can't render

gkowalski wrote on 5/13/2002, 10:02 AM
I am unable to render my first project to my hard drive: I get a message warning me that the file is too big, estimated at 39GB even though the total size of the source files is only 9 GB and the project itself at just 157 KB. That was at the default resolution setting. I started it anyway, it rendered for several hours, got about 50% through according to the progress meter, then quit leaving nothing at all in the destination file. On another attempt, I was able to render it at the lowest resolution (56k) but the quality was of course unacceptable. Does anyone know what's going on?

Comments

jrstueve wrote on 5/13/2002, 10:17 AM
not sure if this would help or not...

I was deep into my editing project, my method was to bulk capture footage from a party, and then clip and stitch together a 14 minute clip from about 80 minutes of source video.

When it came time to the final render, I grabbed (what I thought was) all the extra clips and deleted them, and then hit make movie. IT ended up rendering 48 minutes of video... I finally figured out that I had left a single clip in the overlay timeline at about time 47:30... I went back and deleted that clip, and it rendered the correct time.

You can also try rendering just a 'timeslot' from the Make Movie dialog...

other things to look at.. what format are you using (aVI, Mpeg, WMV, MOV), what framesize.

Make sure you've got the space needed, and if necessary a defrag might help...

Anyone else?
gkowalski wrote on 5/13/2002, 11:11 AM
Thanks, the .avi file size is much smaller, and I didn't get the warning about the file being too big. It still estimates the rendering time at about 4 hours for a 17-minute video, is that normal? I will start the render at the end of the day when I don't need the computer for other things, so I'll know tomorrow whether it worked or not. Thanks again for the tip.
jrstueve wrote on 5/13/2002, 11:15 AM
for an avi... yeah... sounds ballpark...
what is the resolution? I use the 352x240 because my end product is a VCD. Render times would be higher (around that 4 hour mark) for a full frame 720x480 DV avi... (has to create more bits)

IIRC I think my 14 minute mpeg took about an hour (maybe two, I set it and left) at the 352x240 size.

Hope that helps.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/14/2002, 11:33 AM
gkowalski,

After you click on "Make Movie," and then "Write Your Movie to File on Your Disk," but before you start the render, make sure that you set the "Template" to "NTSC DV" (or "PAL DV" if you live in Europe). If the template is set to "Default Template (uncompressed)" you will get huge files that are totally useless for sending back to your camera. I don't know why Sonic Foundry uses the words "default template" to describe the uncompressed AVI codec. It is seldom, if ever, the selection that you will want to use.

Rendering times can be quite long, but only if you've added a lot of effects and transitions. If you do a "cuts-only" project, rendering should not be too much longer than the running time of the original video (at least on my 450MHz computer).

John