Vegas freezes after render
 

This is a repeat of an issue I had a little while ago that went away after a complete system rebuild but has now returned.

Briefly, on completion of a project render, if I don't quickly click on Open or Open Folder, Vegas displays (on the progress bar at the bottom, not in the render progress window) that it is starting render 1 of 2, then 1 of 3, then 1 of 4 etc etc.

In fact, Vegas freezes at that point and although I can still click Open or Open Folder, the main Vegas program can only be closed through Task Manager. It doesn't appear to be actually rendering anything and the cancel button in the status bar has no effect. The render progress window is not visible and no file is created. The original (desired) rendered file is unchanged and works perfectly.

This happens regardless of project complexity, content or render format, but (and this is the frustrating part) it is intermittent. I just rendered the same project that displayed the problem last time and it didn't happen (I left it for an hour).

To confirm, I recently rebuilt my pc from scratch (full format, reinstalled o/s etc) and the problem seemed to have gone away. I can't think of anything that I have done, or anything I have installed, that might have caused this.

Specs: XP Pro SP3, 3Gb RAM, Quadcore @ 2.67GHz, Vegas 8.0c (build 260), Nvidia 8800GTX with 768Mb RAM, all drivers < 8 weeks old.

Anyone have any thoughts on the cause and/or a solution? Anyone else experiencing the same thing?

Last time there was a suspicion that it could have been an install of a WAMP server which may have caused some kind of SQL conflict. That shouldn't be the case this time as WAMP isn't installed.

This is frustrating rather than showstopping, but if I can get rid of the problem I will be a happy chappie.

Cheers,

Ian . . .

Anyone got any thoughts? I'd be surprised to learn I am the only person enjoying this problem.

No, I don't get this - but . . . .

When I hear ANYthing to do with render or post render issues my thoughts are taken back to the time I had humongous issues with render hangs and BSDs happening. DUST on and in and around the cooling system.

You say you have done a system rebuild. Sure . .. Have you actually looked inside the box? Make doubly sure that any cooling "fins" are clean and visible and that any air ways are not blocked. I used a Vacuum cleaner and sucked NOT blew away any dust hair and detritus.

Result? My rendering and hangs went.

Also, I understand UK has had something of heatwave, and maybe this has exacerbated an ongoing, and intermittent issue? Maybe your cooling system needs to be overhauled?

Hi Grazie,

Very interesting suggestion. Funnily enough, it's been the cause of some recent unexpected shutdowns on my laptop - a quick clean of the fan and hey presto.

But as for the main pc, I am quite thorough and regular when it comes to cleaning. I have a pretty much industrial strength cooling system as well as a temperature monitor (I am not geeky enough to have asked for that - it came with the case!). I don't believe overheating is my problem here, especially as the problem doesn't occur when using equally processor intensive apps like Ultra or AE.

But a good thought nonetheless.

We are indeed having a bit of a heatwave here at the moment. Sounds like you're overseas at the moment - anywhere nice? I just returned from a few days shoot in Estonia - hot AND light almost 24 hours a day. How foolish of me to tell the client we would go on shooting until we lost the light . . . sigh . . .

Cheers,

Ian . . .

1] Have you looked inside? Today?

2] Can't comment on the amount of PC power needed for AE, but IS it the same as Vegas-rendering? Until you have figures you might NOT be comparing like with like.

I have now - all clean and cool.

My processor tcase temp peaks at 55c (Intel rate it for 62c) and the tjunction temp peaks at 60c - all well within tolerances. Ambient is 22c. I don't overclock and the only other card I have in the box is the graphics card which is also independently cooled (although it is recirc not rear exhaust so it's rated as 'middling' by SpeedFan standards).

This problem is present (intermittently) regardless of the length of the project - it can happen on a 60 second render as well as a 6 hour render. Also, it doesn't hang or crash the pc - it just freezes Vegas. I can re-render the exact same project straight away and it works perfectly OK.

Pretty sure overheating is not the problem but I will certainly keep an eye on it.

While this likely will not help, try turning off your virtual memory, reboot and see what happens. After you reboot you might as well delete your pagefile (good routine maintenance thing to do anyway).

Defragment your C drive afterwards as further good practice.

Sometimes virtual memory can get corrupted, so I've heard.

You can turn your virtual memory back on anytime after your test.

Always worth a try! Thanks Jeff. Again, you'd think that if this were the problem it would manifest itself elsewhere, but I'll give it a whirl. As you say, always good practice, as is Grazie's cleaning idea.

I really doubt it will do anything but what the heck.

