Sony Vegas Pro 9 – Half of the Vid FX screens are blocked off

[Aaron Star]

If you do not know the video card in your Sony Laptop, you can use an app like “Speccy” to tell you the details about your system. That app will tell you the exact detail on your video hardware, and you can easily download the correct driver from NV selections.

[Madelyn Grey]

I haven’t tried that. I pulled it up and everything was so huge that I reverted it back to normal, but I guess if that could make it work again, I should try it.

I d/led Speccy, and I don’t even see my model listed.
According to Speccy, I have a GeForce GT 425M:

But on the Nvidia website, I don’t see that listed anywhere under the drop menu:

I saw that I can system restore to 6/20, but I don’t know if that’s a safe option for my computer. It probably wouldn’t work anyway, since my computer typically fails any time I try to restore beyond a few days.

[Francois Blawat]

[ Madelyn Grey] Since you are using a SONY Vaio laptop, it would be best to get the drivers from SONY Vaio’s website.

According to nvidia your notebook original equipment manufacturer (OEM) provides certified drivers for your specific notebook on their website. NVIDIA recommends that you check with your notebook OEM about recommended software updates for your notebook. OEMs may not provide technical support for issues that arise from the use of this driver.

You can find Reference drivers from nVidia with the above disclaimer located here for your graphics model: https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/50007 This driver is listed as 306.97.

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FixitMad

[Aaron Star]

You can either do what Francois recommends by going to Sonys site, or download the 400M series driver from NVs site. The 400M series driver will work with that laptop. Drivers from the OEM are generally not as up to date as the NV drivers.

About the only reason to go to the OEMs these days is for very custom device integration like cameras, SD card readers, special buttons like media player controls, or unique on screen overlays. Most notebooks use motherboards that follow the chipset design specs to the letter, and an OEM like Sony just fits it inside a custom case. So your NV, Intel, and Realtek drivers will work with the notebook.

[Madelyn Grey]

What exactly does a video driver do, and what will upgrading/downloading a new one do for my computer? I don’t understand how this can be linked to the issue, considering how I’ve been using Sony Vegas Pro 8 for the past 8 years (6 of which having been on this laptop). I’ve never had this issue until sometime last month, so is something in my video driver possibly malfunctioning and causing it? I’m reluctant to download anything before knowing exactly what it’s for.

[Aaron Star]

In your case, the video driver handles the drawing of the screen on resolutions over 640×480. I cannot speak for everyone that has chimed in, but my feeling is the issue is one of two issues. Either the application (Vegas) is not sending the missing info, or the video driver is not displaying the missing info. This is called a redraw error.

Based on all the things you have tried to reset the application, the next steps I would try are:

Verify that custom scaling options is at 100%

Verify that all Windows updates have been applied, and reboot.

Run “SFC /scannow” from an admin command prompt

Install/re-install an updated video driver, and test if the issue is resolved

If not, Uninstall Vegas, perform a CCleaner scan of the registry, reboot, and reload Vegas. Then test if the problem is resolved.

Something has changed from the time your system worked properly, and the forum is attempting to help you correct this.

[Madelyn Grey]

Okay, thank you, that’s a bit clearer. Where would I find the custom scaling options? I haven’t seen anything like that before. Is that the same thing as right-clicking on the desktop and setting the screen resolution? Second, I noticed yesterday I keep getting occasional pop-ups of something called Sony Update Manager, but it never does anything. It just comes up with the start of my computer, and then disappears. Could that have something to do with this, too?

[Aaron Star]

try this:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff629368.aspx

see how it goes.

[Madelyn Grey]

I think I’m just going to have to grin and bear it with this issue. SV is still usable, but just difficult with certain FX. Anyway, I unfortunately have a new issue that seemed to arise after uninstalling/reinstalling SV 8 (though the problem is also on SV 9, so I’m not sure what’s going on).

Basically, even when I set my event pan/crop to widescreen, I still have black bars. And I do NOT want to uncheck maintain aspect ratio, because that stretches out the image/makes it look funky. Any idea on what could be causing this/how to fix it?

[Edward Troxel]

check the “Split Screen” button above the preview screen and turn it OFF

Edward Troxel