Brand New Computer, Vegas 9d, T2i clips....NOT WORKING
 

So it seems I've run into some trouble with brand new gear.

I'm editing some 1080p/24fps clips from my Canon T2i using a brand new Dell XPS Studio computer with the following specs:

Win7
i7 @2.80GHz
4GB RAM
500GB HDD
Can't remember the exact video card, as I'm at work at the moment, but it has 1GB, and I *believe* it's a Radeon.

For a few weeks now, the setup was running awesome, but now I'm having issues of the video playback being randomly black, whether on the timeline or when previewing a clip. Of course, they're all Quicktime files, and those seem to be the only ones giving me the problem, but I ran into that issue once already when I first loaded Vegas into the system. I updated Vegas to Version 9.0d and the Quicktime problem went away. Also, whenever I try to render a 3-min 720p version of the same project that I'm currently working on, it says "System doesn't have enough memory" and kicks it back out. OR....it'll start rendering, get about 20-30% into it, and say "Vegas Has Stopped Working. Would you like to send this error to Microsoft?" and shuts down Vegas completely. The format used for rendering doesn't seem to matter. I haven't updated anything since the 9.0d upgrade, so unless Quicktime updated without my knowledge, I'm at a loss as to what I'm supposed to do to fix this.

Would updating to 9.0e help?

Anybody have any advice on this?

I would definitely upgrade to 9(e). 9d had some big issues that were fixed by e.

You also need to consider intermediate editing codecs or techniques. H.264 adds a lot of processing strain to your system. Using NeoScene and now NeoHD from Cineform has been my answer. There is another program I also bought that creates a proxy file to edit it. It is called Epic, by DVFilm:

Epic I by DVFilm - Edit DSLR H.264 Quicktimes from Canon 5d, Canon 7d, or Canon Rebel in real time with Sony Vegas Pro 9.0


I like the Cineform process better for editing purposes, but you do have to make some adjustments in Vegas to see preview correctly.

Epic takes a while to create its proxy files, and I am just now sure how the application of filters and transitions to the proxy files, relates back in the final render, as I have not worked with it enough. From that standpoint, editing directly and rendering from Cineform intermediate files seem better to me.

Ugh...how annoying.

Looks like I'll be reverting to my original fix, which was to run the lot of clips through Adobe's Media Converter and work with AVI's. Thanks!

I would take another look at Epic I which is only $45 and makes direct, real time editing of your clips possible. You will waste a lot of time making transcoded AVI's and by contrast Epic I is pretty much a snap, just drag the quicktimes into Vegas, adjust your in and out points, and by the time your rough cut is assembled you can start playback in real time. There are no extra files to worry about.

BTW on making color corrections, etc. Epic gives an exact match between the real time and rendering modes so there are no worries there either.

Honestly, the render times for conversion of a couple dozen video clips didn't take that long. The Adobe Media Converter program converts pretty fast on this machine, and all clips were converted within 3 hours.

The reason for Vegas' problems with Quicktime has to do with these quicktime files running inside 32-bit file access even though the vegas app is 64-bit. The 32-bit file i/o runs out of memory because it's poorly designed and then clips end up not playing back properly or crashing the app altogether. I am frankly shocked that Sony hasn't fixed this by now.

My solution is to transcode all quicktimes to XDCAM HD 50/422 which appear to be loaded with a 64-bit loader, or at least a much better designed 32-bit loader. Performance is acceptable.

Yep...pretty annoying. However, I will say that I've been having excellent luck with everything once I've converted my MOV files to uncompressed AVI format. Takes up a good chunk of space to have them on the drive for editing, but once the edit is complete, the AVI files go bye-bye, and I still have my master MOV files, which are roughly 1/4 the size of the AVI's.

MXF solution (?)
 

Well, I wrotein another thread the following text:
"I use Vegas 9.e and have been transcoding my T2i files to Neoscene - big files.
In fact I have ignored MXF up to now.
But I made a litle test rendering some T2i files to Sony MXF and noticed that, beside the rendered MXF files are much smaller than the corresponding T2i files (great!), comparing them (eye) on the preview monitor, it seems that there is no video quality loss, and editing is easy."
I hope my non-scientific experience may help.

Jad, Ron --

I too have been converting to .mxf with good results. Do you have any info on .mxf vs. neoscene? What are the main technical differences between the two? It seems that converting to .mxf does the job well (with smaller file sizes than neoscene).

I'm curious to know about the color space of .mxf -- anybody know? 4:2:2? If so, that's the same as neoscene...

Bump -- anybody?

Why not use mxf instead of Neoscene? Just tried Neoscene today and after importing converted clips, they look very washed out, low contrast. It appears we now have to use the sudio rgb to computer rgb 'levels' preset to get acceptable viewing levels... not good, slows down the preview (frame-rate) as well

My opinion... use what works best for you. If you like how the mxf works, don't worry about using neoscene - especially if you like the mxf version better! So just use mxf and edit away! :-)

Thanks Edward, I'd agree with that -- but I would still like to know what the technical, nitty-gritty differences are.

I've been searching all over the web to find a side by side comparison of h.264, cineform (neoscene), and Vegas's version of .mxf. One item I read says .mxf within Vegas is roughly half the quality of h.264 (???) -- and thus it should not be used as an intermediate. Humm...

My question: as related to all three formats (h.264, cineform and most importantly to me -- mxf):

8 bits, 10 bits?
color space?

My issue is THIS: converting with neoscene brings up the issue of having to place a 'studio rgb' to 'computer rgb' filter on the clips -- if I want to see the video correctly in the preview window. And it slows down the playback speed (frame-rate preview). Two good reasons not to use neoscene and just convert to .mxf internally.

However and again, I want to be absolutely sure that I am not losing quality in doing so (I also generally do heavy color correction/grading).

Anybody with the technical knowledge care to chime in here?

Much thanks --

DVFilm Epic I (version 1.1 was officially released today, with support for Vegas 9-64 bit) has the ability to decode to either video system RGB or computer RGB with the press of a button. It's a selection in the Advanced Options.

The playback performance is the same in both modes.

It can also decode to 10-bit YUV and uses 4:2:2 upsampling.

The best part about it, though, is you can start editing without transcoding, and it completely eliminates any worry about whether you're getting the full quality out of the MXF or Cineform files because you always render from the original.

dvfilm.com/epic

JB: Just use mfx files for editing, then replace with the original files for final rendering. You lose nothing. When done delete the mfx files and your good to go.