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Vegas Pro 8.0c crashes rendering large project
I feel like this is an old subject, but I’m hoping someone is figuring out a way to deal with Vegas Pro problems rendering large projects. I had a deadline last night and just made it by breaking my project up into pieces, but don’t much like that as a long term solution. I’m pondering rebuilding my PC with 64 bit Windows and loading up on RAM, but am not sure from other forum posts whether that helps or not.
Some notes on my specific problem:
1. My project includes a couple hundred subclips of basketball video from different sources. It’s in three formats: MPEG2, MTS and MOD. All import and work in Vegas Pro 8.0c, at least for editing.
2. In addition to video clips, I’m also using stills with keyframed pans/zooms. I batch processed all of these (JPGs and some PNGs) in Photoshop to reduce them to 720 vertical pixels for video use.
3. I did some bumper sections and transition elements in After Effects, and output them as WMVs or Quicktime if I needed RGB+Alpha. This included border elements to put behind SD video content and stills that don’t fill the screen.
4. I’m rendering to MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC Widecreen and Dolby Digital Pro so that the files don’t require re-compression when I burn them to DVD.
5. Total project is about 35 minutes long.What I know about my crashes:
1. I’m running on a Vista 32 bit Dell XPS 410 with Core 2 duo 2.7 GHz processor and 3 GBytes of RAM.
2. Vegas is running on my system drive, and my content and output is on a second internal drive. Both have 200 GBytes or so of free space.
3. With just about any setting, Vegas crashes within the first few minutes of rendering.
4. I’ve seen three types of crashes:
a. I usually get a “Sony Vegas has encountered an unknown error”
b. I’ve seen Vegas just disappear without any trace
c. I’ve once seen a warning about low memory
5. I’ve tried turning down my preview RAM to 16 MB, setting 1 thread of execution, and purging unused content from the project before rendering. I’ve also turned off Vista transparency and shut down any startup tasks. And I’ve tried changing my output file destination to a drive different than the content.I’m pretty sure memory is playing a part in this problem because I get big delays returning to Vegas if I open another Window or application. I also had some problems with Vegas crashing during editing as the project got large.
I met my deadline by breaking the project into three sub-projects. They rendered fine. I had to kludge my DVD with three separate start controls just because I was running to a team function and didn’t have time to do anything else. For my final version, I plan to import the pre-rendered elements and produce one complete one. Based on other posts, I hope this will work.
Long term, I need to be able to render large projects directly. For sports videos, I really value Vegas tracking which clips are used and which aren’t, and I lose that if I work in sub-projects. Have people found that running 64 bit Windows and Vegas 8.1 with more RAM (say 8 GBytes) helps with problems like mine?
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7 Replies
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Jerry,
It could be a single corrupted file. Have you tried rendering it from like minute 5 on? If it’s crashing right away, it could be a file near the beginning of th project?
I’ve also had strange things happen with pre-rendered files during a render as. You can try getting rid of any, or cleaning up any pre-rendered files.
What format are you trying to go to?
John Bollenbacher
10engines -
I wondered about corrupt content, but doubt it’s my problem. My crash was always early in the render, but not at a specific spot. Also, when I broke up the project into three pieces, I left all the content in place. It rendered fine then.
I’m not sure what you mean by pre-rendered files. I’d say my After Effects content is effectly pre-rendered, but it should just look like another wmv or mov.
I’m rendering to MPEG 2 Widescreen and Dolby Digital audio using default templates that work with DVD Architect without re-compression.
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I would get rid of and stop using WMV as an editing source. WMV is a delivery format which is highly compressed and tough on a processor to decompress. Use AVI as your first choice (DV for SD and CineForm for HD) or MOV as a second choice. Just be sure to use a codec that stores full frames. I assume the MTS is AVCHD which is tough to render. Make sure your PC is not overheating.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks John. I changed all my After Effects renderings to AVI, substituted them in Vegas and the full project rendered without error in about an hour. Great!
Presumably, something about the stress of a large project (e.g. on memory) combined with decoding the highly compressed WMVs and rendering out to MPEG-2 caused my crashes. In smaller pieces, Vegas could handle WMV After Effects content, but in the full project it couldn’t. Perhaps more memory could fix this without incurring the disk space cost of rendering effects as AVIs. I could tinker with the AVI effects some (they are rendering as 720p HD), but they will still be much larger than my WMV versions. Do you have any experience with Vega 8.1 running with 8MB or more of RAM on 64 bit Windows?
If not, thanks anyway. Your advice was great!
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> Do you have any experience with Vega 8.1 running with 8MB or more of RAM on 64 bit Windows?
No, I can’t use Vegas Pro 8.1 because none of my FX plug-ins or codecs like CineForm and TechSmith work with 8.1.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hi Guys,
I am also having the same issue.
I just purchased a new computer for editing purposes, and the file I am trying to render is a 7 minute long collection of videos shot in HD for a wedding. I am rendering into an mp4 file and the rendering usually freezes between the 30-69% mark.
It is becoming quite frustration and I’m not sure how to solve the issue.
I am not using any other programs while attempting to render, and screen savers etc have been turned off.
Would appreciate some help as soon as you can.
Thanks
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I have had the same problems when rendering in Vegas Pro 8, I have literally tried everything under the sun in rendering settings and I finally found a fix! Go into your options>preferences>video and set number of threads to 1. I did this and it renders perfect now.
I created an account here just to let people know about this sense it is so frustrating to have Vegas crash for apparently no reason.
Hope this helps someone out.
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