Warning for those using HDVSplit & Vegas at DVinfo.net

Laurence Kingston · April 19th, 2006, 12:38 PM

After checking out several different ways to work with HDV footage in Vegas, I decided on the following approach:

1/ Capture m2t footage with HDVSplit using scene splitting.
2/ Generate proxies using Gearshift.
3/ Edit by dragging proxies to the Vegas timeline and editing these proxies.
4/ "shift gears" using Gearshift to substitute the original m2t clips for rendering.

Unfortunately I have come to find out that there is a major problem with this approach. That is that once you get past about 90 separate m2t clips on a Vegas timeline, Vegas can't handle it and will give you various errors and frequently crash.

In trying to figure out this situation I have found out that Vegas and Gearshift work fine together if you use the following approach:

1/ Capture long unsplit m2t sections.
2/ Generate long unsplit proxies using Gearshift.
3/ Edit by selecting desired shots from within these long proxies using trimmer and dragging these sections from trimmer to the timeline.
4/ "Shift Gears" to substitue original m2t files for rendering.

Anyway, I like my separated clips and have given up on the Gearshift approach until such time as Sony fixes Vegas so that it can handle more separate m2t files.

From reading other posts here, it seemed like other people might be trying to use short scene separated HDVSplit clips along with Gearshift. Yes it will work on extremely short (less than 90 clips) projects, but it's not a viable approach beyond that.

Chris Barcellos · April 19th, 2006, 12:55 PM

One of the rules I edit by is keep it simple. If possible, I will usually edit a long project into several several sub sections, based on natural breaks in the content. Once I render the subsection, you then can bring them together in a final edit. The more complex you make the edit, the more chances of everything crashing. This seems true of Vegas, PPro, or any other editor.

Laurence Kingston · April 19th, 2006, 01:06 PM

The project I noticed Vegas choking on multiple m2ts was a 2.5 minute promo video with less than 100 m2t clips. I don't know how much smaller than that you'd want to get!

Chris Barcellos · April 19th, 2006, 04:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurence Kingston

The project I noticed Vegas choking on multiple m2ts was a 2.5 minute promo video with less than 100 m2t clips. I don't know how much smaller than that you'd want to get!

Hey Laurence:

So thats 100 clips in 180 seconds about, or 2 seconds a clip average. Assuming longer clips on some, some of those clips almost have to be strobing in and out. Could that be a problem, given the way the HDV codec is interframe reliant. Could that be creating your "choking" effect. Wouldn't working in Cineform through HDConnect solve that ??

Chris Barcellos · April 19th, 2006, 04:16 PM

The other thing I noticed with HDSplit is that it seems to come up with a lot of drops that don't show up when I capture with with the Vegas capture utility or the Premiere Pro 2.0 HDV capture on the same clips. I assume you actually screed the .m2t files to confirm they are okay.

Laurence Kingston · April 19th, 2006, 08:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

The other thing I noticed with HDSplit is that it seems to come up with a lot of drops that don't show up when I capture with with the Vegas capture utility or the Premiere Pro 2.0 HDV capture on the same clips. I assume you actually screed the .m2t files to confirm they are okay.

There was a revision or two where the buffer size of HDVSplit was lowered and you'd get these kinds of problems. The last few HDVSplit revisions have none of these problems. Make sure you have the latest version.

Gian Pablo Villamil · May 1st, 2006, 05:12 PM

Just to say I'm seeing the same thing Laurence observes. It seems to be memory related.

I have a project with about 80 .M2Ts on the timeline, on a single core Intel machine with 1GB of RAM it will not render at all, it will crash.

On a dual core Athlon machine with 2GB RAM the project will render, but only if memory for RAM Video Preview is reduced to 64MB, and all other applications are shut down.

Very annoying, because HDVSplit scene detection is extremely useful for me, and enables a very useful way of working with Gearshift.

Rob Gregory-Browne · May 22nd, 2006, 10:31 PM

Maybe this is a dumb question, but doesn't Vegas capture already do the scene splitting? It does for me with DV. But I'm new to HDV, so maybe it's different.

Michael Stowe · May 22nd, 2006, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Gregory-Browne

Maybe this is a dumb question, but doesn't Vegas capture already do the scene splitting? It does for me with DV. But I'm new to HDV, so maybe it's different.

Does not do it with HD footage I believe.

Rob Gregory-Browne · May 23rd, 2006, 07:22 AM

Strange. I thought as long as there's a break in the action, it'll pick up on it. I'll have to do some experimenting.

Chris Barcellos · May 23rd, 2006, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Stowe

Does not do it with HD footage I believe.

HDSplit exists because neither Vegas or Premiere have scene detect available in their HDV capture utilities.

