rid of over-clocking the processor. I tracked a lot of the problems down to HDCP handshaking being affected by the over-clocking. Having lost all the BSODs, I checked the video drivers. The driver I have for the on-board HD graphics is actually the latest from Asus my motherboard supplier. Indeed it is only a few days old! However, I bow to your greater knowledge about these things. I am sure that you are right.

I have been investigating which graphics card to buy here in the UK. The Sony benchmarks show that the Nvidia GTX570 chipset has the best overall effect across all the rendering and other tasks. There is an Asus board using this chipset on our Amazon, here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004K8R8DA/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B004NBYD0U&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0JA3GR28FRJX2PYNGMNQ

The biggest problem for me is the noise the fans make. Sorry to bother you again, but do you have any suggestions about a suitable reasonable priced card that should be quietish, even passively cooled? Or should I accept the fan noise for performance and low price, please?

[Stephen Mann]

No clue on the noise. I have a pair of GeForce gtx 520’s driving four screens and they are quiet enough. If you record in the vicinity of the PC, maybe you can shut it down during recording, or move the PC to a closet and run long cables to the peripherals.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[John Rofrano]

[Derek Green] “The clips are non-encrypted HD .ts files… The other crashes occur nearly as quickly. I add a lot of wma audio files to the timeline and edit them successfully, but when I try to re-render them as an output wma file the program yet again crashes and stops working.”

Where are you getting .TS files from? The files themselves could be the problem. Vegas Pro is primarily an editor for videographers and as such, gets testing with lots of video camera formats but if you are not using a format from a camera, this could be part of the problem. Also I would stay away from WMA audio. PCM audio (i.e., .WAV files) is the preferred format.

What you might consider doing is converting all of your footage into a format that is easier to edit. Perhaps HDV, XDCAM, or CineForm. Just because you can throw all sorts of formats on the Vegas timeline doesn’t mean you should. I believe your editing will be more stable with a standard video format.

~jr

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

[Derek Green]

I have a newly installed satellite TV card and have been experimenting with some recorded 3D broadcasts to change the aspect ratio of the side by side pictures broadcast. The broadcasts are therefore .ts. I have used Vegas successfully for years making Wedding and Corporate videos and had no problems with formats before, although like everyone had performance issues with HD, hence the new PC and upgraded version of Vegas! As I am just in retirement, I thought I would start to investigate 3D with HD. I was surprised that the .ts clips caused Vegas to actually crash. It would be better if it just refused to drop on the timeline, but it gets half way there and puts the audio track there and then crashes. This is not the sort of behaviour I expect of software.

I have used wma before, on Vegas 7-9. I was stunned when it crashed rendering wma on the latest version. I agree it is not the best format (ex BBC engineer!) but I have some historical recordings and wanted to remove the gaps between clips. A simple task for previous versions of Vegas? However, crashing on rendering is a surprising outcome and quite unwelcome.

I will try converting the video and audio to other more Vegas friendly formats. However, I am still annoyed that Sony could release software that has such a catastrophic way of dealing with formats it doesn’t like. I have not had such badly behaved software for a long time and certainly not from such a respected company. It is not as if this is a brand new product. This is production version 11, not a Beta first release.

I will also buy a graphics card. There are some passive cooled versions of the GTX 520. I do some voice overs in my editing room, so it is not a huge problem. I am just annoyed by any humming! Thank you for all your suggestions.

I will still pursue Sony as I think this crashing issue deserves resolution. If the program put up some message e.g. Incompatible Format rather than crashing, I would be much happier.

[John Rofrano]

[Derek Green] ” I thought I would start to investigate 3D with HD. I was surprised that the .ts clips caused Vegas to actually crash. It would be better if it just refused to drop on the timeline, but it gets half way there and puts the audio track there and then crashes. This is not the sort of behaviour I expect of software.”

There would be no reason to refuse dropping the clip on the timeline since Vegas supports MPEG-2 Transport Streams which is what a .TS file is. I am not surprised that it crashed because I doubt highly that anyone at Sony ever tested ingesting 3D footage from a satellite TV card.

[Derek Green] “I will try converting the video and audio to other more Vegas friendly formats. However, I am still annoyed that Sony could release software that has such a catastrophic way of dealing with formats it doesn’t like.”

