Excalibur

[Ian Stark]

@Edward Troxel

Hi Edward,

Just wondering if any development is in the pipeline for Excalibur to be fully functional and stable with current versions of Vegas, or whether it's hit the end of the road?

There are some functions I use every single day (close gaps, batch render regions, select all to right of cursor etc) that I would really miss, however, when I click on some tabs (Events, for instance) it crashes Vegas.

Could you let the user base know what, if any, plans you have?

Many thanks.

p.s. auto-save is again causing problems on loading a project. I seem to recall this happened some years ago after a Vegas upgrade. Basically the project does not load and gets stuck in a cycle of 'loading 1 of 1, loading 1 of 2, loading 1 of 3 etc'. I had to disable auto-save to stop this behaviour. Any thoughts?

[Edward Troxel]

Ian, as far as I know, the current version of Excalibur works fine on Vegas Pro 14, 15, and 16.

I have not heard of any issues with Auto Save and not sure why there would be any issues with using auto save. After all, all it does is "save" the project - albeit multiple times in different folders. But that should not affect starting Vegas in any way.

[Ian Stark]

Hi Edward,

Thanks for the quick response.

I fear there is something wrong with Excalibur and VP16. I've attached a (rather long, low resolution) video showing what's happening.

Briefly there are two main issues. This relates to Excalibur 6.14.0.32497 running under Vegas Pro 16.0 build 261 (Windows 10, latest updates applied).

1. With Autosave on, it causes a hang during the project loading phase (note, not Vegas start-up, but the PROJECT start-up). You will see this in the first couple of minutes of the video. If I turn Autosave off the project loads without problem. I repeat this several times in the video and you'll see the behaviour is repeatable. I have also tested this in VP15 and cannot repeat the problem.

I was convinced something similar had happened before and I was right - but it was back in July/August 2009! I was experience very similar symptoms that only went away when Autosave was deactivated. You did some research and discovered that it was, in fact, doing something wrong and ended up releasing a point release (6.06) with several fixes, including "Fixed an issue where AutoSave would prevent Vegas from releasing media when not the active application" and "Fixed an issue where AutoSave would try to save while the "Render Complete" dialog was still visible." I'm not suggesting these are related to the current problem, but it does seem that Sony/Magix have changed code in the past that has affected how Autosave behaves.I wonder if that's the case here.

2. Also, clicking on several of the Excalibur tabs causes Vegas to hang or crash, again these are demonstrated in the video and are repeatable. Specifically Multi-cam, Event, Video Effects and Audio. These issues ARE repeatable in VP15. I no longer have VP14

Now, these particular crashes don't really affect me as my main uses of Excalibur these days are on the Timeline and Assets tabs, but I thought you would want to know about them.

Thanks.

Ian . . .

[Ian Stark]

Annoyingly, the forum wouldn't let me upload an mp4 so I will put it on YouTube and post a link.

[Ian Stark]

Issues with Excalibur 6.14 in Vegas 16.0 - YouTube

[Ian Stark]

There's no need to watch the entire video! The Autosave issue appears in the first few minutes. The rest of the video clip is either repeating the action with Autosave on or off and then it goes on to show the tabs that aren't behaving. I was going to edit it but I've run out of time today I'm afraid.

[Edward Troxel]

Ian, if you could please send me an e-mail with instructions to duplicate the issue, that would be helpful. I have not heard of anyone else having any issues with AutoSave but will certainly test it out.

Please do note that AutoSave is not, technically, a part of Excalibur. I do use the Excalibur installer to install AutoSave, but AutoSave will work whether or not Excalibur is activated. It's a free custom command that anyone can use.

The same is true with "Project Inspector". Installs with Excalibur but is not part of Excalibur and is free to use.

[Ian Stark]

Yes, of course, Edward.

Re Autosave not being part of Excalibur, yes, I remember that now - so of course there are no expectations!

Could someone else who uses Autosave in VP16 please test to see if the problem is limited to just my system?

