Need help preventing errors and crashes

[Denizen38]

Hi all,

I'm completely new to using VideoStudio (currently using VideoStudio Ultimate 2021) so apologies if I overlook something obvious or important here. I started working on a test project a couple of weeks ago just to learn how to use the software, using a range of sources that are all in MP4 format, but with a variety of framerates and resolutions. Everything ran fairly well initially, but over time VideoStudio started giving errors and / or crashing occasionally, and these crashes became more and more frequent the more I worked on the project. As of yesterday, I'm pretty much unable to do anything at all as attempting to do pretty much anything in the "Edit" interface immediately leads to a crash with no error.

I've decided to reinstall VideoStudio completely and start with a clean slate, but would like some help in trying to understand how to avoid reaching a similar point again. There are few things that strike me as being a possible cause of the system instability:

- Bloated media folders: I continued to add more and more sources to the media folders until they contained several hundred gigabytes of video content. Since all these videos were either in 1080p or 4k, I made proxy files for all the imported media. Is it possible that VideoStudio just doesn't handle having a very large volume of imported media?

- Differences in video formats: a bit of Googling has suggested it's best to use imported videos that are all in the same format. While all of my imported media was MP4, they varied according to resolution and framerate. A handful of the videos were encoded as "Baseline" rather than "High Profile" too. Should I be using a converter to make all of these videos conform to a single, universal set of standards for all the different parameters? Doing so would be very time consuming given the large number of files I'm working with, but if it's absolutely neccessary, I would probably be willing to do it.

I don't have my exact hardware specs to hand, but the machine is primarily a gaming PC and is equipped with a GTX 1080ti, so I'm assuming the hardware is sufficiently good to handle 4K video editing.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be very welcome - thanks in advance.

[asik1]

Well, MP4 is not the issue here it's the volume of files and their gazillion variants.
I don't know what project your are on but if you can cut it into few shorter segments then you might work it thru.

[Denizen38]

So I'm now running everything on a clean install and just to test things, am working with a library of three low-res videos (360p) all encoded identically. The main editor works OK for now, but when trying to build a custom split screen template VideoStudio still has absolutely terrible stability and will freeze and crash every 5-10 mins when working in the split screen creator interface. This is particularly frustrating as there's no way to save progress in that interface as far as I know, so I'm repeatedly coming back to square one. I'm at a bit of a loss for what's wrong and how to fix these performance issues at this point.

[Davidk]

You haven't said, but the amount of source material - assuming you use it all - is daunting: the project must run for a longgg time.

Per the prior suggestion from Adi, smaller segments - for editing - are much more usable. say, 10 to 15 minutes max in the the project file stage. The limit for VS AFAIK from prior commentary is 10 hours, but that is huge and basically unmanageable.
Once you have your effort rendered into small sections, it is easy enough to assemble the them all in sequence and without further editing simply render the lot into a single final - all using the same properties.

On the subject of mixing properties, source material with mixed properties is usually tolerable, but variable frame rates generally are not. For best performance, consider the final needs - is it a TV-style presentation, or an FHD file which will be downloaded by any users?? and set the project and rendering properties to suit the intended result. You may find that translating software like handbrake used to obtain a common source spec altho extra work solves a lot of issues. Note that for a downloaded presentation via Youtube - the nominal mp4 filetype they specify will be modified by them to enable fast download by any user - and that generally isn't an FHD spec. So being picky during editing when the result is transformed by an intermediary is often counter-productive.

A gaming machine should be more than good enough for FHD or 4k editing, but you do need to use proxy files; if you have say 2 gb of main materials, you need at least that and probably more for the proxy files. Your description of what happens sounds much like the PC is choking up as the editing session progresses: and the amount of storage you have for these files may be an issue in your Pc performance, particularly if it's on an external drive. An external drive connected via usb is likely to cause jerky performance - particularly if you are using a cheap memory stick that typically turns out to be usb 1+, rather than 2 or 3. There is freeware that can tell you what the connected devices are. It's just that the transfer rate of data across the interface is limited to the slowest partner in the connection and the PC may not be able to keep up with a large amount of data here from proxy files when the OS and CVS are also demanding usage of any memory. I found that using a really fast memory like a video SD card is better than USB (any version) and best is internal storage on the device - the data paths within the machine are not only much faster but not limited by management software eg the stuff that goes with usb hubs.