Error message: External Renderer has failed

Birk Binnard wrote on 2/2/2014, 8:04 PM
Has anyone seen this error message when trying to create a BluRay ISO file? I've made quite a few ISO files with previous versions of DVDA and have never seen this - until I installed the current version.

The error stops DVDA in it's tracks, but does not crash it - you can OK out of the error message dialog and DVDA is still running.

What is an external renderer anyway? And where is it?

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 2/2/2014, 8:06 PM
What version of DVDA?
What are you feeding it?
Be specific.
Birk Binnard wrote on 2/2/2014, 11:50 PM
It's DVDAS 5 Build 186 (the most current version.) Input is all from Movie Studio Plat. Ver. 12 and 13 AVCHD rendered with the Sony AVC/MVC template. My system is Win7-64 with 16GB RAM and separate drives for input & output.

I ran CHKDSK on the output drive - no errors. I de-installed and re-installed DVDAS but this had no effect.
musicvid10 wrote on 2/3/2014, 12:02 AM
You need to use the DVD Architect templates in Vegas.
Birk Binnard wrote on 2/3/2014, 12:49 AM
Thanks for the suggestion - that's something I had not thought of.

Unfortunately this is not good news for me - I've always used the AVC codec from Vegas and have made several BluRay disks with DVDA. Currently I have 2 disks to make - one is 23GB and the other is about 12GB, and the though of re-rendering all that video is not exactly appealing. Not to mention rebuilding the disk structure & menus in DVDA.

I submitted a bug report to SCS and am hoping they can perhaps give an alternative solution.
TOG62 wrote on 2/3/2014, 3:15 AM
Not to mention rebuilding the disk structure & menus in DVDA.

If you rename or delete the original file you'll have the option to replace with the new one, so that should not be necessary.
Birk Binnard wrote on 2/3/2014, 9:28 AM
Yes, except the suggested Movie Studio template creates 2 files for each video clip (one video, one audio) instead of the single file I have now.

I wonder: if I gave both the video file and the audio file the same name, would DVDA be able to do the substitution you describe? I'll try that with one clip and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestion.
Birk Binnard wrote on 2/3/2014, 10:04 AM
Well that was a bummer. I tried re-rendering my shortest clip (2:34) and Movie Studio crashed at about the 2:28 mark. By "crashed" I mean is just ended - no error message, nothing - just boom; gone.

Second time it gave the standard Error Report dialog at about 2:15, so I sent this to Sony. In both cases the render produced an incomoplete M2V video file, but had not yet created the W64 audio file.

The partial M2V file played back ok, but of course is useless.
musicvid10 wrote on 2/3/2014, 10:23 AM
Sounds like you have heat issues, one major cause of incomplete renders.
Clean your fans and fins, and don't overclock, even though it may seem tempting.
Birk Binnard wrote on 2/3/2014, 10:59 AM
Very interesting....and a little disconcerting.

I OC'd my CPU (i7 3770-S) about a month ago using the standard ASUS BIOS auto-OC option. My clock rate went from 3.1 GHz to 4.1 GHz and I've had zero problems since then, except for Movie Studio & DVDA. So I thought I was safe.

I am aware of heat issues and I did use RealTempGT to check core temps while rendering. It said I was never closer than around 35F to the CPU's max temp.

But OK - it's easy enough to go back to standard. I'll try that.

Thanks for the suggestion.
Birk Binnard wrote on 2/3/2014, 12:00 PM
I went back to no overclocking and was then successful in re-rendering my shortest clip using the DVDA BluRay template.

I guess that's how we learn our lessons!

As expected this made 2 files: The Dead Sea.m2v and The Dead Sea.w64. So after the render completed I renamed my original The Dead Sea.m2ts and The Dead Sea.m2ts.sfl to The Dead Sea-x, respectively.

Then I loaded my DVDA project just to see if it could pick up the new m2v file. It gave me the "file could not be found" dialog for the original m2ts file, but I used the "Specify new location or replacement file" option to point to the new m2v file.

It took this OK so I went to Preview to see if I got both the new video & sound files OK, and it worked OK. So just for the fun of it I'm doing a Prepare Disk now just to see what happens.

DVDA says it is Rendering, so my guess is it is re-rendering all the m2ts files - which I thought it would not need to do.

If DVDA makes the ISO file OK I'll probably just go with that rather than re-rendering all the video with Movie Studio. But in the future I'llbe sure to use the DVDA template in Movie Studio.

Thanks to all for all your help with this.