Vegas Pro 8 Sudden Slowdown
 

I have a Dell dual core AMD Athlon 64x2 5000+ 2.6 processor with 4gb RAM running Vista and am using Sony Vegas Pro 8. I have been using this setup for two years now with no issues.

I am capturing 24p, 30p, and sometimes 60i HDV by firewire from my Sony V1U cameras (and a Canon HV20).

Until recently when I would open a project the time it took to "build peaks" was only a minute or two. Now it takes an hour or more for a 30-60 min project.

Rendering to MPEG 2 NTSC Widescreen 24p for DVD Architect that used to take a few hours at most now counts on up to 20+hours and gave up after a few actual hours.

I have checked for any programs running at startup and uninstalled the few I could find. As far as I can tell nothing has changed on my system.

Any ideas what is going on?

is this on all projects?

what happens if you start a new project - does it take longer to load as well?

how's your hd space?

have you checked that your ram is ok?

Leslie, it has been on all projects lately. I have tried closing them and reopening, rebooting, etc and nothing changes. Computer shows the 4gb's of RAM I have and the hard drive I am rendering to has 30% of it available.

have you installed any codec packs recently, or any other video programs?

maybe it's worth try a reinstall of vegas?

is this a dedicated pc or general purpose? if the former maybe a complete clean reinstall of system and vegas, if the latter, have you checked for virus / malware / etc?

I have current anitvirus scans and have run diagnostics to check my memory, hard drives, etc and they all check out fine. I do regularly download updates from Microsoft that are "criticial" so I am wondering if one of those has created the problem.

If I have to I will reinstall Vegas but hate to because I have Vegas 6 then upgraded that to 8 and you have to install 6 first then the 8. Just having the license for 6 is not enough.

d you have to install 6 first then the 8

news to me?

you should be able to simply uninstall / reinstall 8 directly without worrying about 6 as long as you have your serial number all should go smoothly....

btw, are you having the same problem in 6?

btw2 - haven't (as yet!) ever had a problem with m$ updates....

One other issue that appeared on the latest project was that when my associate got done editing using multicam and would play the preview back everytime cam 1 was up the playback was jerky and skipping frames badly but when cam 2 was up the preview was smooth. Very weird. To test I rendered the first five minutes to see what the final product would look like and it was fine.

However it did take 5 hours to render the five minutes! Doesn't bode well for rendering this 2+ hour project when it is finished.

Have you done an antivirus/malware scan lately?
I recommend the free versions of Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware for malware scans.

When did you last blow out the dust bunnies?
Is your CPU heating up during renders?
Core Temp is an excellent and free tool for checking temps.

Mike,

I regularly run my antivirus scan and have spybot installed for malware. I will chck out the temp thing you mentioned.

I noticed last night that while we were working in Vegas one of the CD/DVD drives kept coming on and running even though there wasn't any media in them. Very srange.