Vegas 9 is low on memory

Leslie Wand · May 1st, 2011, 06:35 PM

have been following this thread but can't really comment since the only time i had a similar problem was years ago.... however:

i always use png's, have second (and third) hd's, start most projects as straight tl, ie, no fx etc., and save under new 'ver' names at each stage.

i had a client who had a problem similar to yours - i got him to simply cut and paste the whole tl into a new instance of vegas and save with new name. it worked though ymmv....

Dale Guthormsen · May 2nd, 2011, 07:59 AM

Morning,

Leslie's idea is also good too! I do this with almost every project that is 30 min or longer. I also do any color grading at track level ande then render it. Also using nested shorter sections is a good practice keeping two versions open eachon a their own monitor. Sence I manage my projects better I have far fewer problems in all regards.

Good luck with this!

Jeff Harper · May 2nd, 2011, 08:07 AM

Leslie, great idea, but I think he's already tried the cut and pate into a new project (didn't work).

What's funny, is his laptop is handling it but his new desktop is not, which kind of points to a hardware issue, or something specifically related to his PC.

I am anxious to see what he ends up finding out. Very frustrating stuff!

Steven Davis · May 2nd, 2011, 05:31 PM

Well,

I'd love to start this response out with; by the greatest of scientific deduction and computer ingenuity I was able to figure it out, but sadly, that's not the case.

I reinstalled Vegas, and that was what it took to fix whatever in the world the issue was. Since my installation and computer was only a month old, I never suspected that it may be a software issue, especially considering 8.1 was doing fine on much larger projects with much more resources needed.

So that's it. What the specific issue is, I have no idea. Did reinstalling Vegas fix it, yep.

Or we can go with the conspiracy theorists and say that it had something to do with the death of OBL. Naaaaa.

Jeff Harper · May 2nd, 2011, 08:51 PM

Great Steven, a simple fix! Congratulations.

Steven Davis · May 2nd, 2011, 09:30 PM

Thanks Jeff. It was a journey.

Greg Huber · August 25th, 2011, 08:14 AM

I have been using the 64 bit Sony Vegas 9.0d for over a year now to render HD videos without any issue. The source format of my videos (straight from a JVC GZ-HD7) are MPEG2, with about 25M bitrate. I've edited and rendered countless weddings, some video short films, etc. and never had any problem with Vegas.

Several months ago, I purchased a smaller camera- a Kodak Playsport that has source videos encoded in H.264, around 8MB bitrate, and a .MOV format.

Just recently I went through my normal process of adding the video to the timeline in Sony Vegas 9d and added the .MOV files to the project. I added around 30 minutes of footage (roughly 8 or so videos), a title, and some background music just as I've done many times before... Within about 10 minutes of rendering down (to a 720p format) I got the dreaded Low Memory error.

I've been scouring many sources and have taken a lot of the steps mentioned in this thread including just about everything but re-installing. However, since Vegas still works fine with my other MPEG2 HD videos I am not sure if a reinstall will do the trick. Also, after applying many of the "fixes" I now get the low memory render error immediately, as opposed to 10 minutes later.

Does anyone have experience fixing the Low Memory issue in my scenario (H.264/.MOV files)? My computer has plenty of memory and cpu (i7-920 and 6GB of ram). While rendering, the memory usage never goes above 2.3 GB or so, and I have 6GB total. Memory usages starts around 1.8 GB and then immediately jumps right up to around 2.3 GB. I am thinking it may be some kind of codec issue but I am not sure what I'd do to fix that.

One other point- I was able to render one video individually without getting the low memory error. That particular video was only about 3 minutes of footage. I have not tried with longer videos (some are over 10 minutes). Of course this is not an ideal solution...

Thanks,
Greg

Steven Davis · August 25th, 2011, 06:56 PM

Yes yes, this is an issue with Sony Vegas that is worthless asking them about it. The sony noob techs will read something like, 'have you updated, maybe you need to format your computer.' So, count my wasted time with Sony as your own. lol What I ended up doing once was copying my project to another pc and rendering it on that machine. Same files, worked on a different machine. Dumb Vegas. You could try that, just copy the whole project to a different machine. That's the only way I ever got around it.

