[Steve Boreham]

No replies, but for the benefit of others who perform a similar search to me before posting their problem, I will share the outcome.

Perversely, the cause was using Reduce Interlace Flicker.

Undoing this setting on the video clip in question (actually I used the switch option to undo it from all clips since I had only used it in the first place as “belt and braces” rather than because of actual flicker) and the jitter disappeared completely. Applies both to Blended and Interpolated deinterlace methods; there is no distinguishable rendered playback difference between the two despite the panning motion being quite fast with respect to the background during the middle portion.

[Steve Boreham]

Typo:

… as also applies to using Progressive Scan for field order; the latter is no better than Upper Field First when I tried it expecting it to be worse.

Should be:

… as also applies to using Progressive Scan for field order; the latter is no better than Upper Field First when I tried it expecting it to be better.

[Steve Boreham]

Seconded.

CCleaner (from “Crap Cleaner”) is a great free tool that is part of my normal housekeeping for purging unwanted temp files and other clutter, plus deleting or repairing broken registry entries. If you need certain cookies for website logins or preferences you can even set them to be excluded from the purge.

[Steve Boreham]

Reply from Sony Support essentially confirms that with version 9 has come (I presume for technical reasons) a limit to the number of MPEG2 files that can be handled in a project. Version 9a partially improves matters, but a limit still exists and I am blowing it out of the water. Stated workaround is to convert MPEG2 files to AVI with the “HDV 1080-60i Intermediate” template. This utilizes the Cineform HD V2.5 codec and retains all the detail from the original file.

This is hassle I don’t need though so I will revert to version 6 that has functioned perfectly for my purposes and forgo the Dolby 5.1 encoding that triggered my upgrade to version 9.

[Steve Boreham]

Well, jeroen, it looks like I now have your problem, or one remarkably like it.

In response to Sony Support request I today downloaded the latest version, Platinum 9a Build 85.

1) Opened Vegas Platinum 9a and created a new project
2) Started the Windows Task Manager and selected the Performance tab
3) In Vegas, selected the Project Media tab
4) Pressed the button to choose which media to add
5) Chose my media by Click+ShiftClick, then pressed Open

Remembering that I have three GB memory installed (confirmed addressable by XP), a pretty powerful E6600 Core Duo 2.4Ghz processor, and well organized and maintained HDDs, here is a timeline of what followed:

05 Secs – Memory 570MB & CPU 22%
03 Mins – Memory 630MB & CPU cycling from 1% to 8%
08 Mins – Memory 1.06GB & CPU cycling from 1% to 6%
12 Mins – Memory 1.29GB & CPU cycling from 0% to 5%
22 Mins – Memory 1.87GB & CPU cycling from 0% to 4%
28 Mins – Memory 2.03GB & CPU cycling from 0% to 3%
31 Mins – Memory 2.06GB & CPU cycling from 1% tp 12% with the HDDs thrashing like mad (swapping out I guess but weird since I still have a gig of memory to go)
31 Mins and a few seconds – BANG

“An error has occurred. The System is low on memory ”

Unfortunately control never returned to me and I had to kill the Vegas application.

What is interesting is that at the time of the crash, Vegas HAD just created the last SFK0 and SFK1 file as confirmed by looking in the appropriate folder with Windows Explorer.

Steve

[Steve Boreham]

Interesting, thanks, jeroen.

Are you using Platinum 9, and if so, which build number please? I am on Build 55.

I haven’t observed the same memory issues as you (sometimes the “hanging” occurs when 1GB or less of my 3GB in total is consumed), but it’s true to say that the disc is thrashed like crazy for ages and ages – with memory usage hardly changing – before eventually everything goes “idle” but control never returns to the User.

What puzzles me is what Vegas is doing when files are highlighted (selected) for adding to Project Media; I would expect that during selecting, nothing happens because the user hasn’t at that point said what they want to do. In practice though, something obviously does happen because of the huge length of time before the Right Mouse Button menu appears if you select enough files. In fact, even selecting just one file results in a pause of a second or two before the Right Mouse Button menu can be used, so something is going on.

[Steve Boreham]

are you running antivirus while editing?
Symantec Antivirus version 10 runs continually on the PC, as it did when Vegas Platinum 6 was installed, too. Out of interest I just disabled it though and tried to process my test project again, whereupon exactly the same behaviour reported in this thread occurred. Antivirus is therefore innocent on this occasion.

Drives in DMA vs PIO mode?
Ultra DMA Mode 4 to be exact. All drives are Seagate Barracuda with jumpers removed (maximizes performance) and are installed with read/write caching enabled and optimized for performance not hot swapping. They are the same drives, with same configuration, that worked just fine with Vegas Platinum 6 so I think they are innocent here.

What other hardware is on that bus, if any?
None

What other applications running in the background?
A good call, but switching off all non-required processes makes no difference. For the record though, background processes are identical to what were installed and running when I was using Vegas Platinum 6. This includes Memeo automatic backup software, but my Vegas source data, project, and rendered output folders are all (deliberately) unmonitored by Memeo. Checking CPU activity whilst adding files to Project Media shows that the core duo CPU barely gets out of bed. Total memory usage is typically around 0.7-1GB of the 3GB available and the most I have seen whilst using Vegas is a smidge over 2GB.

What is the video source format?
On this occasion, MPEG2 as captured from a Sony DCR-SR100E HDD camcorder. The exact same images were handled in the exact same way by Vegas Platinum 6 without problem.

Thanks for the suggestions though, Doug, and I am of course perfectly happy to follow up other ideas too. Is there anything in Vegas setup I need to double check, perhaps?

The silence on this thread and absence of Google hits tells me that the problem is specific to my installation or usage, but given the blistering way that Vegas Platinum 6 worked and that nothing else has changed, I’m blowed if I can work out what. Hours and hours have been consumed so far!

Many thanks,
Steve

[Steve Boreham]

If other Vegas Platinum 9 users don’t have experience of the problem I describe to share, please will you be kind enough to confirm whether adding large amounts (quantity and data volume) to the Project Media list works properly.

After a complete purge and re-installation I still have the same chronic performance problem whereby adding files to Project Media slows exponentially with respect to the actual data volume until eventually – currently at about 20 files or so – it will never reach “building peaks”, let alone actually complete.

Thanks,
Steve

[Steve Boreham]

Yup, it is indeed a version problem.

Sony Support’s response to me today confirmed that the help file refers to some features that were only available in the Pro edition at the time I purchased Platinum. Subsequent releases of Platinum were however enhanced to support encoding to AC-3 as implied by current v9 functionality.

With the 20% discount upgrade offer, I guess I’ll be upgrading then!

Cheers
Steve

[Steve Boreham]

Update on Dolby 5.1:

1) Click Help / About
2) Select Components tab
3) Scroll down to component “AC3”
4) Observe “ac3plug.dll version: Not loaded”

This implies that I don’t have AC3 encodingg installed exactly as I guessed at the outset, but which contradicts the help file. I will write to Sony Support.