VSx4 Crashes! I need to fix this....

[Mark Swanson]

Hi folks, I am learning to use this program and have used it for a couple of short standard video things. Now I am working with a HD music video about 5-7 minutes long. This shouldn't be too taxing on my brand new ASUS i5 2.50 Ghz machine....but about two minutes in it will crash on me every time. It tells me to contact tech support and send them the DMP file for analysis, which I have done.
They have bumped up to the second level, because the first guy told me about replacing the VXoder.dll file that is supposed to conflict with Firefox, which is what I use. That did not help at all.
i am confused, frustrated and worried! I need this to work for me. There must be answer! Can someone help me?

[Ken Berry]

First off, you need to give us some idea of what format(s) you are using in the project, both video and audio. If your audio is mp3, my first suggestion would be to use a third party audio editing package, like the freeware Audacity, to convert the mp3 to standard .wav files.

Is your original video high def? If so, is it AVCHD or some other format e.g. high def DivX/XVid or .mov?

And what is your work flow i.e. what exactly are you doing at the two minute point when the crash occurs? Are you editing? Or does it occur when rendering at the two minute mark? If the latter, then are you rendering to a new video file or sending it straight to disc and the burning stops after two minutes?

Sorry to have so many questions, but it is difficult to offer much advice when all we really know is that you are making a HD music video and have an i5 and X4...

[Mark Swanson]

Thanks Ken, let me see if I can answer all your questions.

First off, you need to give us some idea of what format(s) you are using in the project, both video and audio. If your audio is mp3, my first suggestion would be to use a third party audio editing package, like the freeware Audacity, to convert the mp3 to standard .wav files.

Is your original video high def? If so, is it AVCHD or some other format e.g. high def DivX/XVid or .mov?

And what is your work flow i.e. what exactly are you doing at the two minute point when the crash occurs? Are you editing? Or does it occur when rendering at the two minute mark? If the latter, then are you rendering to a new video file or sending it straight to disc and the burning stops after two minutes?

Sorry to have so many questions, but it is difficult to offer much advice when all we really know is that you are making a HD music video and have an i5 and X4...

Ha, that is funny, because I had asked a question here before, you may remember, that I cannot play a .WAV file in the software. All I get is a bunch of noise. I do not know if that problem is related to these crashes or not, but I was forced to use an MP3 file for my audio because of that.

The video was shot with a Canon HV30. It is HD video, with 24fps, it is AVCHD as far as I know! I used the SmartProxy feature to make editing easier.

I have three overlay tracks along with the main video track. At this point there is not even five minutes of material added to the Timeline, and when I preview the work, it crashes as it plays in the preview window, about halfway through. Everything seemed to be working fine, but when I moved a still image from the main video line into the third overlay track, now it will not play much past that point. So, I am just doing some editing and if you ask me, I am not doing anything that seems like it would be taxing to the program or the system.....what's up?

[Ken Berry]

In fact your HV30 films in HDV format, which is high def mpeg-2, though not Blu-Ray. (AVCHD is mpeg-4.) And HDV, like DV in the standard def world, is easy to edit. You should not need to use SmartProxy at all, and certainly not on an i5 which should be able to eat HDV for dinner!! So first off, I would suggest you switch off SmartProxy and try again with the original HDV.

I had forgotten about your .wav problem, but still find that very strange. As I think I said in that thread, .wav is the absolute basic standard audio format and few other people (none?) apart from you have ever seemed to have trouble with it. Was that problem with your new i5 or its predecessor. If the latter, then it could still be worth converting your mp3 back to wav for the i5.

And was there anything special about the photo that seemed to precipitate the crashes? What format is it? Some people have had the occasional problem with a certain flavour of JPEG. They have usually found that saving the photo again, even in the same format but with another name, can remove the tags or whatever it might have been that made the photo unacceptable in its original format.

As an experiment, can you try rendering the project as is to a new video file, just to see if the crash happens then too.

