MainConcept presets disappearing!

[Ian Stark]

Well this is weird! I use the MainConcept mp4 format to produce quick and dirty approval renders of projects or parts of projects for client comment and change requests. I've done this for some years.

Now, however, the presets randomly become unavailable! It seems to be every other time I render something the presets just disappear! If I shut down Vegas and load it up again, there they are!

Can anyone reproduce this?

I've been experiencing an awful lot of crashes with VP14/211 in the last few days. In this particular project I'm using a lot of animations with alpha channels rendered from Cinema4D, as well as some screen captures from Camtasia and a couple of whiteboard animations using custom graphics and rendered in Videoscribe as image sequences (also with alpha channels). Am I pushing Vegas too far?

For me, at least, Vegas is still prone to falling over more than I think is good for someone who makes a living with it. This juror is still out in terms of whether I'll be staying with it long term. Never thought I'd hear myself say it.

[Graham Bernard]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

Now, however, the presets randomly become unavailable! It seems to be every other time I render something the presets just disappear! If I shut down Vegas and load it up again, there they are!

Can anyone reproduce this?

I've been experiencing an awful lot of crashes with VP14/211 in the last few days.

Hmm... No loss of Templates. Plenty of RAM Hogging though!

Rendering is the biggest user of processing - yeah I know you know this, but applying this to MC in comparing VP14 211 and VP13 (?) - Chalk and Fromage. I can actually hear VP14 grunting at the "Trough o' RAM".

Using a 30 second 3D Comped VASST Cube ScatterShot and MC MP4 for client exchange files

1/- VP14 consumes and pigs-out on ALL my RAM. VP13 ticks over at the RAM it started with when opened. Strike 1!

2/- VP14 can't get to or uses CUDA, OPEN CL. VP13 can. Strike 2!

3/- VP14 takes 2:57 . VP13 takes 1:47 . Strike 3!

Gotta think MC hasn't been optimized/augmented to work with VP14 - yet?

OK . .moving on. I've been using V2H as my go to MP4 option in both VP13 and just now in VP14. Works in VP14. Then again, I also use SONY MP4.

Your experience will be different to mine, but these figures make me strongly understand that VP14 211 isn't ready for MC rendering. But I could be wrong.

[Ian Stark]

Happy New Year, Grazie :-)

Totally concur with your findings. Maybe it's time to move away from MainConcept (maybe that's what they want?!). It's not particularly great anyway, in my opinion. I only stuck with it because I had built a large number of presets over the years which I use for different clients and at different times.

I'm having a blonde moment (no offence to blondes) but I can't fathom what V2H is!

On the subject of Vegas and RAM, I suspect that's where the root of many of my crashes lies. I have 24GB but (particularly for this project) I have had instances of Vegas, Cinema 4D, Photoshop, Illustrator, Camtasia and Videoscribe open at the same time. I also like to use PSDs rather than converting to PNG, just so I don't have to repeat the round trip process each time I need to edit the graphic. I think those are memory hoggers as well. Oh, plus all those mov files with alphas. Getting a strong feeling here! Disappointing that it should cause a crash rather than present some kind of low memory warning, but I guess it could explain the recent problems.

[Jo Ouwejan]

My guess: V2H is Vegas to Handbrake.

[Graham Bernard]

Jo, correct!

[Ian Stark]

Ah, yes. Not a product I've ever used. Does it all happen within Vegas? i.e. no additional steps in the render?

[Graham Bernard]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

Does it all happen within Vegas? i.e. no additional steps in the render?

Yes and no . . . ONE Vegas Icon Click and your off to the Races! HandBrake gets "served" frame by frame by Frameserver. HB automatically gets initialized, you do your thang and once completed you get dumped back to Vegas. I like it. Not sure you will. But in the meantime, like a render, Vegas is tied up.

Nah, you wont like it . . .

[Ian Stark]

Hehe. Yeah, I'm fussy like that :-)

Worth a look though - thanks for the tip.

[George Dean]

I pretty much use Vegas2Handbrake for all my short 3-10 minute videos. It's a bit better quality than MainConcept, smaller file size and faster, even with the overhead of the FrameServer (for video about 3 minutes or longer).

I have the V2H script setup in the top menu bar, so it is one click to start the process. I have Handbrake setup to await my one click on 'Start', as I may want to change the render settings, although I have a default set for most renders.

I think it's pretty slick, even though there is no longer support, it works flawlessly in VP13 and with a few easy changes will work flawlessly in VP14, as I tried it in the VP14 trial a month or so back.

[Graham Bernard]

Yup, love it. I've also got the Add 1 Second to the region Script. 2 clicks and I'm done.

[Adam Stanislav]

And for anybody who has problems adding that 1 second, I have created a 1-second-silence.wav, which you can download from TinyUpload.com - best file hosting solution, with no limits, totaly free.

[Graham Bernard]

Adam? Do you know that there's a script that just adds an extra second to the Region? No need for a wav.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Graham Bernard

Adam? Do you know that there's a script that just adds an extra second to the Region? No need for a wav.

I don’t know anything about using scripts in Vegas, other than that different versions of Vegas have different scripting requirements, which is a nightmare. I do know we were told to add an empty 1-second event at the end (by the V2H web page). I tried that and first of all, the empty event is much longer than a second, so it has to be adjusted, but more importantly, Vegas did not count it (probably because it was empty) as belonging to the project, so it was not passing it to the V2H script and, therefore, my video was still 1 second short.

It made no difference whether I added an empty event on a video track or an audio track.

So, finally, I got fed up, created the one second of silence, and that works. It also is exactly 1 second long. It is an actual .wav, so Vegas does count it as belonging wherever you place it. And it does not matter what dimensions the video portion has. So, not only does it work now, it is reasonable to expect it to continue to work in future versions of Vegas, as well.