I have a target on my head and seem to get the stupidest errors from Vegas at least once every six months or so. Forgive my attitude, but I've wasted days on Vegas and it's stupid crappy error reporting. It sucks. If it would just accurately error report. The low memory error is a generic error that has almost everything to do with Vegas not understanding the stupidest things. I got the error one time because I was using a specific jpeg/image. Take out the picture, no error, put the picture back in, error. Sigh. Yeah, that' took me 4 hours to diagnose.

I'm no help, I'll stop venting now.

Leslie Wand · August 25th, 2011, 07:15 PM

no, venting's good for the psyche, but pretty useless for repairing software.....

as i wrote earlier. i would never dream of working with some 'new' or 'non-standard' codec*, nor large images other than png. if you do i think you're opening up yourself to countless problems from low mem through to system crashes.

*this is from sony's vegas pro advert:

Vegas Pro 10 software has extensive capture, import, and export support for video and audio. With the Vegas Pro 10 collection, you can efficiently edit and process DV, AVCHD, HDV, SD/HD-SDI, R3D and all XDCAM™ formats in real time, fine-tune audio with precision, and author surround sound, DVD and Blu-ray Disc™.

i see no mention of .mov, .mod (jvc), etc., yes, you can edit them, but....

Larry Reavis · August 26th, 2011, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg Huber

Just recently I went through my normal process of adding the video to the timeline in Sony Vegas 9d and added the .MOV files to the project. I added around 30 minutes of footage (roughly 8 or so videos), a title, and some background music just as I've done many times before... Within about 10 minutes of rendering down (to a 720p format) I got the dreaded Low Memory error.

Thanks,
Greg

Vegas has never liked .MOV. That's why I immediately render any .MOV to an intermediate before putting on the TL. In case even that simple project stalls, kill vegas from Task Manager and you'll probably find that you at least have a partially complete rendered file. Put that back on a new top track, and select all after its end point and render again. Keep doing that until you have a complete intermediate set of clips.

Then render the entire set of intermediate clips in order to get one complete intermediate file.

You might get longer renders if you render only the video (you can use the original audio when you create your final intermediate).

Which codec? I use Cineform. But the free DNxHD is pretty good. You might try it.

Greg Huber · September 4th, 2011, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larry Reavis

Vegas has never liked .MOV. That's why I immediately render any .MOV to an intermediate before putting on the TL. In case even that simple project stalls, kill vegas from Task Manager and you'll probably find that you at least have a partially complete rendered file. Put that back on a new top track, and select all after its end point and render again. Keep doing that until you have a complete intermediate set of clips.

Then render the entire set of intermediate clips in order to get one complete intermediate file.

You might get longer renders if you render only the video (you can use the original audio when you create your final intermediate).

Which codec? I use Cineform. But the free DNxHD is pretty good. You might try it.

Larry, thanks for the suggestion. I finally found a way to get around my issue. Since Vegas can't seem to handle .MOV files very well, I thought try to find another way to convert them. After trying several different conversion programs, I went back to my old standby- Ulead Studio. I was able to do a batch convert from MOV to MPEG of all the files. Of the 20 or so MOV files, it crashed about 3 times but eventually got through them with acceptable quality and no audio syncing issues. I then started the project, replaced the MOV files with MPEG files and everything renders perfectly now in Sony Vegas!

My hopes were that Vegas could handle everything, but it seems there is also something about these particular MOV files that PC's in general don't like. A few converter programs I tried out along the way said I had "B-frames" in my video that affected stability... so maybe the issue is more related to the implementation of .MOV in my video camera.

With all this headache my solution may be to finally give in and switch to a Mac, which everyone tells me "just works" when it comes to video issues and drivers. If that is the case maybe it is worth spending 4x the price for one. (OK I'm getting a little off topic here I know)...

Thanks,
Greg

Jeff Harper · September 4th, 2011, 09:35 PM

When you get your Mac, please report back and let us know what you think.