[Mark Swanson]

Thank you Ken, you are a big help so far. I'll try this by turning off Smartproxy, but the reason I looked into it in the first place was because when editing the video without it, it was very jerky and hard to sync up to the audio.
I can easily try a WAV file or an MP3, I have them both. I am a competent audio person, and I recorded and saved the finished audio in Pro Tools so I have it saved as both formats. The WAV problem I had was on this i5 machine, it's the only machine I am using. Actually, thaat is not true, and I wonder if this may be adding to my troubles- my i5 laptop has no Firewire connection, and thee ONLY way to get video out of my HV30 is through Firewire. So, I am forced to go back to my old Vista computer, where I have also installed VSx4, and use it to capture the video from the camera. I then transfer it with a USB drive to the laptop. This Vista computer is too slow to do any editing or anything- (Vista 32-bit, Intel Pentium D 3.00GHz, 3.50 RAM) and I shouldn't even be using it for VSx4 but I need to get the video to my laptop somehow. It hadn't occurred to me before that it could be messing up the video files somehow? At times, errors have shown up in the video that do not show up in the camera viewer.
I'll try rendering a video file and see what happens. Thank you!

[Ken Berry]

I can only repeat that you should not be having these troubles with HDV. But then again, you also should not be having any trouble with .wav files!! I know whereof I speak, since I have a Canon HV 20, the immediate predecessor of your HV30, and I do most of my editing these days with the HDV, before converting it to Blu-Ray or even AVCHD at times. And I have been using HDV on a variety of computers -- including the current one in my profile; it's predecessor -- an i3; my old video editing computer -- a Quad 6600; and it's predecessor -- which was an even older Pentium IV which at one time ran Vista as well. And on each and every one of them, the HDV played as smooth as silk and was easy to edit and preview. No jerkiness in either Clip or Project mode. Moreover, I have been successfully editing it in every version of VS since VS 11+!!

So don't worry that somehow or other, the capture on your old machine did something strange to the format. HDV is HDV, with only one set of properties (1440 x 1080; 25/29.97 fps, Upper Field First, CBR of 25 Mbps and mpeg audio). So if yours has these properties, that is as it should be.

Curiously enough, though, about the only thing I don't do with VS is the actual capture -- though not because VS can't do it. Instead, I use a small freeware program called HDVSplit -- which as the name suggests, splits the incoming HDV by scene. And you can name your own files. Sort of like a HD version of WinDV.

Anyway, the very fact that you find HDV giving jerky previews does at least suggest that there is something strange going on with either your X4 installation, or something about your computer set-up, though I can't think what...

[Mark Swanson]

Ken, I am sitting here tonight working with things, running a few tests. First off, starting with a new project file, with nothing in the Timeline at all, I put the WAV file in the Library, and it plays just fine in the clip window. When I place it in the audio track of the Timeline, there is nothing but hiss and noise when I play it as "project".
I am wondering if all these problems are related to the same issue. Stay tuned, more to come.

[Mark Swanson]

OK, a few more things...I turned off SmartProxy, and cannot get the program to crash now. I rendered the incomplete project to a MPEG4 HD video file, and it plays well, with a couple of flickers or errors in it but otherwise ok. It didn't crash....I moved a few things around and added some still photos, no crash.
Evidently, as Ken tells me, I shouldn't need to use SmartProxy....but why does it crash when I do? And why won't that WAV file play in the Timeline but it will in the clip preview?
If anyone would like, I can put the WAV file up on a website where it can be downloaded and you could try it on your computer and see what is going on....the WAV file is 44.1kHz, 24 bit stereo.

If I don't use SmartProxy, then the HDV video is really jerky and difficult to edit precisely. Syncing up the vocalist with the audio is really hard when things are so jerky....is that normal?

[Mark Swanson]

Thank you again Ken, I'll wait to hear from tech support, and if anyone here has any other advice for me I'd love to hear it! I sure wish I could have as smooth an editing experience as Ken suggests I should be having!

[Mark Swanson]

One more update here...today I tried a WAV file that was a 16-bit file, and that worked. Maybe the program will not take a 24-bit WAV file? I'll just use 16.