As I've seen the following help with other issues, you could try lowering the number of rendering threads to 1, and if that fixes it then increase till the problem returns. You might also add in lowering the preview ram to 0.

These thing were suggested for Sony AVC rendering issue, and I had forgotten about them, but I know lowering the number of threads used to be a common work around for a number of different things.

Sadly all already done with no effect :-(

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that this must be due to some conflict unique to my machine. Having said that, I'm very surprised that no-one else has seen this.

One opportunity I have to resolve this problem is that I am moving in to my first 'proper' studio at the moment. The last thing to move across is the edit suite and when that goes I will be dedicating the machine to Vegas, Cakewalk Sonar, After Effects and Photoshop - period. No internet, no Office, no email, no antivirus etc etc. I'm hoping that this will give me some performance improvements as well (although I haven't had cause to complain about performance so far anyway).

Fingers crossed!

Ian . . .

Hi Ian. If you want to try something else that probably won't work either, you could pull one of your RAM sticks or even swap them around. Sometimes memory glitches can cause wierd symptoms.

Richard

That's an interesting thought, Richard. Again, I would have imagined that problems would manifest themselves in other apps as well as Vegas (and maybe they are but I haven't noticed them) but I did drop a second 2Gb stick in a few months back (same brand, same speed etc) to give me 3Gb usable. I wonder if that's the culprit? I will investigate.

Meanwhile, here's a picture showing exactly what happens. The (1 of 29) display in the status bar increments from (1 of 1) to (1 of 2) etc etc. The only way to get out of it is to force Vegas to close using Task Manager. Only one file is actually rendered (perfectly) and there does not seem to be additional disk or processor activity. Weird . . .

Yes Ian, take out that stick! Sounds like you might be closing in on this.

Also, have you tried checking the close this window box?

Yeah, fingers crossed! And yes, I have tried clicking on everything clickable, to no avail.

I have the same problem every now and then.. Just gets stuck and have to alt ctrl del to close vegas

Ah, I'm not alone!

What are your system specs, OS etc, Wade? - and what other s/w and h/w do you have?

Interested to see if there is any commonality.

Ian . . .

Are you using the auto save plug-in by Ed Troxel?

Wade, now that is interesting indeed.

All we NOW need to hear is that this is NOT being employed for the purposes in this thread's issues.

I do use Edward's AutoSave and have not had issues with render. And I 've been doing some heavy rendering in the last week. Needed to get some VirtDub out for clients including Magic Bullet video treatment. Heavy rendering . . . .

But I WILL keep a weather-eye open on this for "other" lock-ups though . . thanks for the tip.

Grazie

Just for the record... when a render starts, auto save turns itself off until the render is completed.

Wade - yep, I am. Your thoughts?

Grazie - if you are able (and this may be difficult as it ties the pc up) try leaving the 'render complete' dialogue up on screen for a while (no idea how long). See if that reproduces the issue. I will say that it is seemingly random when it does or does not occur so this may be a fool's errand. If you close the render complete dialogue relatively soon after it appears, the problem will NOT occur.

I stress, I don't think this is a problem with the render process itself - it seems to be a problem with what happens AFTER the render. As I mentioned earlier, it occurs (randomly) regardless of the content being rendered, plugins being used, length of render etc.

Edit: FYI I have also gone through Jeff's suggestions with no joy. I have also pulled the additional RAM. No luck.

REPRO-ED - Feck!!!!!!!

Ian, I hear you baby!

1] I am preparing some 4x3 into a 16x9 for a client to view. Nothing new there then.

2] Rendered out from Vegas; it's saying complete . . . groovy tunes . . . imported to DVDA5 for prep - Checked & looks great.

3] Ah, but hold that thought . . don't touch that dial!!! Switch back to Vegas P9 & I notice that Vegas thinks it should STILL be rendering - and at 100%???

HUNG! - And hung like a Bull Mastiff's dangly bits & swaying in a rank smelling breeze . . Hung like a 4 week old Grouse which was used by a trawler man to wipe down his herring slopped jersey . . . . Hung like a crooked Rothko . . .

And only way to kill it? CTRL+Alt+Delete and Process tree. Or, I'm thinking, a 12-bore?

This AINT heat, this aint memory this is something else.

So, off to SONY Ian! I know I am . . . .

"TAXI!"

If it ain't one thing . . . .

Grazie

Ha! One of the most colourful posts I have read in a while!

OK, so Wade and I aren't going mad. There IS something going awry. Well that's three of us - as you say, Sony time.

