Getting to my wits end

[Matteo Manson]

I have been using Vegas 9e on Win 7 64bit. and all of a suddenly for the last couple days I have been unable to load wav files. I'm going crazy here... I can load projects that have wave files in them, and they will play. like normal. But if I try to drop a new one onto the timeline it will not work under any circumstances, and sometimes it will let me drop it into project media, sometimes it won't. Any idea whats going on here? I have a project to start editing in the next couple days and I will need to work with some wav files. Most video files seem to work but the audio will not work if I drop it onto the timeline from a folder, or project media.

[Craig Longman]

Any similar problems using drag-n-drop with other apps? Can you drag-n-drop that same WAV file into your audio editor, or player?

Or, can you import it directly using the Project.Import Media? (That's on Vegas Studio at least).

[Edward Troxel]

I've never heard of anything like that happening. But if it started a couple days ago, I'd look at what's changed in the past couple of days. Then I might try doing a system restore back to when it was working fine and try to ensure that whatever changed in the past couple of days did not happen again.

[Matteo Manson]

Originally Posted by Craig Longman

Any similar problems using drag-n-drop with other apps? Can you drag-n-drop that same WAV file into your audio editor, or player?

Or, can you import it directly using the Project.Import Media? (That's on Vegas Studio at least).

Thanks for your replies. Most other programs I can drag and drop just fine. I have disabled UAC, but I have tried running vegas multiple times with different configurations of run as admin or not running as admin.
In some cases depending how I run it, I can import into project media but not onto the timeline. If I try to drop it from project media to the timeline the cursor turns into a red symbol indicating I can't drop it there.

I think I have little choice right now but to re-install windows. I was originally using 9c or some earlier one then upgraded, and it was fine and then I added some new hardware... new case, keyboard, mouse, a few hard disks and a new processor. I found I had to reinstall vegas after that when I went to run it it acted as thought it was not registered, so I reinstalled, but I wasn't using vegas at that point as I had no projects for a few weeks. So I may have noticed the problem earlier if I had run vegas, which I was not. I have tried re installing doing what sony says - uninstall the program, delete the folders and the registry keys. But maybe I broke something in the system?
Unfortunately, I usually also turn off system restore, maybe I won't do that in the future, but in the past it usually caused more problems than it fixed.

[Matteo Manson]

I don't remember the details now of why I reinstalled quicktime but I know there have been issues.. is 7.6 (472) currently compatible with Vegas? Could something be configured wrong with that? I'm just not sure if quicktime is what handles the wave playback in vegas or is it done solely by Vegas?

[Edward Troxel]

Quicktime should not affect WAV files.

[Matteo Manson]

Thanks Edward. I was able to drop in an m4a file, interestingly enough it works fine. Still no luck with any wav files, including ones that I have used in other projects. This is very curious.

[Craig Longman]

Was trying to figure out what other images might be involved with loading a WAV file, the only two images loaded after dragging a WAV file were wavplug.dll (from the "FileIO Plug-Ins" directory) and wmploc.dll from windows. This is for me on Vegas Studio v10 at least.

That last file is related to windows media player, perhaps there is something wrong with it? I'm running Win7-64, and it's in the "Windows\SysWOW64\" directory. Maybe try (re)installing windows media player?

Just seems so odd that one type of file would no longer be drop-able...

[Ian Stark]

Is it happening with any and every wav file?

Can you post one here as an example?

I was wondering perhaps if it is something to do with the properties of the wav file you're trying to drop on the timeline - maybe a weird bit-depth or sample rate that Vegas doesn't like? You say you've had the problem with a number of wavs that you have successfully opened in Vegas before so it's a long shot.

[Matteo Manson]

This is getting weirder, some files are opening now, I was just tracking down a wav file to post, some are loading. But many still aren't. I'm not sure what exactly it is.. but I think you may be on to something, I suspect there may be some software I'm using to convert audio files to wav (Not all the source material I get is wav) that is not making it into a very compatible format..

But when I was trying to before with older files that had already been used in vegas projects they would not go onto the timeline either. It may be I was running vegas in admin mode when I was not supposed to be.. Still, definitely strange. well the only real file I have at the moment thats not already archived is this so it's a few megs but but I don't want to break it up and possibly change anything with it that may be *wrong*.

RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting

In the mean time I am going to mess with admin mode and one other thing I am going to mess with is the audio device selected in vegas although that wouldn't be consistent with the issue I think. Oddly enough though I went to do our shoot today and when I came back my digital camera wouldn't connect it jsut said I have no driver (I jsut put the SD card in my USB dongle, it was no issue) and when I was copying data from the shoot that was on a DVD it went really slow, rather abnormally slow. But I was able to start dropping files into vegas. During that entire time from when I went to the shoot to when I returned the computer was left on but untouched (screen off, windows locked etc) so I dunno what is going on.. but something seems really messed up with my system.

[Ian Stark]

Can't see anything wrong with the file format and it dropped onto the timeline without a hitch (32-bit 8.0c).

I'm guessing this was one of the files you are still having trouble with. If so, I'm at a loss, sorry!

[Matteo Manson]

I think you got me onto the right track Ian, I will post more tomorrow after I get a chance to test a few more things.

[Matteo Manson]

Sorry for not replying sooner. I really have no definitive answer as to whats going on. I thought maybe there was a mixup with codecs or something. Did not seem to be the case.

All I can come out with right now is:
1. Don't ever run Vegas as administrator once it is installed and registered.

2. as far as I can tell, a third party program I was using to demux audio from video which I thought was outputting wav was doing like MP2 or something. Which still makes me wonder why then could I not put in MP2 or MP3 files in Vegas? I do not know still. largely speaking though I can get around the issues now.
I haven't done much testing as I am working on a different project right now and once I get through that I will see what I can do with MP3s or similar, maybe I was just running in admin mode when I tried to use them previously.

Clarification: I have been demuxing videos where I need to externally edit the audio, but have a habit of using the unprocessed wav (HAH!) in the vegas timeline until the audio work is done, then adding the processed wav to the timeline in place of the original, or just muting as a part of my anal retentive habit of not losing original material.