Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c Problem

[cutter]

Could REALLY use some help from anyone familiar with Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c.

I'm trying to make a fairly large HD video (about 6 minutes long) with a LOT of video clips. Problem is, it started to crash on me when I got half the clips into the project because of low memory, apparently. (I have 4 gigs on this pc and it's pretty much all free when I run it with no programs running otherwise).

Most info online seems to indicate Vegas will sometimes crash when rendering large HD videos, but I'm not even to that point yet so I'm worried. It's already crashing before I've finished editing.

Anyway, I think I may have put the video together wrong to begin with and perhaps this is why task manager shows I'm utilizing 3 gigs of my ram when I have the project loaded. First, many of the clips I'm using come from much larger videos (about 7 or 8 big video files). But instead of adding the big video to the project bin and then cutting and pasting the little parts I need into it, I made separate clips from the main one outside of my project, and then imported them all separately. So instead of having one big file in the bin used to make little clips in the project, I have many different ones in the bin all taken from the same source. Am I using using up more memory this way? Should I go back and delete all the little files I created outside the project and simply drop in the big video and edit it within the project? (sorry if this is confusing, I can clarify more if you ask me specific follow ups.)

I am SO close to being finished and really hope I can fix this. But with all the crashes and low memory, I'm convinced it will never render anyway. I've done the CFF Explorer file edit fix found online to get files like Vegas80 to not cap off at 2 gigs of Ram, and that actually helped me to continue adding clips when Vegas started crashing about half way through my project. But now, as I am so close to dropping in the last video file, I seem to be approaching my 4 gig cap because I've had crashes again recently just importing files and editing the project (video clips go all red in the timeline, indicating a crash is imminent).

So is there any other fix I can try other than adding more RAM (this thing can't take any more even though its relatively new)? Should I go back and redo my video bin so I have the main source files in there (again, they are large 42 minute HD video files) instead of a bunch of little ones I've edited off those big ones outside the project? Will a newer Sony Vegas (like 9 or 10) have less issues with my project?

Any advice is GREATLY appreciated. This project is something I envisioned a long time ago and now that I'm so close, it's so depressing to not be able to finish.

Thanks!

AMD Athlon II x2 M300
4 GB RAM
Radeon HD 4200

 

[lungjian]

I think you hit the nail on the head. I've always added the original file to the timeline and done multiple edits there. Each clip added to the timeline adds a separate reference back to the original file, using more RAM.

Rendering is probably going to be glacially slow with that low-end laptop processor...

 

[cutter]

Actually, I split the project in half to see if I could at least render the first half. It worked and it wasn't slow at all. I think this laptop is more powerful than you think, though admittedly not ideal (I use my desktop that I built myself for most things).

However, is there a program out there that will combine two .wmv files seamlessly? Otherwise I guess I could render them both and then import them as separate files and combine them in a new project. That way I've bypassed the whole "too many clips in the timeline" problem.

What do you think?