I’m not sure how you would convert 3D footage to another format. Again, the “catastrophic” failure is probably due to the fact that this has never been tested and is not supported.

[Derek Green] “It is not as if this is a brand new product. This is production version 11, not a Beta first release.”

Yes, but you’re doing something the engineers never dreamed of anyone doing. I’m not surprised that it doesn’t work, but I agree with you that it would have been nice if the programmers coded more defensively and caught the error and gave you an error message rather than a critical failure.

[Derek Green] “I will still pursue Sony as I think this crashing issue deserves resolution. If the program put up some message e.g. Incompatible Format rather than crashing, I would be much happier.”

That’s a great idea. If you could send them a sample file, at least they could defend against it, if not actually support it.

BTW, how did you record a 3D .TS file unencrypted?

~jr

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

[Derek Green]

[John Rofrano] “There would be no reason to refuse dropping the clip on the timeline since Vegas supports MPEG-2 Transport Streams which is what a .TS file is. I am not surprised that it crashed because I doubt highly that anyone at Sony ever tested ingesting 3D footage from a satellite TV card.”

That’s just my thoughts too. Your question about the un-encrypted recording – the HD streams from the satellite on Free To Air transmissions are unencrypted, however in the UK the FreeSat system which is actually only an EPG transmission on a separate transponder, ensures a switch in our receivers to encrypt the HD recordings. However, a PC satellite receiver not supporting the special FreeSat EPG but only Now and Next will not add the encryption. Strange, but true. The encryption means that set-top boxes recording HD broadcasts add the encryption using a hardware key unique to your own device.
Recordings can be copied but only played back on the device that recorded them. However, we have a Humax satellite receiver that if you switch it out of FreeSat mode will do the same, but again you only have now and next EPG, essentially a record at once system. No good for timer events.

The 3D transmissions that come from the BBC (not a regular service for our public broadcaster) are simply a 1920 x 1080 normal HD frame with two pictures crushed vertically, with a left and right picture, side by side in each frame. Each eye has a picture 960 x 1080. People obviously look very thin and tall! Recording these transmissions is therefore no different to any other HD broadcast. I was going to use Vegas to squash the two pictures back to 16:9 aspect ratio, still in the same HD frame. I would lose a bit of resolution but hey, this is just an experiment….. So the Sony engineers would not have to have tested anything special! Thta is the beauty of the BBC’s chosen system, even though it is not full HD, it is still pretty good.

[John Rofrano] “That’s a great idea. If you could send them a sample file, at least they could defend against it, if not actually support it.
“

I think I will just send them another support message. There is no need to send a file. I will make the suggestion. I have had problems in the past with earlier versions not playing odd format files that others had produced for me to turn into DVDs using Vegas and DVD Architect. Previously Vegas would just sit there and do nothing, which I learned to interpret as “I don’t like this format”. I got used to converting to other formats. I just don’t like the behaviour of the new version 11.

[John Rofrano]

You might want to try and remux the streams with a tool like tsMuxeR. If it’s just the way the stream is written, sometimes just rewriting the stream will allow Vegas to open it without crashing. It’s free so it’s worth a try.

~jr

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

[Derek Green]

Thank you John. I will give it a try and will report back here.

Over the years I have read threads on this site but these recent problems irritated me so much I thought I would share my thoughts with you experts. Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. Better support than Sony methinks? I wonder if Sony will actually reply to me sometime? Interesting……

[Derek Green]

Some good news? I have been over on the Vegas Forum on the Sony site. Many others have had the same audio rendering problems, indeed no audio would render at all to any format. The thread title says “WARNING 511 UPDATE – AUDIO RENDER CRASHES”. I have been contributing to it. There is a definite serious bug and any attempts to render in any format crashes the latest build (511) of 64 bit (and 32 bit) of Vegas. Some clever person discovered that un-checking the Midi input under options stops it happening (goodness knows what you do if you want to use Midi!). I tried it and it works. I can now render any audio into anything. Previously I had to revert to the previous build version to get it to work. Sony have to sort this out soon.

The video crashes I still have and there are others having similar problems. I hope to work more on this.