Seth Bloombaum · September 4th, 2011, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg Huber

...With all this headache my solution may be to finally give in and switch to a Mac, which everyone tells me "just works" when it comes to video issues and drivers. If that is the case maybe it is worth spending 4x the price for one...

Tongue in cheek? A little? It is indeed frustrating to run into these roadblocks.

Macs do not "just work" with video issues, unless you use a rather limited set of codecs and wrappers. Yes, I've hung various mac apps, including FCP.

Anyone who has had a newer camera with a new codec would share that FCP has consistently been late to the party with native use of codecs on the timeline. Having said that, once converted to ProRes422 intermediate codec, life can be very good.

All these comments based on FCP7, I've not yet spent any time with FCP-X, a different product entirely.

I'm unsure how to apportion my irritation about QT on the PC. Should I be blaming Sony or Apple? With Vegas Pro 10 (or was it 9?), Sony stepped away from QT and supplied their own decoder for many dSLR AVC/h.264 codecs. QT is flakey for me on the PC outside of Vegas, too, especially with Apple's implementation of AVC/h.264. I get mac-created clips that won't play on QT on the PC, or play off-speed, or just plain scrambled; very frustrating. Greg H. has achieved happiness with a new camera codec by taking his MOVs to an intermediate codec - sound familiar?

Not that I want to disrespect Macs. I work on them all the time, they're well-engineered, and work well. But, to believe they "just work", with the implication that PCs somehow don't, is to believe hype, drink the Kool-aid, and join the cult.

Greg Huber · September 5th, 2011, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

Tongue in cheek? A little? It is indeed frustrating to run into these roadblocks.

Macs do not "just work" with video issues, unless you use a rather limited set of codecs and wrappers. Yes, I've hung various mac apps, including FCP.

Anyone who has had a newer camera with a new codec would share that FCP has consistently been late to the party with native use of codecs on the timeline. Having said that, once converted to ProRes422 intermediate codec, life can be very good.

All these comments based on FCP7, I've not yet spent any time with FCP-X, a different product entirely.

I'm unsure how to apportion my irritation about QT on the PC. Should I be blaming Sony or Apple? With Vegas Pro 10 (or was it 9?), Sony stepped away from QT and supplied their own decoder for many dSLR AVC/h.264 codecs. QT is flakey for me on the PC outside of Vegas, too, especially with Apple's implementation of AVC/h.264. I get mac-created clips that won't play on QT on the PC, or play off-speed, or just plain scrambled; very frustrating. Greg H. has achieved happiness with a new camera codec by taking his MOVs to an intermediate codec - sound familiar?

Not that I want to disrespect Macs. I work on them all the time, they're well-engineered, and work well. But, to believe they "just work", with the implication that PCs somehow don't, is to believe hype, drink the Kool-aid, and join the cult.

Seth, thanks for the info. My comment was definitely tongue in cheek :) I would hate to spend that kind of money and still have the same issues. It is frustrating that there are so many factors that can play into instability issues- video formats, codecs, bad implementations of standards, etc. In the end it's always the end users / consumers that get to feel the pain.

This experience has taught me a couple of things:
1. As long as I am using Sony Vegas, avoid file formats that are QT based- I didn't even pay attention to that when I picked it up my low cost portable video camera yet I probably invested more than 10 hours trying to troubleshoot and eventually get my workaround.
2. It would be much more cost effective to pick a more "sony vegas" compatible camera for than to choose a new platform to do video editing on. (Sony brands?)
3. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater thinking the new baby will be a silver bullet. (ie, FCP vs. Vegas). I am doing a lot of research and finding similar frustrations. Also seeing a lot of hoopla about the new FCX vs. FCP and how a lot of the more professional users are frustrated.

Having said that, I'm still shopping around because I have other reasons for getting a Mac, but I am not ready to give up on Vegas just yet. :) Jeff- thanks as well, I'll be sure to post again once I move forward in that direction and see the pro's/con's.

Greg Huber · October 29th, 2011, 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

When you get your Mac, please report back and let us know what you think.

Hi Jeff,

I thought I'd come back to this thread and reply back since you asked. Good news on the Mac!

