Sony Vegas 11 worht the upgrade? NOT

[Bruce Quayle]

Hi Rob,

You obviously need a solution rather than others’ tales of success…so here is my 2-bits worth (forgive me if it was the first thing you did!):

Check your program properties to ensure that they conform to your video and audio as well as being the best for your project.

Do this by clicking: File>Properties. This opens your Project Properties window.

I shoot my material on an EX1r and have the following VIDEO settings:
Template: Custom (1920×1080, 29.970 fps) (By clicking on the folder icon, you can browse your files for a file of your original material and clicking this will set the correct template for you).
Width: 1920 / Hight: 1080
Field Order: None (Progressive scan).
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0000 (square).
Output Rotation: 0 (original)
Frame Rate: 29.970 (NTSC)
Pixel Format: 8 bit
Compositing Gama: 2.222 (Video)
Full resolution rendering quality: Good (NOTE: I have been advised that using “Best” slows down your rendering process considerably and is unnecessary for almost all applications).
Motion Blur Type: Gaussian
De-interlace Method: Blend
Ticked – Adjust source media to better match project or render settings.

My AUDIO settings are:
Master bus mode: Stereo
Number of stereo busses: 3
Sample rate (Hz): 48,000
Bit depth: 16
Resample and stretch quality: Best

Once you’ve checked all that, try clicking Options>Preferences to open your preferences window. Click on your VIDEO tab and make sure that you have the maximum number of rendering threads displayed that your processor can handle (Mine displays 16 threads with my i7 840Q processor). I have my dynamic RAM preview set at 200MB. Also check if your graphics card is showing up in the GPU acceleration box. I only have a NVIDIA GForce GT230M (kind of low end) and it shows up now, since I installed the latest version of SVP 11 (https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/updates/vegaspro), as well as the latest NVIDIA drivers.

I wont go through all the other settings as I doubt they will make any difference to your rendering speed, but it’s something you should do to turn Vegas into the sort of editor you will enjoy working with.

As I said in the intro…please don’t take this as an insult to your intelligence if this was the first thing you did. I can only think that there must be some sort of conflict happening in your software, and by checking the above, you might be able to remove one such conflict.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Bruce

[Nigel O’neill]

I found SVP10 and SVP11 would crash continually, and a symptom preceding each crash was the audio would stutter. After I unchecked Enable track buffer in Preferences > Audio Device, the crashes and stuttering stopped.

The project was a 2 hour long 3 camera / 3 track multi-cam (Ultimate S 4.1) project with colour correction and contrast corrections applied to all events & tracks. Source footage was a mix of m2t and mxf files.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Stephen Crye]

Hi;

Dave, thanks for this tip – I will try it ASAP: ” …I’d make sure there’s a RAM preview buffer set up… while this is supposedly just for RAM previews, I’ve experimentally found this is used for buffering during renders, too (which is precisely what it should be used for). ”

I’ve been keeping the preview buffer small, thinking that would speed things up! BTW I’ve experimented with up to 16 MB RAM on my Dell T3400, but discovered that going down to 8 GB with the proper rank-order was faster (slightly). When I render, I am cpu-bound (use Sysinternals Process Explorer with all the little graph windows enabled – great utility).

Steve

Win7 Pro X64 on Dell T3400 MultiTB SATA 8 GB RAM Vegas 10e x64 DVDA 5.2 Sony HDR-CX550V

[Stephen Crye]

I know this won’t help much, but for my simple projects, until 10e was released, Vegas 10 was a total crash-fest. 10e is WAAAAY more stable for me than was 10b,c, or d.

BTW, I have only one computer and it is used for everything – it has layers of crap on it, but such is life.

I plan to buy 11 next month, but will not use it for any critical projects and will make sure I create safe copied of any 10 projects before I open them in 11. I would expect at least six months before 11 is stable if my experience with 9 and 10 applies to 11.

Steve

Win7 Pro X64 on Dell T3400 MultiTB SATA 8 GB RAM Vegas 10e x64 DVDA 5.2 Sony HDR-CX550V

[Stephen Crye]

Hi Bruce – question. You said ” … Full resolution rendering quality: Good (NOTE: I have been advised that using “Best” slows down your rendering process considerably and is unnecessary for almost all applications).”

If I *ALWAYS* want the best, crispest possible rendered file, don’t I have to set this to best? (I want to make sure I’m not confusing the result file with the preview window).

Thanks,

Steve

Win7 Pro X64 on Dell T3400 MultiTB SATA 8 GB RAM Vegas 10e x64 DVDA 5.2 Sony HDR-CX550V

[Nigel O’neill]

Not using a dedicated system for editing is an issue in itself as other programs may install DLL’s and/or codecs that could interfere with Vegas. Other programs may load other components into memory. For example, iTunes typically loads components at startup. You will find other software does the same. Try to keep your editing system as pristine/clean as possible

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

Not using a dedicated system for editing is an issue in itself as other programs may install DLL’s and/or codecs that could interfere with Vegas. Other programs may load other components into memory. For example, iTunes typically loads components at startup. You will find other software does the same. Antiviruses and firewalls are prone to doing the same. Try to keep your editing system as pristine/clean as possible

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Bruce Quayle]

Hi Steve,

Here is the pertinent section from the Vegas “Help” file for the section on Full Resolution Rendering:

“Unless you have specific performance problems, choose Good. Choosing Best can dramatically increase rendering times.

Good uses bilinear scaling without integration, while Best uses bicubic scaling with integration. If you’re using high-resolution stills (or video) that will be scaled down to the final output size, choosing Best can prevent artifacts.”

I believe there may be a way of specifying certain files that you might want to render “Best” while keeping others at “Good”…but I’ve never tried it.

Cheers,
Bruce

[Stephen Crye]

Sounds great, but I my magic money wand is broken and so, for the indefinite future, one computer is all I have.

As an IT pro by trade, I am obsessive about backups, do them about once per week, complete images, along with incrementals. I save the last 5 or so on various media. So, if I do have a system problem, it is easy to go back.

Steve

Win7 Pro X64 on Dell T3400 MultiTB SATA 8 GB RAM Vegas 10e x64 DVDA 5.2 Sony HDR-CX550V

[Nigel O’neill]

I am an IT professional as well who moonlights as a videographer/editor. As I have paying clients, I have to have a dedicated system. Given the price/performance value proposition of hardware nowadays, you have 3x or 4x the power of an editing system 5 years ago at 1/3 the cost.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6