Why are video editing programs so buggy and unstable?

[Red Squirrel]

I tried every single one out there. They all have the same problem. They crash at random, have trouble with large video files, and the bigger your project, the more often they crash.

I'm using Sony Vegas 7 right now. Literally, every 10 clicks, it crashes. Like it does not matter what I'm doing. I can be clicking play, or moving a video file to another slot, or opening trimmer. It will randomly crash about every 10-15 mouse operations. Its retarded.

How is video editing in Linux, is it better then this? I'm willing to switch to Linux as I've been debating on that anyway.

 

[IamDavid]

Haven't had any issues with the past couple releases from the Cyberlink lines.

As for Linux, Cinelerra is OK. Nothing to special though.

 

[Rottie]

have you try Adobe Premire Pro? I never had any issues but if the price is concern you can try lite version of Premiere for less than 99 dollars

 

[Fardringle]

Honestly, if you are having that many problems with multiple different programs, I would have to assume that the issue is with your computer and not with the applications...

Of course, errors do happen once in a while even on the most stable system, but I have never had any problems like the ones you describe with any video editing program I have used.

 

[Sam25]

Yes, agreed. Looks more like a problem with your computer. Sure once in a while the video editor might crash but not as often as you mention. I use Sony Vegas and Virtualdub but they don't crash just as often on my computer.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I've experienced this on 3 different computers. I tried premiere but it was also unstable. It usually crashes while it's rendering, unlike vegas that crashes while editing. I had no issues with it until I started editing a 45GB avi, but given it's a VIDEO editing program it should be able to handle large files efficiently. With the size of today's hard drives and the speed of processors, a 45GB file should not be what kills a program.

 

[Tarrant64]

I used to use premiere a couple of years ago and only had a couple crashes in let's say, an hour. Now if you want to talk some serious bogus crashing, Windows Movie Editor. Terrible software.

 

[Crusty]

If these are legal copies of the software call support, they shouldn't be crashing like that.... otherwise using cracked software is probably the root problem.

 

[corkyg]

It could also be pilot error - i.e., a procedural problem.

 

[xtknight]

Windows' media architecture (DirectShow) isn't the most stable. Many of these apps rely on DirectShow or VfW (Video for Windows), which also isn't known for its stability. Windows Media Encoder has always been unreliable for me. Many codecs that you install over time don't interact correctly with the video editing software. Although the editing software could be coded to use only specific and first-party filters, often times it isn't and a buggier codec / demux filter with a higher merit (priority) that you happened to have installed gets chosen. There is some program out there to edit the merit of DirectShow filters.

ffmpeg/mplayer/mencoder have always been very stable and flexible for me, however, they are harder to get started with.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I also heard blender can edit videos, is this the case? I downloaded it but it looks more like a 3D rendering program. Looks cool though... need to find some tuts on it some time.

 

[Red Squirrel]

For vegas it seems to only be unstable with large video files. If I precut my video using virtualdub it seems ok at least so far. Though it's tricky doing it that way as often I don't know how long a video clip actually needs to be until I'm editing at that part, as I tend to try and make it go with the music as much as I can. I seem to get lucky with that though, I'll estimate and be dead on.

 

[Modelworks]

One problem with almost all video editing programs is they do not like compressed video. Compressed video, xvid, divx, quicktime, are deilivery formats not authoring formats . Some of the pro packages like shake, handle it better than others.
If you are using compressed video that uses a codec that was not intended to be edited after the fact , you can have crashes all the time. If you are going to edit video I highly recommend converting the video to an uncompressed format. Yes it will use huge amounts of hard drive space , but it is much easier to work with once you do that.
You also need to stick to the correct resolutions for the format. Some programs like Premiere will crash constantly if you use something out of spec like 623 x 278 , etc.
The best format is using a DV codec .

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah premiere was bad for that. Now I use only raw AVI. Most of the time I use 480*360 res but the source clips can be pretty much any res. Normally I do stuff involving screen captures so it is in fact way out of spec as I just select an area then crop the section I need while editing, so maybe that's my issue, though there's not much of a way around that other then screen capture at 480*360 but often I want more to play with so I can pan/zoom etc.

 

[TBSN]

People are probably not going to like this, but you should really think about Final Cut Pro/Express for serious video editing. Obviously it's for Apple OSX. For windows, plenty of people use Premiere and like it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah I know, for video editing mac is the way to go, but this is not something I do full time. Otherwise yeah I'd get a mac since they are better for video related tasks due to better programs. (also twice the price of a PC)

 

[bruceb]

It seems more to me to be either not enough RAM or a slow hard drive. Video editing is best done with the Source & Destination files on seperate hard drives. I would also suggest a test of the RAM .. flaky ram can cause all sorts of issues.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah done all the basics everything is fine as far as hardware. As for HDD OS is on one drive Data is on another drive. Though would software raid 0 be better?