My el-cheapo kodak camera downloads the video just fine without any issues. I don't get any lock up or stutters on the Mac while playing or editing it. Since the camera outputs .MOV, which is a format widely used on the Mac, I am not surprised it works so well. On the PC I couldn't find a single program that wouldn't lock up when dealing with the weirdness of the camera format.

I have also been using the Mac and Final Cut Pro (FCP) for my higher end camera and I can tell you it is a big improvement. One downside is that I have to convert MPEG to .MOV to work in FCP, but that is easily done with a free utility called MPEG Streamclip. One thing that I've noticed is that the Mac allows you to easily control the video format across applications. Fortunately, the conversions are fast and quality of the video is preserved without any degradation.

In general I am very happy I made the switch over and now use it for my video editing needs. I found that making a transition from Vegas 9 to FCP for basic video editing was extremely simple... I found a few web sites that helped me understand the basics and it didn't take long to be productive.

The biggest down side is the cost. I opted for the 17" Macbook Pro, upgraded the HDD's but still have some components to buy. I've already spent $3000... (I also had a few other reasons for switching than just Video Editing). I am quite happy with my purchase and think the productivity and reduced frustration (no lock ups, stutters, out of memory issues, etc) far outweighs the cost. Lastly, I can still run Vegas with VMWare if I ever want to go back, but haven't had a need yet. I still use the PC to do imports from the higher end camera, and hold all the RAW video... It makes a pretty good combo with the Mac and gets me working without tying up a machine.

Hope that helps!! I would recommend the switch to anyone if they have the means to do so. It's really not that painful and I think most people will like the seamless / fluid experience compared to what is on the PC. There is also the iMac that can be had for about half of what I spent and has similar specs and a huge screen. I wanted something more portable so I chose the macbook pro.

May 1st, 2011, 06:35 PM	#61
Leslie Wand Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: upper hunter, australia Posts: 1,410	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory have been following this thread but can't really comment since the only time i had a similar problem was years ago.... however: i always use png's, have second (and third) hd's, start most projects as straight tl, ie, no fx etc., and save under new 'ver' names at each stage. i had a client who had a problem similar to yours - i got him to simply cut and paste the whole tl into a new instance of vegas and save with new name. it worked though ymmv.... __________________ www.lesliewand.com.au

May 2nd, 2011, 07:59 AM	#62
Dale Guthormsen Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Saskatchewan Posts: 3,048	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory Morning, Leslie's idea is also good too! I do this with almost every project that is 30 min or longer. I also do any color grading at track level ande then render it. Also using nested shorter sections is a good practice keeping two versions open eachon a their own monitor. Sence I manage my projects better I have far fewer problems in all regards. Good luck with this! __________________ DATS ALL FOLKS Dale W. Guthormsen

May 2nd, 2011, 08:07 AM	#63
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory Leslie, great idea, but I think he's already tried the cut and pate into a new project (didn't work). What's funny, is his laptop is handling it but his new desktop is not, which kind of points to a hardware issue, or something specifically related to his PC. I am anxious to see what he ends up finding out. Very frustrating stuff! __________________ "The horror of what I saw on the timeline cannot be described."

May 2nd, 2011, 05:31 PM	#64
Steven Davis Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Richmond, VA Posts: 3,065	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory Well, I'd love to start this response out with; by the greatest of scientific deduction and computer ingenuity I was able to figure it out, but sadly, that's not the case. I reinstalled Vegas, and that was what it took to fix whatever in the world the issue was. Since my installation and computer was only a month old, I never suspected that it may be a software issue, especially considering 8.1 was doing fine on much larger projects with much more resources needed. So that's it. What the specific issue is, I have no idea. Did reinstalling Vegas fix it, yep. Or we can go with the conspiracy theorists and say that it had something to do with the death of OBL. Naaaaa. __________________ What happens if I push the 'Red' button?

May 2nd, 2011, 08:51 PM	#65
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory Great Steven, a simple fix! Congratulations. __________________ "The horror of what I saw on the timeline cannot be described."

