[Aivis Zons]

In short this is because of the 29.97 fps. That .97 is what’s causing this drop. Unless this material is being produced for TV or has some specific technical requirements, then I suggest you just go with a solid 30fps in the future.

I’ve attached a screenshot of the Timecode FX in Vegas Pro 20 and the Time Format settings for Ruler timecode. I copied your project settings and setting Timecode FX to “Time & Frames” is what introduces the lack of “,29” before 00:00:17:00. If I set it to the SMPTE 29.97 options – it has the “,29” now.

There’s probably some math that explains this difference very clearly, but basically in your case you need to have a matching Time Format in your Project Settings, Ruler, Timecode FX. To edit Ruler timecode – go to 3rd tab of your Project Settings or right click on the time above timeline. If there’s an option with your specific framerate – use that; if not – use Time & Frames.

Actually you can set your Ruler to Absolute Frames and try playing around with switching between 29.97 and 30 fps for your project at different points in the timeline. The values will differ slightly (as they should) and at some point they no longer round to the same value and this difference increases every x frames. This shows the .03 fps difference pretty well. I guess that if you don’t specify the .97 fps value then it rounds some things to 30 fps? I feel like it should be something along those lines and there’s probably a more technical explanation.

[Aivis Zons]

By default nvidia installs “Game Ready” drivers. Have you tried installing the latest “Studio” driver?

[Aivis Zons]

I believe that “(Legacy) Text” hasn’t changed in-between versions except for being called “(Legacy)” at some point. I think what you’re looking for is “Titles & Text” from Media Generators.

“(Legacy)” text does not come with any animations, that’s for sure. Frankly the only time I use Legacy text is when there’s a font problem within “Titles & Text” as sometimes it would work within (Legacy) Text no problem.

[Aivis Zons]

Is your source recording smooth? Are there no drops in framerate in the original video where your final video speeds up?

My guess is that this is more to do with your recording software. Maybe it’s recording in a variable framerate and vegas is interpreting that as constant fps. So in moments where you lose some frames it’d speed up.

[Aivis Zons]

Could it be that your laptop is overheating? Have you checked your temps?

Freezing/crashing could also be caused by some odd file formats/effects. Is there anything different in that particular spot?

As a last resort you could also try to render your project in smaller segments and then combine them in another render. Try to isolate the problematic bits, maybe copy them over to a separate project.

[Aivis Zons]

I see. Then I’d cobble this up to be some edge case software bug :/

In your version of vegas pro you click and drag windows by their tab labels, see image. If needed hold Ctrl to toggle docking.

What I want to suggest in addition to this (if you move it as a window) is that you can save multiple Window Layouts which you can access with keybinds. Found under View – Window Layouts. So for example you could have Alt+D+0 as the default layout and Alt+D+1 as the 2 screen layout, then switch between the 2 with ease.

[Aivis Zons]

Try to toggle the button circled in my screenshot (labelled “Split Screen View”).

It’s pretty weird how you can see your desktop on one side of the screen… can’t really explain that. I typically use this function to toggle FX Bypass for the whole screen when previewing, but it can also be applied to half screen or a selected area.
If the fix wasn’t this simple then you can try to go into Options, Preferences, Preview Device and see if playing with any of those settings helps fix the issue.

[Aivis Zons]

Have you made any hardware changes? Or used your key in another PC?

I believe MAGIX permits 2 devices per key and it might recognize a single hardware component change as a new PC. In MAGIX website where you see your copy of Vegas Pro – if you click on show more details under your serial number – are there multiple devices listed? If yes, simply deactivate the old one.

Alternatively you might want to try reinstalling again. Perhaps something went wrong during installation.

[Aivis Zons]

Assuming that this is a static shot, you could mostly get by with only masks, cropping & zooming. However, removing the background behind a moving person in this case will be quite hard. As far as I know Vegas Pro doesn’t have any native tools that could easily try to remove such a background. If it was a well lit green/blue screen – that would be more doable with Chroma Keying. In your case you’d have to look for some other tools that could remove/replace the background, but even those will not do a perfect job, as this is not the best case setup.

So I suggest you first pan/crop the area you want to be shown. Then if there’s something within the new framing that you want to hide or blur, you can duplicate the whole footage to another track and add a blur or pixelization effect to it. To contain the effect to a specific area you need to open pan/crop for the footage in the top track and enable “Mask”, then you use the masking tools to create an area where this blurred track will be visible. If you have already cut your footage, you can right click, copy, paste event attributes to the rest of the clips to save time.

Attached 2 images – one of a simple zoom and pan, one with a selectively blurred background. Personally I think that if you were to go with similar framing as in my examples, you don’t even need to add that extra blur as there aren’t any particularly eye-drawing features there that would distract from your main subject.

[Aivis Zons]

When you use NV Encoder it’s using your GPU. If that’s the only option that’s producing issues, there might be some driver problem.

Have you tried updating/reinstalling your graphics card drivers? What about switching to the studio driver?

Going beyond that I’d test out other rendering formats to see if it’s localized to some specific templates or if everything is semi-broken.