Render prob - Vegas just disappears from the screen
 

Hi everyone. I'm a newbie using a Sony V1, XP SP2 PC with 2Gb RAM (Corsair), Vegas 8A, Cineform Neo HD latest update. Everything working great and looking good until render time.

I have a 3 minute project with cineform HD 1920x1080 clips, WMV clips, JPEGs, audio clips on the timeline. No matter what render combination I try Vegas just crashes after 60%+ render complete, I mean just disappears from the screen without as much as a freeze or an error message (tried WMV, AVI, QT etc).

However if I down-rez the JPEGs, render timeline in 3 separate passes (1 minute each), and then create a new project import the 3 files and then render, say as WMV, no problem but not a good workflow!

This is a weird problem and I wondered if anyone has come across it themselves. (But surely Vegas ought to error-trap any bug rather than just disappear from the screen?)

Any advice appreciated.
Sherif

I don't use Vegas 8 for video edit, but this sounds like a corrupt clip or still in your timeline.

Does the render stop at the same place every time?

Try rendering at approx the 60% (or where ever the render halts) area of your timeline, or shift out clips in that area until you can determine which is the culprit.

Thanks, no the render doesnt stop at same place each time. (I know that large JPEGs cause Vegas a problem so fixed that). But here's the thing, if I do 3 separate passes (1 min each render) every clip on the timeline renders. It just doesnt do all 3 minutes in 1 go. I thought maybe i was running out of hard disk space or somnething but doesnt look like it.
Sherif

I'd still bet that you have a bad element in your timeline.

Can you output your project in a single render as an audio file only? How about video only?

Marty, I'll put it to the test. :-) Will strip the timeline of everything except the Cineform Neo HD clips and the associated audio, and try that. Fingers crossed.

But again, shouldnt Vegas error trap everything properly no matter whats on the timeline ?

Sherif

I use Vegas mostly for audio, although I've recently added Pro 8 with the notion of trying video with it.

I can only compare to Premiere... and it had no means of flagging bad clips (at least up through Pro 2.0). Of course, Premiere will crash if a fly lands on my monitor.

Sometimes it's just a bad frame at the very beginning or end of a clip... often, you can catch it on playback from the timeline if you detect a glitch of any kind.

Not sure what you mean by "stripping the timeline of clips"... but you can try creating a new video track, mute or otherwise shut off its visibility, then move clips to it.... that makes it much easier to reconstruct your project when your troubleshooting is complete.

I would further narrow things down by rendering audio and video only versions of your project and see if either are successful.... if you succeed with say, a WAV version of your project, then you know that it's a video clip that is causing your trouble. Vice versa if you can render out a video only track.

Keep us posted and good luck.