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Vegas Pro 9 – first experience and observations
As a I wrap up a major project I’ve just done in Vegas Pro 9 and DVD Architect Pro 5 for U.S. Navy, I wanted to share some observations. Some of what follows is probably redundant for the pros, but newbies might find it helpful. First, I LOVE Sony products and have used them for many years. As a former government video professional who used some very expensive Mac-based “turn-key” hardware-intensive NLE’s starting with the old ImMix “TurboCube,” moving on to Accom’s “Affinity,” and eventually shifting to the Avid Media Composer, etc., I’m astounded at the creative freedom Vegas Pro allows, yet it runs on relatively modest PC platforms. Since I started using Vegas, back around version 4, it has only gotten more feature-rich and considerably more stable. For no more than it costs, it is pretty incredible software.
Now retired from government service and running a very small production business I started as a hobby and for profit, I make a pretty fair chunk of change using Vegas and Sony’s HVR and HDR-series equipment, so I have no real axes to grind here – just a few observations about editing in Vegas 9. Running Vista Ultimate 64 bit on an Asus motherboard with a 9800 dual monitor video card, 8GB RAM, and some very fast SATA drives, my system performance has been quite good running Vegas Pro 8, but my first project in Vegas 9 has posed some operating challenges that tested my patience on a few occasions.
Sidebar – I acquire in HD using an HVR-V1U and an HDR-FX1, recording both to tape and to the companion HVR-DR60 hard drive. Given the dropout issues with tape, I cannot overemphasize how valuable the somewhat pricey, but bullet-proof, little DR60 has been to me. It is very quick and very easy to transfer the native footage to the editing platform via IEEE-1394 bus, and the drive has saved my hide repeatedly when tape has failed me due to those occasional half-second dropouts you WILL eventually experience, regardless of deck maintenance and quality of tape used. That said, I’ll move on to the real points now:
Project settings – HDV 720-24p (23.976) (32 bit pixel format), with final rendering settings for DVD Architect at NTSC DV Widescreen 720p with 2-3 pulldown.
The ingredients – This particular project included camera-original HD footage from the HVR-V1U and HDR-FX1, as well as some standard 4×3 DVCAM stock footage and Quicktime video clips (originally acquired in DVCPRO and DV formats). I generated some original graphics in Photoshop at the project settings (1280×720), created and imported numerous Digital Juice “Fonts” title graphics (rendered at project settings), a couple Digital Juice HD “Jumpback” animations (pre-rendered at project settings) and some PC screen grabs (also resized in Photoshop to 1280×720, at 72dpi, saved as png’s and targa files with alpha channels).
During The Edit – I started off editing in the Vegas Pro 9a 64-bit application because I wanted to avail myself of a lot more of the physical RAM that operating in the 64 bit environment allows. (I’d just upgraded to 9a) I set the preferences to allocate minimal RAM to the Preview function so as to maximize system performance using the ap. But, mysteriously, I was soon experiencing instability, sub-par playback at very low draft resolutions, and, ultimately, repeated Trimmer crashes. Lots of Trimmer crashes. If I let any HD clip play to its natural end, Vegas would immediately crash. I finally decided to reopen the project in the 32-bit Vegas 9 (not 9a – didn’t want to upgrade the 32-bit version in the middle of the edit. Been down that shaky road before). Upon reopening the project in Vegas Pro 9 32-bit, to my surprise, I discovered the missing titler pages bug – all my lower-third CG’s were gone! The CG events were there, but no actual lower-thirds data. Had to re-do all of 23 of them. Worse yet, all my 4X3 SD clips cropping and sizing keyframe data was corrupted and the clips all had to be individually re-cropped and resized back to project settings again – lots of work custom cropping them again. There were a couple other anomalies, but you get the idea. Apparently, the aps are not transparent and you can’t just arbitrarily work in your project going from one to the other, should you be so inclined. Having now gone back to the more stable 32-bit ap to edit, I was then faced with the limited system RAM limitation – a throwback to W2K and XP OS’s, so it wasn’t long before I started experiencing the dreaded “File Interface Surrogate Stopped Working (not visible)” crashes – a low memory issue, I believe. In fairness, I must admit that I pressed the software and hardware to the max with lots of layers, compositing, key-framing, multiple track motion layers, envelopes, color correction on MANY clips, and various audio effects. After lots of trial and error (read: crashes and extra work/delays), I finally discovered that it was still best to do all the editing in 32-bit and ALL the final rendering in 64-bit. With each editorial revision, reopening the project back up in 64-bit with the attendant cropping corruption necessitating fixes was always experienced.
Conclusion – the project – my first using these settings – is completed, and it looks and sounds incredible. (As a benchmark for others, this 22:30 show with lots of number crunching, rendered at 32-bit pixel format, took 3 hours and 1 minute to render in 64-bit. I’d guess at least 4 1/2 hours or longer in 32-bit, with crashes along the way that would have forced going back to 8-bit pixel format.) Viewed on a very large screen, the 720p product almost has a motion picture look to it, actually. Thankfully, the clients loved the first cut and ordered only a nominal number of changes and fixes, all easily accomplished pretty quickly. But, if only they knew what it took to get there from here! I cannot imagine having had the Navy client and/or his contract oversight rep sitting at my side during the entire editing process, enduring all the crashes, surprises, and delays along the way. Fortunately, as this is a sideline gig for me and I’m a techno geek, I could afford to eat the extra time invested in the project that I can’t bill. It was great training. In fairness, I must also admit that numerous 1 hour projects I’d previously done in Vegas 8 at 1080i project settings have been a piece of cake and rendered very fast, so maybe the 720p settings and pulldown were the culprit here.
The moral of this rambling diatribe – Vegas is pretty amazing software and fun to use, but it will probably always be a work in progress, and we who use it for fun and profit will always be the unwitting beta testers, as others have probably already pointed out. Hopefully, Sony is listening and will eventually work out these little imperfections and the other problems and bugs that have already been reported in Vegas 9. I still sold, and can hardly wait for the next upgrade! Thanks for letting me ramble on. I hope others can benefit from my experiences of the past couple weeks.
Bill Church
Briarwood Productions LLC -
1 Reply
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I have a similar setup and have experienced similar frustrations. I feel your pain. Hopefully, the forthcoming “9b” will resolve these bugs and Vegas can return to its previous excellence. I am confident that it will.
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