May 2nd, 2011, 09:30 PM	#66
Steven Davis Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Richmond, VA Posts: 3,065	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory Thanks Jeff. It was a journey. __________________ What happens if I push the 'Red' button?

August 25th, 2011, 08:14 AM	#67
Greg Huber Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Toledo, OH Posts: 31	Vegas 9 low on memory... I'm another lucky one I have been using the 64 bit Sony Vegas 9.0d for over a year now to render HD videos without any issue. The source format of my videos (straight from a JVC GZ-HD7) are MPEG2, with about 25M bitrate. I've edited and rendered countless weddings, some video short films, etc. and never had any problem with Vegas. Several months ago, I purchased a smaller camera- a Kodak Playsport that has source videos encoded in H.264, around 8MB bitrate, and a .MOV format. Just recently I went through my normal process of adding the video to the timeline in Sony Vegas 9d and added the .MOV files to the project. I added around 30 minutes of footage (roughly 8 or so videos), a title, and some background music just as I've done many times before... Within about 10 minutes of rendering down (to a 720p format) I got the dreaded Low Memory error. I've been scouring many sources and have taken a lot of the steps mentioned in this thread including just about everything but re-installing. However, since Vegas still works fine with my other MPEG2 HD videos I am not sure if a reinstall will do the trick. Also, after applying many of the "fixes" I now get the low memory render error immediately, as opposed to 10 minutes later. Does anyone have experience fixing the Low Memory issue in my scenario (H.264/.MOV files)? My computer has plenty of memory and cpu (i7-920 and 6GB of ram). While rendering, the memory usage never goes above 2.3 GB or so, and I have 6GB total. Memory usages starts around 1.8 GB and then immediately jumps right up to around 2.3 GB. I am thinking it may be some kind of codec issue but I am not sure what I'd do to fix that. One other point- I was able to render one video individually without getting the low memory error. That particular video was only about 3 minutes of footage. I have not tried with longer videos (some are over 10 minutes). Of course this is not an ideal solution... Thanks, Greg

August 25th, 2011, 06:56 PM	#68
Steven Davis Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Richmond, VA Posts: 3,065	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory Yes yes, this is an issue with Sony Vegas that is worthless asking them about it. The sony noob techs will read something like, 'have you updated, maybe you need to format your computer.' So, count my wasted time with Sony as your own. lol What I ended up doing once was copying my project to another pc and rendering it on that machine. Same files, worked on a different machine. Dumb Vegas. You could try that, just copy the whole project to a different machine. That's the only way I ever got around it. I have a target on my head and seem to get the stupidest errors from Vegas at least once every six months or so. Forgive my attitude, but I've wasted days on Vegas and it's stupid crappy error reporting. It sucks. If it would just accurately error report. The low memory error is a generic error that has almost everything to do with Vegas not understanding the stupidest things. I got the error one time because I was using a specific jpeg/image. Take out the picture, no error, put the picture back in, error. Sigh. Yeah, that' took me 4 hours to diagnose. I'm no help, I'll stop venting now. __________________ What happens if I push the 'Red' button?

August 25th, 2011, 07:15 PM	#69
Leslie Wand Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: upper hunter, australia Posts: 1,410	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory no, venting's good for the psyche, but pretty useless for repairing software..... as i wrote earlier. i would never dream of working with some 'new' or 'non-standard' codec, nor large images other than png. if you do i think you're opening up yourself to countless problems from low mem through to system crashes. this is from sony's vegas pro advert: Vegas Pro 10 software has extensive capture, import, and export support for video and audio. With the Vegas Pro 10 collection, you can efficiently edit and process DV, AVCHD, HDV, SD/HD-SDI, R3D and all XDCAM™ formats in real time, fine-tune audio with precision, and author surround sound, DVD and Blu-ray Disc™. i see no mention of .mov, .mod (jvc), etc., yes, you can edit them, but.... __________________ www.lesliewand.com.au

September 4th, 2011, 09:35 PM	#72
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	Re: Vegas 9 is low on memory When you get your Mac, please report back and let us know what you think. __________________ "The horror of what I saw on the timeline cannot be described."