End of the road?

[Ian Stark]

After well over a decade of being a staunch defender of Vegas I'm very close to the end of the road now and have started looking at alternatives.

Functionality - fantastic.
Ease of use - fantastic.
Flexibility - fantastic.

Stability - dire, and getting worse, for me, anyway.

I had hoped that swapping out my graphic card and doing a clean install would solve my constant crashing issues but sadly that's not the case. Vegas 13 is crashing now on dead simple three track video/dialogue/music projects, without any added fx. If I can't trust it to do that how can I trust it to be stable on my usual complex projects with numerous tracks of different format source media, 3d, fx, titles, keyframes, envelopes etc etc?

Even with gpu acceleration turned off I can guarantee I'll experience numerous crashes - but even the oft-cited suggestion to turn acceleration off kinda gets me angry when it's a function I have bought and paid for and expect to work.

I'm happy for the many people who are enjoying a crash-free existence with Vegas - but I suspect that those people are creating somewhat less complicated projects. I can forgive the slightly new-feature-light release of 13 as the bundled add-ons (SFP11 and HitFilm) are useful to me, but I'm so disappointed that the stability issues haven't been resolved, at least for me . . .

I'll see what happens with the next couple of point releases and if theres no improvement I'll almost certainly be taking advantage of another part of my Adobe CC subscription . . . albeit with much sadness.

Edit: . . . and now I discover Boris BCC8 doesn't work with Vegas Pro 13 and you have no choice but to upgrade to BCC9 which is not available until June. A cynic might suggest that's an underhand move on Boris's part . . .

[Jeff Harper]

Very sorry to hear of your issues Ian. I would be devastated to have to leave Vegas, I just don't want to go anywhere else.

I can only speak for me, but I would swap out my MOBO and processor before I would switch NLEs.

Did you install Vegas on a new instance of Windows and install nothing but the bare necessities before trying Vegas?

Crashes for me are rare, they happen during CC or very fast editing when I add a quick succession of fancy transitions. I have learned to save often when I do those things and so far I've been lucky.

I edit mostly 3-4 cam weddings 1080i with maybe three lines of extra audio, that's as complicated as I get usually.

You're a good friend to many of us here and I for one really hope you can find the issue that will be the fix to get you stable.

It is very disappointing to hear about Boris.

[Leslie Wand]

i agree with geff...

ian, i think there's something seriously amiss with your installation, be it os, software, or even hardware.

i'm not one for keeping quiet about my opinion of vegas, and have at times thrown my hands up in utter despair and even moved to ppro, but found nothing matches the fluidity of vegas.

again, before you jump ship i suggest you try a simple, clean install. ie. image your system, then simply install os and vegas and see what happens. if all else fails you can simply restore image.

btw. have you tested ram?

[Jeff Harper]

Leslie, I suspect Ian is extremely well versed in PC things, so I feel the issue is either a software conflict or it just doesn't like his hardware. My thinking is if he installs nothing but Vegas to a clean install of Windows, and the necessary things he edits with, it might help eliminate narrow things down.

If that doesn't do it, then a plugin or something he is editing with is creating an issue (Boris, etc.) or his hardware configuration is just not liked by Vegas.

I absolutely feel very lucky, because I know that when an expert in Vegas such as Ian is having these kind of problems it it only by pure luck I am relatively stable. This whole thing is absolutely maddening to read about and I just wish Sony could figure out what is happening.

I actually have sympathy for anyone that has to design software to run on a zillion PC configurations. It is why Macs are relatively stable, because the software design issue is much simpler with the limited # of configurations normally found on Apple machines.

[Leslie Wand]

very true, and i have no doubt ian knows infinitely more than i do about pc and especially vegas - i've followed some of his tuts...

meanwhile, i'm still annoyed that scs hasn't done a single thing regarding their appalling implementation of gpu functions. you would have thought that the noise generated on the various forums would have made them put some energy into sorting it out rather than i'gimmicking and playing around with the gui...

so far 13, though not pushed heavily, is proving pretty stable. that said, i do have ALL gpu functions turned off - i really don't have time for half-assed coding that has me trying to figure out what scs should have figured out 2 releases ago...

