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Vegas has spiraled into a mess of unuseability
Hi all, new to the forums. I’ve searched a bit, but as I’m sure we all know, most everyone’s problem is different.
Mine is utterly insane.
I’m putting together a video, and for the most part it started out perfectly fine. Then, at some point, it started crashing while rendering.
I eventually pinpointed where it would crash and spent hours testing what could be causing the crash.
Now, first of all, I am unable to put an .avi file or an .mp4 file into vegas. As a matter of fact, I had to convert everything off the camera’s initial .mp4 files into .wmvs just to be able to bring them into Vegas.
So I’ve been editing with .wmv files.
At the point that it was crashing, here were my layers:
wmv file 1
wmv file 2
solid color 1
solid color 2
jpeg(the wmvs were chroma-keyed, and the others had various effects; that’s why so many elements)
I found that if I turned all other layers and one wmv off, it would render fine. The wmvs together would crash. So I converted them to .mpgs. the mpgs together rendered fine. When I added the other layers, though, it would crash. I finally narrowed it to the jpeg, so I rendered it separately as a wmv.
By the end I had:
mpg file 1
mpg file 2
solid color 1
solid color 2
jpeg’s wmvSilly, yes. The mpgs’ video quality was worse than the wmvs, etc. I wasn’t happy, but it worked.
So I moved on.
Immediately another crash.
I eventually made it work by decreasing the background jpg’s size. (I didn’t think it was very big to begin with, but whatever.) Next section, immediate crash. From here, I was unable to make it work. And then the previous section would no longer render. And then the part I fixed before -that- caused a crash.So then I start thinking that all .wmv files are causing the crash, despite working before, so I start converting to .mpgs. Quality decreases everywhere. Then crashes happen anyway. Everything causes a crash.
I tried virtualdub -and- Imtoo to turn the original mp4 files into avis. Vegas couldn’t use any of them.
I’m at my wit’s end here, and I can’t possibly even begin to describe everything that’s gone wrong, or what all I’ve done to fix the problem, etc. I’ve spent well over 10 hours on this.
I would honestly love to just have some Vegas master remote-connect to my PC and just talk on the phone or Skype with them to work with them and see all what’s happening. Because like I said, I just cannot describe everything that’s going wrong or what I’ve done.
Is anyone confident in their abilities and willing to try something like that?
This is a project that I was very passionate about, and at this point I almost want to just give up and never touch Vegas again. I honestly don’t know what to do.
Thanks for reading a broken man’s words.
– Bryan
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9 Replies
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Okay…
Take a breath.
WMV files are not the best for editing. You never mentioned your selected bitrate for the mpg files or what type of mpg files you converted them to. Regardless you are going from one extremely compressed lossy format to another. The degradation isn’t going to be pretty.
With that being said, what version of Vegas are you using? Is it a 64 bit version? 32? How much RAM do you have installed? Watch your page file usage in the task manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) as you are rendering and see if it peaks out. If it does, you are running out of RAM. Perhaps try increasing your page file size (or if you have more RAM available, put it in). If you are on a 32 bit OS and running 32 bit Vegas you are limited to about 3 gigs of RAM total so there isn’t much more you can do on that front.
Let us know.
j razz
https://www.jrazzcreations.com
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Hi,
First of all, thanks for the response. I know the post seems a mess, but I really ust had so much working against me I didn’t know what to say.
WMV files are not the best for editing.
— I don’t -want- to be using them. They’re all I can use besides mpgs. Like I said, I can’t import .avis or .mp4s for whatever reason. (I was able to once before.) When I try to import either, it’s just a black screen with sound. Also, half the time I export an avi or mp4, vlc can’t even read it.What version of Vegas are you using?
Sony Vegas Pro 8.aIs it a 64 bit version? 32?
I hadn’t even considered this.. I once used it on a 32bit computer, but now it’s on a 64bit machine. I suppose that could cause some problems?How much RAM do you have installed?
8GbWatch your page file usage in the task manager …
I feel it can’t be running out of ram, as it is an immediate crash. I isolated the crash points and set the Render Loop Region around it so it would work only with that section. Plus, I have a far more resource-intensive section where about a hundred things are going on at once, at it renders fine, if not slowly.Like I said, it’s something to do with the wmvs themselves, or their combination with other things. What works and what doesn’t is so random, and it seems to change later.
I really don’t know what to do or how to explain everything. I’ve put everthing back to wmvs for now, but I would love to get the avis and mp4s working. That could potentially solve the problems…
Oh well. Thanks for deciding to help– I look forward to a response!
– Bryan
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None that I know of.
I tried installing K-Lite to fix the problem, but it didn’t seem to make any difference, so I uninstalled it.
If there’s some epic codec pack I should have, by all means tell me what it is and how to properly use or install it.
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My first reaction to reading your original post was “I’ll bet he has a codec problem”. Then I read your last post and you confirmed it.
You may have had an unrelated problem with a media file, but then your blind man with a shotgun approach to fixing it only complicated things.
Codec packs tend to break things. Pretty badly. You can’t just uninstall it, you have to reinstall the codecs that the pack overwrote.
At this point I would reinstall Vegas.
(And, yes, you can run out of memory without warning – especially if you have a rogue codec eating commit resources every time it’s called).
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Well, I definitely don’t know a whole lot about what I’m doing. (Terrible film classes at our college, so everything I learn is on my own)
I did actually reinstall Vegas and that didn’t make any difference. Is there some codec pack I should try instead?
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“Is there some codec pack I should try instead?”
What part of “Codec packs tend to break things. Pretty badly.” did you miss?
It’s possible that something happened to the codecs installed by Windows.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I’d misunderstood because anywhere else I look, people say “Download this codec pack to fix everything!!”
I downloaded a Trial of Vegas 10.c, and it seems to be handling everything much better, including importing files and exporting properly, and no crashes. Not only that, much faster.
I’ll be using the trial up and then probably upgrading.
I may still have problems, but so far I suppose Crisis Averted.
I thank everyone for your help.
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[Bryan Howard] “I’d misunderstood because anywhere else I look, people say “Download this codec pack to fix everything!!””
Codec-paks are great for media servers and internet PC’s where you want to be able to play everything. It contains free codecs. Unfortunately, on a video editing PC, the same codec-pak will blindly replace the high quality expensive codecs that came with your video program, with questionable quality free codecs that haven’t been tested to work with your NLE. That’s why we tell video editors to never install codec-paks. There is no need to. You only need to install the one codec that your source video uses.
[Bryan Howard] “I downloaded a Trial of Vegas 10.c, and it seems to be handling everything much better, including importing files and exporting properly, and no crashes. Not only that, much faster.”
An alternate approach may have been to update your Vegas Pro 8.0a to 8.0c which has a lot of bugs fixed. If you want to buy Vegas Pro 10 that is a much better solution because it is a lot better than 8 was but you were not using the latest version of Vegas Pro 8.0.
[Bryan Howard] “I may still have problems, but so far I suppose Crisis Averted.”
The only problem you may encounter is if your original source files use a codec that doesn’t edit well in Vegas. You never told us what it was, but if it’s DivX or Xvid that would be cause to convert the files into a format that edits easier and renders without problems.
Glad you got it fixed though.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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