Strange problem when rendering

[Ian Stark]

I'm rendering a short PAL video clip to uncompressed AVI, prior to converting it to FLV.

All goes according to plan and the render completes without a hitch. However, on completion, when I click Open (is it Open or Play, can't remember?!) Vegas hangs. What happens next is very weird: the status bar that shows the progress of the render and the outstanding tasks increments - instead of showing 1of 1 it shows 1 of 2, then 1 of 3 - and it now sits at 1 of 7. It's as though the render is continuing in the background, although there is no disk activity and no further files are created and the progress remains at 100%. Clicking Cancel does nothing, nor does trying to exit normally. The only way out is to close Vegas using Task Manager.

I have managed to do this twice now, with different veg's but in between times I have successfully managed to render the same veg's.

The only Vegas component I have added recently is Excalibur but I have rendered plenty of other videos since then. This problem has only started today.

This is a very long shot, but I installed WAMP a couple of days ago, as a way of building my website offline before uploading it. Anything there do you think?

Advice welcomed.

Cheers,

Ian . . .

8.0c, XP Pro SP2, Quadcore, 4Gb etc

[Perrone Ford]

What happens if you don't open the file? If you just close vegas when the render is done without trying to open it?

Can you close Vegas cleanly? If you can, can you double click the file from the drive and have it play?

[Edward Troxel]

I can ease your mind and tell you that Excalibur would have no effect on that.

[Ian Stark]

If I close without trying to open the file, there is no problem. I can close Vegas cleanly and play the file from Explorer.

The file is OK even when the problem occurs.

Interestingly, I am now getting the message "The media library default could not be opened".

Edward, absolutely no thoughts in Excalibur's direction whatsoever! Just highlighting the fact that that is the only thing that has changed recently. But thanks for confirming it can be discounted.

[Ian Stark]

Update:

It's not uniform either (which is annpying!). Sometimes it's OK, other times I get the issue. I have tried all combinations of opening/opening folder/closing etc at the end of a render and it has hung twice and been ok four times. I can't see any logic behind it. I'll monitor, but meanwhile, if anyone has experienced and/or solved this issue I'd be grateful. 24 hours and I'll reinstall.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

...Interestingly, I am now getting the message "The media library default could not be opened"...

Sort of fishing in the dark here, but that could be indicating that the Media Manager is importing the file for indexing and is somehow failing. Which could, indeed, bring down Vegas.

I think you're right in suspecting WAMP. I recently installed MS SQL Server Express 2007 for a project, and in the process found out that the media manager default install includes MS SQL Server Express 2005. Which is fine, I just had some small configuration issues to resolve in the 2007 update, Media Manager runs fine on it.

So, I'm thinking that the MySQL server included with WAMP has broken Media Manager, or broken SQL Server Express, or is somehow intercepting Media Manager's calls to SQL Server.

A quick test - shut off Media Manager in Vegas prefs (then restart Vegas) and see if that helps. I'm guessing no more errors. If that's true, and you still want MM functionality, you might try just a fresh install (which could break the MySQL server in WAMP, or maybe not).

If these two servers aren't going to play nice you'd have the choice of one or the other, (nothing wrong with either of them), or, server configurations that are beyond me...

Hope this helps, it's pretty speculative.

[Ian Stark]

Seth, this all sounds like a good root cause to me. I had some issues with an incompatible MySQL version under WAMP but reading up on various websites gave me the impression there was nothing to worry about. However, WAMP then started to deliver the joyful BSOD at odd times so I moved my web dev activity to a separate pc. However, I did not remove WAMP, thinking I would reserach it some more later.

I think I'm going to go ahead and remove WAMP straight off and see if that reslves the issue. if not then a reinstall of Vegas is in order. To be honest I don't use MM really. But I might . . . . !!

I think you may have hit it though, thanks!

[Ian Stark]

Well, I've just returned (from a delightful shoot in a supermarket in Italy! Don't ask) and the problem is still there.

I have uninstalled WAMP and it doesn't seem to have had any effect. The really bad news is that when I went to reinstall Vegas I ran into some problems.

I obviously had to uninstall Vegas (8.0c) first. When I reinstalled, all went smoothly until I had to enter the registration details. Firstly, it said that the registration had failed and that I had to try it manually. I then checked the serial number from my Sony account but when I entered the machine ID it said it was incorrect. I panicked because obviously Sony support is not open today (and for me, being in the UK, it won't be open until 2pm tomorrow, which would trash half a day's work). Luckily a system restore worked and returned the original install in a (sort of) working state.

This is a 100% legit copy of Vegas so I'm not sure what's going wrong. I have installed it on my laptop as well, but I am sure I have only installed it maybe three times at most - is it possible I've exhausted my allowed registrations?

I can't continue working with Vegas as it is now (it's usable, but scary!) and I really would like to trry a reinstall. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Ian . . .

[Allan Black]

Did you consider adding SP3 to XP? That *seemed* to rectifiy some odd issues for me. They went away anyhow.

Cheers.

[Ian Stark]

Hi Allan,

I tried - and failed! The SP3 installation kept falling over part way through. I forget the reason but I am sure I read somehere that Vegas would work happily without it. I think I am going to do a complete rebuild of the whole system though - and install SP3 before installing any apps. Just need to sort that registration issue out . . .

Cheers.

[Edward Troxel]

Yes, Vegas works fine on XP SP2. That's what I'm currently running here as well.

[Ian Stark]

Edward, out of curiosity, have you had the same issue of being unable to complete an install of SP3?

As an unrelated side issue - I am kicking myself for not buying Excalibur sooner. Absolutely indispensible part of my edit suite now!

[Edward Troxel]

No. I've never tried to install SP3 - if it's working fine without it, why mess it up? :-)

Glad to hear Excalibur is helping your editing workflow. After using scripts for 6 years, I can't image people using the Pro version of Vegas and NOT using scripts.

[Seth Bloombaum]

I recently had to rebuild an OS drive from scratch.

Previously, on trying to install XP SP3, it came to a point where it seemed to stall. After about 20 minutes I cancelled the install.

On this new OS drive I had lots of long installs, and just let SP3 go when it also appeared to stall. After a long time (45 minutes? Longer?) it did indeed complete installation.

[Ian Stark]

Well I am about to take the plunge - just gathering everything I need to rebuild the whole system from scratch. I have to say I am a little nervous! I have SO much to reinstall. I was thinking about a dual boot with one o/s dedicated to Vegas. Need to do a little research here . . . I don't even know if I need two copies of the OS for that!