[Chris Harding]

and people still ask me why I'm still using Version 10 ? I have to wonder if new versions are maybe rushed out by their marketing department to make bundles of money as soon as possible when the software itself hasn't really been tested and de-bugged correctly ?

When I see multiple posts following the new version releases of all the tears and frustration that people who have upgraded to the "latest and greatest" I remind myself that I might not have all the latest features but I know I can drag all my clips onto the timeline and edit and render without any issue. Hence the reluctance to upgrade. Maybe I'm just a coward but for me time is money and I cannot really afford to contend with multiple crashes on a new version when clients are waiting for their videos.

Chris

[Leslie Wand]

i doubt you are alone in your thinking.

i upped to 13 because of a 'render as' problem. i could probably have gone back to 11, but hey, $150 in the scheme of things isn't a lot....

so far, apart from a mild heart attack when a couple of scripts wouldn't run (see thread over at scs) 13 seems to be ok. i haven't pushed it very much (then again, in the scheme of things i don't really do that much pushing - most of my stuff is more along the lines of long / short form doco rather than multicam or heavy fx).

as i wrote i'm certainly not happy about the state of gpu, but i'll give this release a chance to sort it out. if not, i can't see what scs can do to make me continue buying 'unfinished' software...

[Mark Wilson]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

Vegas 13 is crashing now on dead simple three track video/dialogue/music projects, without any added fx.. . .

Once the frustration fades away I guess you would agree that it is very unlikely that this is a generic problem - Vegas really is quite capable of editing a dead simple three track project without crashing.

So the question is how to go about solving the problem. One way is to keep your hardware platform and throw some new software (Adobe CC?) at it. But that is more $$$, more time, and potentially a whole new set of issues.

Personally, before I went down that route I would try borrowing/renting a different hardware system, if only to convince yourself that the software can work reliably and maybe give you some insight into where the problem lies. Compared to your time, hardware is cheap!


Good luck!

[Art Varga]

Ian - I agree you may want to troubleshoot a bit further before jumping ship. I've had crashing episodes with Vegas myself over the years and while sometimes never completely resolved, I found a way to work around the issues (i.e if it does that when you do this - then don't do that). One thing I have found to work going back to release 10 ( I'm on 12 now) is to keep your dynamic RAM preview setting as low as possible. I have plenty of RAM on my machine so I don't know why this would matter but it just does. So I keep it at about 2000 while I'm cutting and then when I get to adding effects or color correction (when I'm most apt to get a crash) I drop it to zero. Give that a try

Art

[Ian Stark]

Thanks everyone for the messages of support! Nice to feel wanted :-)

Yes, I did indeed post in a moment of frustration, although it's frustration that's built over several years of experiencing a distinct lack of stability in Vegas. I will, of course, give Vegas another chance - I've invested waaaay too much time and money into it over the years. However, this is not an endless font of patience as I have to run what has become a very busy business and I just can't afford to keep losing time to constant crashes.

To respond to some of the observations you've made:

1. The three track project seems to have been (hopefully) a one-off. I didn't mean to suggest that it was happening all the time, and I realise my words might be construed as meaning it was a repeatable crash, which it wasn't. In fact I had been playing around with a much more complicated project in the same editing session. Additionally I had used, then removed, a bunch of effects in the simple project so while they weren't operating at the time of the crash they had been active in memory during that Vegas session. Thought I should clear that up. However, it DID crash - and that's wrong.

2. I will do a clean install from Windows up - when I have a spare day! I have just invested in a very high end laptop for a specific job where the client wants the project delivered same day and I will be installing Vegas 12 (and yes, possibly Vegas 10!!) and my other bits and pieces on that machine so I have something to work with while I rebuild the big box. I'd add that I did a completely new install when I added those SSDs at the end of last year and the problems persisted. I did, of course, also add all my other goodies as well. The pc that Vegas sits on is purely used for media creation - but it has much more than just Vegas on it. It's a custom built (not by me) Hexacore i7 980 cpu @ 3.33GHz, 24GB RAM, Windows 7/64, and it's a beast!