Grazie, are you active on the official Sony board (I'm not). Any chance you could drop a post there?

p.s. just wanted to add that I am using 8.0c and Grazie is using 9.

Sent report off to SCS. Give 'em something to chew over, I'd say.

Grazie

Grazie, put that down! (Grouse season doesn't start until August 12th.)

Richard

hehehe.

Grazie, how are you filing the report to Sony? Do you have an email address I could have?

Cheers,

Ian . . .

Ian, unless Grazie has a direct contact, I always use this page on the Sony site.

BTW, this isn't the first time Grazie has come out with such colourful language :-)

He has an e-mail address you CAN'T have... ;-)

Aha . . . one of THOSE email addresses, huh?!

Thanks Mike, duly reported.

Intersting to note there is a thread at the Sony forum as well: Sony Creative Software - Forums - Vegas Pro - Video Messages

Ian, I was quite certain you were aware of just how to report? This from the SONY website you posted on back in May '08? " I'll open a trouble ticket and see where that leads. " Sony Creative Software - Forums - Vegas Pro - Video Messages

Grazie

Ha! Well spotted Sherlock!

Yes, you're right, but having never had any response to such tickets from Sony I wondered if I was doing it wrong. I have always gone through the link Mike kindly provided but never yet had any reply (that I can recall - apologies to Sony if I've simply forgotten). The only joy I have had, contact-wise, is with telephone support but, let's be honest, this ain't gonna be resolved over the phone!

Update
 

I've been meaning to do this for a week or so now, but I have been up to my eyes in work.

As an experiment, and based on Wade's comment earlier in this thread, I turned off Autosave (from Excalibur), restarted Vegas, rendered a short project segment, then left the 'render complete' dialogue box open for ten minutes to see if the problem would manifest itself. I repeated this five times with the same project/render segment but I could not reproduce the problem.

I then turned Autosave back on with (I think) factory settings) and repeated the above process. On the very first render the problem occurred within a minute of the render completing.

Now, this is certainly NOT a scientific test and the problem is annoyingly random, so it could just be a coincidence (and Edward's comment earlier suggests it should not be the cause) , however I think it's something that should be considered and looked at more closely.

. . . and I'd like to point out that after 5 days I have still not had a response of any sort from Sony, which is disappointing.

Just to add something that may be relevant?

Attempted a render of a 5 minute program last night using Pro9a. I had successfully rendered this same program a coupkle of days ago to MPG2 and prepared a DVD. This time I was attempting to render as MPG4 for use on an iPOD. I set it to render (default) and walked away. Didn't return for two hours (I'm sure it only took a few minutes to actually render (i7 system). Found the progress bar at 100% but did not say Render complete and the only box available to activate was the cancel. Waited 15 more minutes with no change.. Then pushed cancel(?) which brought up a statement that render was canceled by user (duhh) and it stuck there. Tried to close Vegas but it was frozen tight. ONly way to close was ctrl-alt-del.
The only difference between the successful and unsuccessful render were that one was MPEG2 and one was Mpeg4 and for the successful one I was diligent and closed the render box within moments after it completed. Have not had time to try rerendering to MPEG4 again.

PS. VPro32 on Vista64 bit i7

When Vegas starts rendering, it sends out an "I'm Rendering" command that scripts can pick up. When that happens, I turn off autosave until I receive an "I'm Finished Rendering" command from Vegas. Now I'm wondering if Vegas sends out that command before displaying that dialog box and then hangs because it's trying to auto save while that dialog is still displayed????

Interesting thought. Anything I can do to aid further diagnosis? Just let me know, I'd be happy to help.

In fact, things are starting to add up:

This would perhaps explain why the problem is seemingly random - your script would not run if no changes had been made to the project, yes? So under those circumstances the problem would not occur - and I often render different formats from an otherwise unchanged veg.

Also, when I tried the test again with Autosave turned on, I changed the settings to save every 1 minute. Guess what - the problem occured within 1 minute.

And finally, I was rendering a file that had not been saved in the first place, thereby automatically kicking off an autosave instruction, I assume.

Looking like a strong candidate!

Yes, it definitely sounds like it is indirectly the cause. If the project does not need saving, it does NOT try to save. Perhaps a good temporary solution would be to make sure you do a file save before the file render. I will look into this, though.

Ed could you also look into the open copy in sound forge thing also... when I use auto save it won't release the sound forge file... I love your program though, it has saved my a$## a few times

Wade, I hadn't heard of that one.

Can both of you send me e-mails? It would be helpful for me if you did that.