Vegas 11 + Multicam editing = Crash

[Aleksey Tarasov]

Make sure you have updated Vegas to the latest build (594/595) and installed the latest video drivers

[Al Bergstein]

Shaun, while Vegas is known for it’s crashing, this sounds like something is amiss with your video card drivers. nVidia has new drivers out in the last month, be sure your card is updated with them. Beware of beta drivers though, until you have a stable system. And make sure you have chosen the proper version of Vegas (if you are running 64 bit W7 then you should have downloaded 64 bit Vegas). Also, what footage are you working with? It could affect Vegas’ ability. What OS are you using? Also, is your footage off on a fast eSata or USB3 drive and not on the main OS drive? All footage should be on something external to the core OS drive, which I assume you are aware of. And another possibility is that you may be using a drive that spins down to save energy. This feature should always be turned off for video editing, I’ve found, if it can. While we love saving energy, I believe it leads to crashes. This is only a hypothesis at this point.

I have found, for example, that with 4:2:2 footage from Canon, and mixing it with a GH2 HDSLR AVCHD, that I can do multi cam and usually experience only maybe a crash a day, often on exiting the program. I have cut back to one monitor because of how frequently Vegas was crashing, and yes, that did help lower my crashing.

I’ve been moving to a very well known competing NLE, and just as a matter of controversy, the exact same footage on the exact same machine *never* crashes on it. So yes, it’s a Vegas issue somewhere in the bowels of the interface between the graphics card drivers, and Vegas. I’ve thrown everything at it I can to crash it, and things that routinely crash Vegas do not even phase the competition. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t something in my footage, or workflow so I have spent time trying this out.

But you should *not* be experiencing crashes continually after only 1 minute of use. My experience for lowering crashes led me to only do multi cam *first* in a project, render it out and add it to a second time line where I would then add the graphics and head and tails, and I’ve even gone to a workflow where I create any graphics needed with New Blue, etc on a separate project timeline, render them and add them back in. This seems to lower the crashes to a workable amount. And all on one monitor. Try those ideas as well, as long as you get the latest drivers. But even there, it could be a problem, some have had great success with beta versions from nVidea, some, like me, found I actually blue screened the computer when I used them, and had to reinstall my graphics drivers from scratch and fall back to the last known good production release of them. I do not blue screen *ever* except with nVidia beta drivers on this machine.

The sad part of this is that Vegas is way easier to use than any competing NLE. Once they finally get this nonsense worked out they likely could be a real contender. I like the product’s features and it’s interface!

Al

[Shaun Laframboise]

i do run 2 monitors so I’ll take one of them of entirely.

Also, my footage is on a Sata 3 internal drive.

I see gtx 570 updated their drivers and I tried to update it but it keeps failing. I’ve uninstalled the drivers entirely (with revo uninstaller) and tried to reinstall but it fails everytime.

I’ll try with one monitor and will keep trying to install the newest driver again (any idea on why this might be happening?) and see where i can get and will post back.

Yea, and new blue titler just crashes the entire system when I open it.. really lame.

[Al Bergstein]

maybe don’t update the drivers, but use what shipped with the card, or the next to last drivers. Sorry for your headaches, but I think once you get that card installed correctly, you will have far less crashes.

By the way, are you running dual monitors off of one card? Or do you have two cards installed. My guess is that the best way to handle dual monitors with Vegas is with two cards and not trying to run two on one card, as I was doing. It did reduce my crashes substantially when I went back to one card/one monitor. I’m waiting to upgrade my system to put in dual cards.

Al

[Nigel O’neill]

Al, I too am sad to report I am exploring another competing NLE. May I know which one you are considering?

I did not know about an issue running 2 monitors off 1 video card. I have a GTX 570 as well, but the size of the beast makes it impossible to fit another card on my mobo. What mobo and case are you using? You must have one hefty PSU as well 🙂

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

[Al Bergstein]

To be clear, I cannot say for positive that multi monitors on one card is an issue, but I have a lot of circumstantial evidence. I stopped using nVidea for a while. I’ve gone over to the Radeon 5670, for the time being. I backed off two monitors just for a fluke, as I read something that clicked that idea into my head. Most of the people that were not complaining (and some of them telling us it was us and not Vegas) were not running two monitors. So I tried it and it did cut down my crashes substantially. I still get them, but far less often, without changing anything else.

The last nvidea upgrade totally blue screened my box when I installed it. That was the last straw.

So I sprung for Premiere. It is a *vastly* different work flow, one that takes getting used to, and is no where as easy to use as Vegas. But. To be clear. It has not once crashed on me in two months of work on the same computer with the same video card.

I still am using vegas for *quick and dirty* jobs that I am being paid a low rate on. But continue to cut my teeth in multi camera with Pr. And yes, it runs on both my Mac and Windows platforms natively. Not that that is a make or break issue. The built in titling is nice. Very nice. Vegas needs to update their titling, maybe buy NewBlue and fix their issues. NB is buggy as heck.

I really hope Vegas can fix these issues. It has the fastest workflow I’ve worked on, which includes FCP, Pr and Vegas. Actually much faster. And when it works, it’s great!

Al

[Shaun Laframboise]

i have support ticket open with SOny right now where I’m asking their tech support if Vegas works better with 2 monitors if each monitor is on it’s own Video Card… i’ll let you know what they say.

[Andy Abulafia]

if you can tolerate it, drop your preview quality? Iwas doing some multicamera with 3 sources and this seemed to help my machine when it was struggling severely. But… of course.. quality of preview was rubbishy.

———————-
Vegas 11, Win7, Intel i7 w/12GB RAM – In need of a decent SSD, methinks 🙂 Sony TG5V, Kodak Zi8, Playtouch.

[Thomas Roell]

A entire compute crash is most likely not the result of using 2 monitors connected to one GPU. On my debugging rig pretty much all the real crashes I am seeing are either recoverable by the graphics driver (meaning only the app crashes), or you’d see a blue-screen (for a stuck IRQ or something). Most times when I see a complete system going down it was either due to a power supply not being big enough (CPU + GPU can draw a lot of power, and depending upon the workload distribution it’s different for every application). Or it’s due to a thermal overload. Latter one can be triggered by an inefficient airflow in your system, or a stuck/bad fan. Worth checking both.

[Shaun Laframboise]

It’s def. not thermal, temps are super low, nothing is even firing at more than 50% when I’m working/editing or rendering.

I think I found the issue though.

RAM.

I spent twice the money on Cas 7 g.skill ram which caused issues from the start, but I thought I though I had those issues fixed with a bio tweak of dialing in the ram cas settings, something I don’t think you have to do with standard cas 8 or cas 9 Ram…

anyway.. my unit is now awaiting the replacement RAM that’s to arrive today. Going to install it and run RAM Test and see what it finds.

I agree on the two monitors on one card thing… i think it’s totally fine to do that, in fact I read on ‘videoguys’ website that Sony was one of the few programs optimized TO run two monitors off one dual port video card… of course… that ‘optimization’ could be buggy… but who the hell knows.. i’m asking sony and still no reply…

will keep y’all posted.