3. Jeff, I tend to think hardware conflict is where my problem lies - although as I mention below, the issue only presents itself in Vegas, so I am blaming Vegas ;-). I have now replaced the graphics card (for a lesser model - I went from 580 to 760) and I'm not conscious of any stability improvement. Next item of hardware to replace is the audio interface. I have been using a Roland V-Studio 100 which is fantastic for the audio work I do in Cakewalk Sonar, however, I have noticed that the device keeps going offline at odd moments and I wonder if this is causing an issue. I have ordered a Focusrite Scarlett 616 which is supposed to be very stable (and is still supported, unlike the V-Studio) and will try that out. I wonder sometimes if dual display is also introducing a crash risk.

4. I will test memory - good advice, thanks Leslie. I'm a bit skeptical though, as I simply do not experience crashes in other high end apps such as After Effects, Cinema4D - and dare I say Premiere! (although I've only been using it for very simple projects, just to get a feel for it). Having said that, I have been experiencing odd crashes in Cakewalk Sonar hence my thought about swapping out the audio interface.

5. "(Crashes) happen during CC or very fast editing when I add a quick succession of fancy transitions". Same here, and I also save work frequently. However I tend to work very fast and often get carried away and make three or four changes before remembering to save - and it's the crash that reminds me! Aside from which it just shouldn't be the case that you need to save every couple of keystrokes. I haven't reinstalled Excalibur yet but when I do I will revisit the autosave utility.

6. I've always tended to use the default RAM Preview and rendering threads settings (200/16). I've played around with these settings based on other people's advice in the past but haven't noticed a major difference in stability. I'll certainly try again. Thanks Art.

7. Mark, I already have a subscription to Adobe CC (for AE, Illustrator and PS primarily, but the other apps come with it). However, the idea of using an alternative system to see how I get on is very good advice. As I mentioned earlier, I've just bought a HUGE laptop and I will be trying out Vegas on that.

OK, my wife has now come home and is expecting dinner so I'd better end here before I get yelled at!

Thanks again for the advice, suggestions and encouragement. I certainly AM frustrated with Vegas in a way that I am not with any other high end app I use. And I certainly AM still looking at my options. However, I'm prepared to give it another go (or two) as I really, really don't want to go anywhere else. But like I said before, my patience is limited, and whether or not the issue is with my hardware or other software or is a generic Vegas defect, it is only when I am using Vegas that these repeatable crashes occur, so I am looking to Sony to solve the problem.

As a final note of intense frustration, here's a very basic bug that's been reported by many and not fixed in v13: Create a new project, add some media to it, file/save as, create new folder - CRRRRASH. Every single time.

Oh, and where are my 'paste selected attributes'?! ;-)

[Jeff Harper]

Ian, you mention something going offline at times. Are your PC power settings set to never turn off hard drive? That can and will cause a crash in Vegas. You probably already know about that setting but if you haven't double checked it please do. This is especially true on laptops but holds equally true for the default settings of any new windows install.

Similarly, long ago I occasionally edited from an external "green" drive that would stop rotating every so often while I edited and it caused long stalls or a crash. When I finally figured out the issue I got rid of the drive and all was well.

[Ian Stark]

Hi Jeff,

Great thought about the disks. I can see a setting for putting the display to sleep and one for putting the pc to sleep, but can't see anything for just the hard drives (this is in Control Panel/Power Options). Both are set to 'never' in my case.

The device that randomly goes offline is the audio interface (VS100). Sometimes I hear the 'USB disconnect' sound, sometimes not.

[Jeff Harper]

You're in the right area, but find advanced options below where you were and you should find a lot more settings to choose from including USB and disc power settings.

[Ian Stark]

Aha!

Well, well, well. I guess when I last reinstalled Windows I didn't adjust those default values beyond simply changing pc and display to 'never' and never thought to do so since! Disk was set to 20 mins and USB to suspend as well.

I will monitor closely now that those settings are set to what they should be!

Many thanks indeed Jeff. Even if it doesn't resolve the crashing issue it should hopefully resolve the annoying disappearing audio interface!

Fingers crossed . . . .

[Mark Wilson]

"As a final note of intense frustration, here's a very basic bug that's been reported by many and not fixed in v13: Create a new project, add some media to it, file/save as, create new folder - CRRRRASH. Every single time."

I tried this...again, and again. It doesn't crash. Wonder if this is a disk access problem as suggested above? (Disk drive "going to sleep" when Vegas tries to access to create new folder, but doesn't know how to wait.)


Sounds like you are maintaining a sense of humour - that's a good thing!