Mike Sakovski · May 31st, 2006, 09:26 AM

Ive done the same thing - got bout 150 clips via HDVSplit and tried to import em all at once into the Vegas 6d. My laptop runs Core Duo 2.16Ghz Intel with 2G of RAM. As soon as the Vegas hit the 2G memory limit it crashed. So yea, it is a BIG problem. I sent an email to sonymedia staff, asking if this is a known problem and what they gonna do about it, hopefully they will reply in a few days. BTW, Vegas5 behaved exactly the same way - crashed and burned. So i dunno .. switch to Edius, PPro, Liquid? I refuse to work on 1 huge file, too tiresome and long. I want my clips 2 be split for me - is it too much to ask?

Lee Kennedy · June 19th, 2006, 07:33 AM

I am having this problem too...but without having HDV Split in the chain (I only just found out about HDV Split actually).

I've got Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. I could only get upto 70 clips then crashing and corrupting would all happen. Then I upgraded to the latest update (build 123) and I thought it solved the problem but then the same thing would happen from about 90 clips. Yet if you start a new project file...it of course lets you capture the rest.

It definately seems to be an "unannounced limit" of how many clips you can have before it crashes. I only have a Ath 64 2800+, 1.5 gig of RAM, 128mb Geforce 5900, 80gig PATA (system drive), 200 gig PATA and 300 gig SATA (capture drive) so I know I'm only barely making the minimum specs needed for HDV, but if people with dual core athlon's with 2 gig of ram are having the same problem...it's definately got to be software related. And yeah I agree it seems to be memory related, cause I was able to on some of the times it crashed get Vegas to say that it was memory related.

Also if I have task manager open, I can see it max out everything (memory etc.) when you try to import the clips. I've tried different virtual memory settings but not real difference. If anyone has any solutions I'd love to hear it cause I want to stick to Vegas. I've used Avid, Final Cut, Premiere and Vegas...and I find Vegas the best to use by far.

Nick Outram · June 21st, 2006, 03:57 AM

Hi,

I just learnt about HDVSplit and it sounds like a good tool. Up until now I have been manually splitting 'chunks' of 5-10mins .m2t clips up. Not sure how many but it looks like this generates 50-100+ smaller clips on the timeline b4 I delete -i.e. quite close to the '100 file' limit of Vegas...

Is it only a problem of having these clips on the timeline or can I import them all and selectively drag and drop? (I normally don't use all clips).

Any updates? Any fixes?

Regards, Nick.

Lee Kennedy · June 24th, 2006, 08:13 PM

I find that it doesnt matter if you have the "limit" of m2t clips on the timeline or just in the media bin...it still stuffs up.

The best solution I've found for now is just capture upto the "limit" in one project file, then capture the rest in another, render both to the included cineform HD intermediate then start a new project and import those rendered 2 (or more) clips in and cut and edit from there.

It's quite time consuming, but at least works (...for now). I think the way around this would be using something like Connect HD so that you are capturing straight to the intermediate format rather than m2t first, but obviously that costs extra money to get. The only prob with the editing in the intermediate format from what I can see so far...is the massive file sizes compared to the compressed m2t files.

Really it's a bug that Sony should get fixed in vegas, when they advertise HD editing like as if it's a breeze within Vegas on the box. It seems RAM and possibly CPU related, but if people are getting the same crashing/limiting results no matter what spec's they're running, it's definately gotta be a problem with the software.

April 19th, 2006, 12:38 PM	#1
Laurence Kingston Major Player Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Clermont, FL. Posts: 941	Warning for those using HDVSplit & Vegas After checking out several different ways to work with HDV footage in Vegas, I decided on the following approach: 1/ Capture m2t footage with HDVSplit using scene splitting. 2/ Generate proxies using Gearshift. 3/ Edit by dragging proxies to the Vegas timeline and editing these proxies. 4/ "shift gears" using Gearshift to substitute the original m2t clips for rendering. Unfortunately I have come to find out that there is a major problem with this approach. That is that once you get past about 90 separate m2t clips on a Vegas timeline, Vegas can't handle it and will give you various errors and frequently crash. In trying to figure out this situation I have found out that Vegas and Gearshift work fine together if you use the following approach: 1/ Capture long unsplit m2t sections. 2/ Generate long unsplit proxies using Gearshift. 3/ Edit by selecting desired shots from within these long proxies using trimmer and dragging these sections from trimmer to the timeline. 4/ "Shift Gears" to substitue original m2t files for rendering. Anyway, I like my separated clips and have given up on the Gearshift approach until such time as Sony fixes Vegas so that it can handle more separate m2t files. From reading other posts here, it seemed like other people might be trying to use short scene separated HDVSplit clips along with Gearshift. Yes it will work on extremely short (less than 90 clips) projects, but it's not a viable approach beyond that.