The instructions to repeat the issue are as simple as :

1. Make sure Autosave is on
2. Open a project and leave it until it's had a chance to actually do an autosave.
3. Close the project (maybe even close Vegas as well).
4. Open the same project. In my case that's where the 'opening 1 of 3, 1 of 4' etc loop begins and the only way out is to force close Vegas using Task Manager,
5. Turning Autosave off stops the issue, allowing the project to load as normal.

Note this is in Vegas Pro 16.0 build 261.

The three Excalibur tabs crashing Vegas still stands, though. This may very well be my system and I'd be interested to hear if any other Excalibur users lurking here have experienced any similar issues.

Thanks in advance for taking a look, Edward. I still think Excalibur is the best of the bunch :-)

EDIT: Sorry, I just re-read that you asked me to email - I'll do that as well.

[Edward Troxel]

Just an update for everyone: 3 of Ian's 4 tabs that would not open now open correctly. There were some improperly uninstalled OFX plugins that had some remnants left over. So Vegas was seeing a plugin that did not exist.

This can happen because Vegas can keep some files locked - even if you exit Vegas. That's why I always recommend you reboot before installing or uninstalling any plugins for Vegas.

Now the only tab Ian has left that is not opening is the Audio tab. I suspect the same is true as with the video effects. There may be some rogue VST installed.

As for testing AutoSave. I have tried testing on a simple VEG file and all is working fine. I really would like to duplicate this issue but, so far, have been unable to do so. I still don't understand how AutoSave could cause that issue. Here's what AutoSave does:

After the allotted amount of time has passed, and if the project needs to be saved, the project is saved and then COPIED to one or two other locations adding the date/time. So the original file is always the original file and the backups are just copies of that original file. That should have no effect on the original file and reopening that original file. However, Ian obviously has found a case where there is an issue so I need to know how to duplicate that case in order to resolve the issue. Step-by-step directions to duplicate would be greatly appreciated.

[Ian Stark]

Yes, I confirm that three of the four non-working tabs are now fine.

I did a bit more research after first reporting the issue(s), as Edward could not reproduce them on his machine using the same builds of Excalibur and Vegas and was therefore unable to come up with a solution.

I found that an old demo of Genarts (now Boris) Sapphire, even after uninstalling, was still showing up in my Vegas Plug-in Chooser. Actually, the folders were showing up but they were empty and I couldn't delete the folder (from within the Chooser). I went out to Windows and did a bit of brute force file removal, as well as going to and deleting plugin_manager_cache.bin and svfx_plugin_cache.bin in the AppData folder. On restarting Vegas, the plugins were no longer showing and three of the four Excalibur tabs were working fine.

The one tab that still doesn't work is the Audio tab, which doesn't just hang Vegas, it abruptly dumps me straight out to Windows. As Edward says, it's my suspicion that there is a similar issue with an improperly uninstalled audio plugin, or perhaps a plugin that is only licenced to operate in a specific DAW. I was a long time user of the Cakewalk Sonar DAW until Gibson canned them. A number of their bundled VST plugins will not work in any other DAW (I now use Studio One) and I wonder if it's a case of Excalibur being unable to read one or more of those when it is run. They show up in Vegas, but when you click them (in the Plugin Chooser) a message comes up saying they can't be used outside of Sonar.

I don't use the functions on the Audio tab, so personally I'm not too concerned.

As for the AutoSave issue, I'm not sure what else I can say about it. I've made a video of it happening, but Edward can't reproduce it using my instructions so he is naturally unable to troubleshoot. It works fine in VP15 but not VP16. I have reproduced the issue on a variety of projects, although when Edward showed me his settings and I reproduced them on a new, simple project, it worked fine. When I went back to trying my original settings on a complex project it fell over, in the same way you can see at the start of the video. When I turn AutoSave off, the problem goes away. When I turn it back on, it resumes. It's clearly something that is affecting some situations and not others, but it seems from the lack of responses from others here, I am the only one experiencing it!