OK, apologises for this off-topic post, although it is a technology thing I suppose! Just wanted this out on the internet in case anyone else has this issue as I could not find this solution anywhere.
Before the Purchase
I’ve been using Sony Vegas 11 Studio for several years and it’s been in my opinion an excellent editor with a user interface that isn’t that steep to learn the basics quickly. But time moves on and as I’d seen reviews for the speed increase offered in Vegas 15 Pro I decided an upgrade was in order. In addition the pro version offered some features I’d wanted for some time (although not essential). So I committed and purchased an upgrade license to use Vegas Pro 15. Before paying my money I did some tests rendering sections of existing video and all seem fine and the speed improvement was indeed very impressive, in particular on older or less powerful CPU machines (which my cheap laptop is). In fact the speed improvement was gigantic for me, with tests showing between 2 and nearly 4 times speed increase in rendering times. I have seen other videos where people haven’t seen quite this improvement, but they seem to have much more powerful systems than myself. So the extended GPU hardware acceleration would seem to benefit those with less powerful CPU’s than those with a powerful CPU which can number crunch quickly anyway. Either way, I was sold!
After the Purchase
So on my first full new video edit (around 25 mins long) I started the render with my preferred settings and it seemed to be working but then got stuck at 2% exactly on the transition from the second scene to the third. The estimated time remaining kept on ticking, getting higher and higher, until it had reached 19 hours! You couldn’t cancel nor quit the software with the only solution being resorting to the task manager to force quit the software. I tried again, same result, tried many different rendering templates and settings, still same.
The Internet solutions
On the internet there were several solutions offered to fix rendering and general crashes with Vegas. I tried them all, from turning off GPU acceleration to reducing the number of CPU’s cores allocated to Vegas. I also changed some general settings. All of these did not work for me and I’d exhausted all the suggestions that I could find. What would have been annoying if some of these had worked, was that they would have dramatically increased the rendering time – something that I didn’t want, reduced rendering time was the main reason for purchase!
The solution – for me at least
OK at one point I moved the entire video forward 15 seconds and then it worked, it rendered far beyond 2% before I cancelled. But this isn’t much help, no one wants 15 seconds of blank screen on the start of a video. So tried moving to to 1 second (and even this amount of blank screen I was uncomfortable with) but the crashing returned. Grrr…. I then remembered that all my initial tests on the trial version had involved rendering a section of video (called a loop region in Vegas). So I thought I’d try this, but again it froze! For goodness sake! Getting annoyed now! After a calm down and cup of tea I thought – why not try loop region rendering the full video after I’ve moved it on 15 seconds.
Success
It worked, it rendering the selection, which is the entire video, when it was selected and moved 15 seconds further on on the timeline. It’s not much extra hard work at all, just a few seconds, so that is perfectly acceptable to me.
Vegas 15 Pro – My Verdict
I think this software is excellent (caveats coming) for users of low spec machines with supported GPU hardware rendering. It really is orders of magnitude faster at rendering, for me at least. Other users with well specified machines with fast CPU’s appear to see some increase but not anywhere near as much as myself. The user interface remains more or less the same (with some tweaks), which is a good thing as I like it. I really didn’t want to give it back! More on that now…
Magix – The company that now makes Sony Vegas (now called just Vegas)
OK arriving at the fix above took around a day and a half and after one day I’d had enough and requested a refund from Magix. I’d ordered the boxed version but was given a download link as well to start using right away and I’d also used the trial version to do my tests. Under their terms and conditions boxed versions can have refunds if faulty but not digital downloads. Where did I stand? Well under UK (where I’m based) consumer law I still seemed to be covered for a refund no matter what terms they state and as I’d used a credit card I also had some protection there too. But at time of writing I’ve had no reply from Magix and I don’t think I will unless I pushed it, which I won’t as I love the product and now I have a working work-around I’m more than happy to keep it. But if I don’t here from them then it doesn’t say much for their customer service. If they do replay I’ll report anything new in this article.
Hope this was helpful and solves the problem for others 🙂