Sony Vegas 8 low memory error

[mouseclubhouse]

Hello, I hope somebody can help!

I have Sony Vegas 8 platinum and I am trying to render a simple fifteen minute clip. Not graphics or anything unusual. The only effects are a fade in and fade out.

I exceed the system minimum requirements. I have 2 gb of ram and 2ghz process, and a Windows Vista 32 bit system.

When rendering the file for DVD by about 90% complete the machine gets so slow and I always get a low memory error.

I don't mind purchasing more memory if it would help, but is there something else going on? Sony Customer Support has run out of ideas. It's not like I'm doing an hour video, which is what my ultimate goal is, but right now I'm just trying to do a fifteen minute video.

I've tried saving as mpg and wmv, I've tried saving video only without audio.

I'm going nuts. If I can't even do a fifteen minute video, if I double the memory the max 4gb will I even be able to do an hour?

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[edDV]

I've only had Vegas low memory warnings when running multiple instances + other apps. What are your project settings and source formats?

[NoBuddy]

I guess missing memory isn´t the real issue. 2 Gb should be more than enough.
First: are you running many other applications in the background while rendering? Stop the ones not needed.
Play with the memory amount of the Preview in Vegas: down to zero, than maybe 32 Mb - check the difference while rendering.
Disable the preview while rendering - makes a difference?

While rendering, check CTRL-ALT-DEL: what´s happening with Vegas.exe?
CPU usage, memory amount.

There are a lot more points to check, but first try these easy ones.
And like edDV said: What are you rendering?
Good luck.

[mouseclubhouse]

THANKS for replying.

I am not running other apps in the background. At one point I went into MSconfig and turned off everything and still had the problem.

Usually when rendering I don't run anything else. I just leave it alone.

I have completely disabled the preview when rendering to see if that was the deal and it still stopped and gave me the memory error.

(Unfortunately, it takes about an hour to test if it works, but I guess that's life.)


What I'm rendering is a 15 minute AVI video from my digital camera. I've added a fade in and fade out and am rendering it to a file to make a DVD.

I've tried to render with a variety of settings and to wmv and mpg. Generally I am doing 29.97 frames, Quality VBR90, and various compression settings. Target bit rate is grayed out but shows ISDN 500K.

Checking the usage with the task manager, it is showing that almost immediatly the CPU usage goes up to 99%. It fluctuates a lot, going down to 65% but going back up to 97% and at times hitting 100%. It's hitting at least 93% about every five seconds.

Memory is hovering at about 1.20gb consistently.

Clicked on the resource monitor. Don't know if this additional info helps, but:

CPU: As listed above but the box to the right reads "100% maximum frequency"

Disk: mainly 0, sometimes up to 1.

Both network boxes stay at 0.

Getting back to CPU, I showed the details where it lists any other apps running, and wanted to see if any of those were causing the problem, but VEGAS on its own is reaching numbers of 90 on up.

I sincerely appreciate your help!!!!

Memory fluctuates between 1 to 4 hard faults.

[mouseclubhouse]

Update: The CPU usage is not as high when I turn the video preview off. It hovers around 70% and does get up to 80% but it not hitting 90%.

[minidv2dvd]

what is reporting memory hard faults? it's not an error message i'd ever want to see and unfortunately probably indicates bad ram modules. try one or more of the memory testing programs you can find with an online search. m.s. offers one of their own or something like memtest.

[mouseclubhouse]

The memory hard faults are not error messages, but when I open the Windows Task Manager and click on Performance and then click on Resource Monitor, there are various things listed and one of those is Memory/Hard Faults/sec

[minidv2dvd]

ok. that's the os reporting it can't read the ram - physical memory modules. test them as it appears one or more is malfunctioning.

[Sartori]

re above post , there are programs available to check the modules , using a boot floppy or mem stick I suppose . If it came up with errors Id remove the ram modules and then reseat them and check again .

[mouseclubhouse]

Hello, made the boot CD of the Windows Memory diagnostic tool. It found no errors on the first pass but i just let it run all night, pass over pass and in the morning it still found no errors at all.

Any advice? I hope?

[Sartori]

The only other things I can think of are youve
1.run out of hard drive space
2.you have virtual memory turned off - check in case Windows has had an "incident"
3.hard drive error - check it
4.program error on hard drive - reinstall
5.your pc getting hot when under the duress of encoding mpgs and the memory or chip getting too hot then failing -
6.error in the avi file - check with VirtualDub
7.codec error on hard drive - reinstall.

Id personally try them in order of ease and not assume things on the list ...........Ive had a few of them above myself . Ive been a technician for 25 years , machines seem to lie when they say whats wrong , its as if theyre human and dont want to do any work

[mouseclubhouse]

Hi,

I definitely have not run out of hard drive space and I also tried saving it to an external drive as well.

I have made several changes to virtual memory, none of which did the trick, but it's definitely installed.

As far as the PC getting hot, I can tell you that it DOES get hot. Sometimes after a couple hours on I find that the mousepad is quite warm.

[Sartori]

Run the file through VDub to check it for errors and if none found , cut out a small portion of it , say a 3minute section - if you do it so its on `Direct Stream Copy` for the audio and video and then try encoding that - that should help narrow down if its Vegas/codecs .

Does the avi file plays ok in windows (with jumping forward in it as well) and identifies the codecs its using correctly ?
Have you updated Vegas to the newest update ? as youve been dealing with customer help I take it you have but I ask just in case .

I had to put in some "bloody obvious" ones in the list above , despite having pcs since 1982 , I still fall for "schoolboy errors" now and again

[mouseclubhouse]

Hi, I got the problem fixed. I was trying various things. You got me thinking that maybe it was the file so I was trying different files.

I actually was using the latest version of the Sony Vegas 8, but then I got an email that Sony Vegas 9 just came out. I wrote to Sony since I just bought 8 within the last two weeks and it turned out that I was eligible for a free version 9 since it was within 30 days of the 9 release.

I installed it and it worked fine! I wonder if maybe 8 wasn't compatible with my machine since my machine is pretty new, but it did the trick.

Wish I had this before I spent so much of my time and your time!! But it was much appreciated, so thank you.