project takes forever to open (vegas pro 10)

[Stephen Mann]

“Not sure what you mean by XT. But if you meant XP”

Oops, senior moment. If you are old enough to remember the XT computers, then you’ll understand.

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

[Renato Zuma]

hehe, no sorry I’m not that old. However my first PC was a MSX. It certainly couldn’t handle 2GB’s of ram.

[John Rofrano]

[Renato Zuma] “In this scenario, for the next games he records what codecs should he use instead to convert fraps files into small files and keep it vegas friendly, without losing quality (which by the way isn’t HD. Quality is actually kinda poor. Just don’t want it to be worse)”

I would have him convert them to Motion-JPEG. I use a tool called AviDemux to do this. Here are the settings I use:

[Renato Zuma] “Back to my end, so my best option now is to convert these AVI H.264/AVC to Motion JPEG? Am I losing quality? I’m gonna try that.”

It should maintain all the quality. Try it and see. Make sure that you select M-JPEG and not MPEG (which is complete different).

[Renato Zuma] “My codec pack is the Win7codecs by Shark007. I didn’t have any additional codecs until I realised I couldn’t drop AVC files into Vegas, so I found this by googling.”

I would also uninstall the codec-pak. This is probably what’s causing the slow-down with Vegas. Never install any codec-pak on a video editing PC. It overlays the high quality codecs that you paid good money to Sony for, with questionable quality open source versions that may, and have, caused problems with Vegas in the past.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Renato Zuma] “You convinced me. I’m gonna get 2GB’s more. Not just for vegas but for general purpose.”

I believe you’ll see a difference. Let us know how you make out.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Stephen Mann] “Oops, senior moment. If you are old enough to remember the XT computers, then you’ll understand.”

I’m not only old enough to remember but I still HAVE one! It’s in my basement next to an original Apple Macintosh 128K and my Apple ][+ 64K. (it’s like my own little Smithsonian) 😉

~jr

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

[Renato Zuma]

Ok, I downloaded Avidemux and used the settings you suggested.

There’s no noticable quality loss, but output file has no audio. Original audio codec is AAC, can’t it be converted to PCM?

Vegas wouldn’t let me drop those files into it before installing additional codecs. Well, it’s been such a hassle for a noob like me that I may have actually confused myself whether it wouldn’t allow them as mp4 too or just avi. Should Vegas accept AVC files in mp4 containers with original Windows Seven/Sony Vegas codecs??

[John Rofrano]

[Renato Zuma] “There’s no noticable quality loss, but output file has no audio. Original audio codec is AAC, can’t it be converted to PCM?”

I don’t know why the audio didn’t convert. If AviDemux can’t do the job then try and find another converter (perhaps Super(c)) but you want M-JPEG video with PCM audio in an AVI container. I know AviDemux works with FRAPS so can your friend convert the original files again?

[Renato Zuma] “Vegas wouldn’t let me drop those files into it before installing additional codecs. “

This is not a good sign because Vegas Pro 10 can read M-JPEG files natively. You should not need any codec. That codec-pak must have really messed up your PC. I really don’t know how to recover from this other than to format and start over and never install a codec-pak.

You might want to try re-installing Vegas Pro 10 and see if you can get it to read M-JPEG files again.

~jr

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

[Renato Zuma]

I believe my friend has deleted the original FRAP files. Anyway, it looks like M-JPEG files are too big for the task. The main reason why he converted the original files to AVC before sending them to me is exactly file size… What I needed for future videos (we are in a gaming community… He records it, I edit it) is a file that is as small as possible and Vegas-friendly at the same time, without losing noticable quality.

As a workaround, can I just use the converted M-JPEG files with no audio, and then extract something like wave audio from the original files (which are AAC) and try to sync both in Vegas?

“This is not a good sign because Vegas Pro 10 can read M-JPEG files natively…”

No sorry, I meant to say Vegas wouldn’t let me drop AVC files into it before I installed additional codecs. It’s reading M-JPEG just fine.

[John Rofrano]

[Renato Zuma] “What I needed for future videos (we are in a gaming community… He records it, I edit it) is a file that is as small as possible and Vegas-friendly at the same time, without losing noticable quality.”

You won’t get both. Small means highly compressed. Highly compressed means hard to edit. The workflow will have to include you converting them to a more editable format since he has to compress them to make them small. As you have seen, you won’t loose any quality by converting h.264 to M-JPEG. You just have to solve the audio issue.

[Renato Zuma] “As a workaround, can I just use the converted M-JPEG files with no audio, and then extract something like wave audio from the original files (which are AAC) and try to sync both in Vegas?”

Yes, you can extract the audio separately and then sync in Vegas. I would still try and find a format that he can create that will work in AviDemux or Super(c) or whatever you are going to use to convert.

[Renato Zuma] “No sorry, I meant to say Vegas wouldn’t let me drop AVC files into it before I installed additional codecs. It’s reading M-JPEG just fine.”

That shouldn’t have been the case either. I drop MP4 files onto the Vegas timeline all the time and I have no code-paks and Vegas opens them fine. What is he using to convert the FRAPS files? Perhaps that is what’s causing all the problems.

~jr

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

[Balint Takacs]

In my case opening some projects also takes ages (means around 30 minutes) in Vegas 9.0. I have 6GB of RAM and a pretty powerful Intel i7 920. So hardware is not always the problem.

The project contains about 300GB of raw HD material encoded with the lossless Lagarith codec. ProcMon says that what happens is that Vegas sweeps through all files by reading 4096 byte blocks and some 4 byte sections in about 1-2MB increments. For some reason it waits ages between reads, about 5 mseconds: reading through 300GB so takes 300000*5/1000 = 1500 secs. 5 msec is quite much for purely sequential access on a HDD.

Does anybody know a way to turn off this inital scanning? Not sure why it needs it.