April 19th, 2006, 12:55 PM	#2
Chris Barcellos Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Elk Grove CA Posts: 6,838	One of the rules I edit by is keep it simple. If possible, I will usually edit a long project into several several sub sections, based on natural breaks in the content. Once I render the subsection, you then can bring them together in a final edit. The more complex you make the edit, the more chances of everything crashing. This seems true of Vegas, PPro, or any other editor. __________________ Chris J. Barcellos

April 19th, 2006, 04:16 PM	#5
Chris Barcellos Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Elk Grove CA Posts: 6,838	The other thing I noticed with HDSplit is that it seems to come up with a lot of drops that don't show up when I capture with with the Vegas capture utility or the Premiere Pro 2.0 HDV capture on the same clips. I assume you actually screed the .m2t files to confirm they are okay. __________________ Chris J. Barcellos

June 21st, 2006, 03:57 AM	#14
Nick Outram Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 90	HDVSplit and Vegas still buggy? Hi, I just learnt about HDVSplit and it sounds like a good tool. Up until now I have been manually splitting 'chunks' of 5-10mins .m2t clips up. Not sure how many but it looks like this generates 50-100+ smaller clips on the timeline b4 I delete -i.e. quite close to the '100 file' limit of Vegas... Is it only a problem of having these clips on the timeline or can I import them all and selectively drag and drop? (I normally don't use all clips). Any updates? Any fixes? Regards, Nick.

April 19th, 2006, 01:06 PM	#3
Laurence Kingston Major Player Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Clermont, FL. Posts: 941	The project I noticed Vegas choking on multiple m2ts was a 2.5 minute promo video with less than 100 m2t clips. I don't know how much smaller than that you'd want to get!

May 1st, 2006, 05:12 PM	#7
Gian Pablo Villamil Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: New York, NY Posts: 138	Just to say I'm seeing the same thing Laurence observes. It seems to be memory related. I have a project with about 80 .M2Ts on the timeline, on a single core Intel machine with 1GB of RAM it will not render at all, it will crash. On a dual core Athlon machine with 2GB RAM the project will render, but only if memory for RAM Video Preview is reduced to 64MB, and all other applications are shut down. Very annoying, because HDVSplit scene detection is extremely useful for me, and enables a very useful way of working with Gearshift.

May 22nd, 2006, 10:31 PM	#8
Rob Gregory-Browne Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 107	Maybe this is a dumb question, but doesn't Vegas capture already do the scene splitting? It does for me with DV. But I'm new to HDV, so maybe it's different.

May 23rd, 2006, 07:22 AM	#10
Rob Gregory-Browne Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 107	Strange. I thought as long as there's a break in the action, it'll pick up on it. I'll have to do some experimenting.

May 31st, 2006, 09:26 AM	#12
Mike Sakovski Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: nj, usa Posts: 65	Ive done the same thing - got bout 150 clips via HDVSplit and tried to import em all at once into the Vegas 6d. My laptop runs Core Duo 2.16Ghz Intel with 2G of RAM. As soon as the Vegas hit the 2G memory limit it crashed. So yea, it is a BIG problem. I sent an email to sonymedia staff, asking if this is a known problem and what they gonna do about it, hopefully they will reply in a few days. BTW, Vegas5 behaved exactly the same way - crashed and burned. So i dunno .. switch to Edius, PPro, Liquid? I refuse to work on 1 huge file, too tiresome and long. I want my clips 2 be split for me - is it too much to ask?

June 19th, 2006, 07:33 AM	#13
Lee Kennedy Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 28	I am having this problem too...but without having HDV Split in the chain (I only just found out about HDV Split actually). I've got Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. I could only get upto 70 clips then crashing and corrupting would all happen. Then I upgraded to the latest update (build 123) and I thought it solved the problem but then the same thing would happen from about 90 clips. Yet if you start a new project file...it of course lets you capture the rest. It definately seems to be an "unannounced limit" of how many clips you can have before it crashes. I only have a Ath 64 2800+, 1.5 gig of RAM, 128mb Geforce 5900, 80gig PATA (system drive), 200 gig PATA and 300 gig SATA (capture drive) so I know I'm only barely making the minimum specs needed for HDV, but if people with dual core athlon's with 2 gig of ram are having the same problem...it's definately got to be software related. And yeah I agree it seems to be memory related, cause I was able to on some of the times it crashed get Vegas to say that it was memory related. Also if I have task manager open, I can see it max out everything (memory etc.) when you try to import the clips. I've tried different virtual memory settings but not real difference. If anyone has any solutions I'd love to hear it cause I want to stick to Vegas. I've used Avid, Final Cut, Premiere and Vegas...and I find Vegas the best to use by far.

June 24th, 2006, 08:13 PM	#15
Lee Kennedy Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 28	I find that it doesnt matter if you have the "limit" of m2t clips on the timeline or just in the media bin...it still stuffs up. The best solution I've found for now is just capture upto the "limit" in one project file, then capture the rest in another, render both to the included cineform HD intermediate then start a new project and import those rendered 2 (or more) clips in and cut and edit from there. It's quite time consuming, but at least works (...for now). I think the way around this would be using something like Connect HD so that you are capturing straight to the intermediate format rather than m2t first, but obviously that costs extra money to get. The only prob with the editing in the intermediate format from what I can see so far...is the massive file sizes compared to the compressed m2t files. Really it's a bug that Sony should get fixed in vegas, when they advertise HD editing like as if it's a breeze within Vegas on the box. It seems RAM and possibly CPU related, but if people are getting the same crashing/limiting results no matter what spec's they're running, it's definately gotta be a problem with the software.