Movie Studio crash on rendering

paultomkins wrote on 2/10/2005, 2:54 AM

Hi

I recommended Movie Studio to my father because I read it was the most stable. However, I'm struggling. We have imported some videos into the computer. Each video is about 30 minutes long. We do a small number of edits and then go for render. We render to the hard disk and every time, no matter which video we try and render, the screen starts going pixelated and then the computer just crashes or switches off. We have tried using all kinds of render options including PAL and selecting a deselecting different option on the Advanced Render dialog.

The computer has an AMD 3.2 64-bit chip. The hard disk is a 160 GB SATA with 8 MB of RAM, formatted as NTFS and has 120 MB left and is running with XP Professional. I have just reinstalled Windows and the computer now only runs Movie Studio + DVD with the 4.0a patch that I downloaded from this web site ... and still the problem persists.

Any clues?

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 2/10/2005, 3:05 AM

That sounds like a hardware / overheating issue... Do you have any way to monitor the CPU temperature? There are several free tools that will display this information.

But... just to help with the overall knowledge of what is going on... can you tell us..

What is the source format of your video (Imported from what?) - Is it DV AVI (hopefully) or is it some MPEG format (hope not).

What are you rendering to? MPEG2 or DV AVI? MPEG2 tends to stress the CPU harder than DV AVI - and can result in showing that you have an underlying heat/cpu issue.

paultomkins wrote on 2/10/2005, 3:43 AM

Hi

I don't know of any tools to monitor the CPU temperature but I shall have a look now that you ask. If you could recommend one that would help immensely.

The source is DV AVI in NTSC from a Sony camcorder. We have tried rendering it back to AVI NTSC, to AVI PAL and to the MPEG 2 format for the bundled Sony DVD program. Hopeless.

We have checked the Windows Event logs to see if the crash was recorded and they mention no errors whatsoever.

dtudela wrote on 2/10/2005, 5:49 AM

I don't have an answer to your problem, however your post states that you have only 120MB left on your hard drive--hardly enough for a 30 min video since 30 mins will require about 6.5 GB of disk space (avi). Could this be part of the problem??
Darrell

paultomkins wrote on 2/10/2005, 5:59 AM

Sorry.

I meant 120 GB.

gordyboy wrote on 2/10/2005, 6:28 AM

Could well be overheating - I have had random crashing in the past using both Acid and Vegas whilst rendering and on each occassion it has turned out to be accumulated dust clogging up the CPU heatsink fan. A quick blast with a vacumn cleaner and everything is AOK again.

It tends to show up only when using Vegas to render - presumably because of the severe load on the CPU which will generate a lot of heat to dissapate. The motherboard has an auto-shut down if the temperature is too high.

Cheers

gb

paultomkins wrote on 2/10/2005, 6:45 AM

Hi

Thank you everybody. You have been very kind and helpful. I am tempted to believe the CPU is getting too hot. It is a new computer but I shall research what I can do about this.

Thank you again to you all.

Paul

JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/10/2005, 7:14 AM

This definitely sounds like an overheating problem. I use SpeedFan to monitor my CPU temps and it can adjust your fan speeds automatically. It sounds like perhaps you don’t have enough cooling for the long renders which are extremely CPU intensive.

I had the same problem gordyboy had. After a year, my PC started overheating from renders. When I opened it up there was an incredible amount of dust clogging the CPU heat sink. Unfortunately, heat sink fans blow down onto the fins (not up away from them) and so it is an ideal opportunity to blow dust down into the heat sink and trap it there. I peeled the dust off in one piece as if it were a felt pad! (not good!!!)

One other problem may be the thermal paste used between the processor and the heat sink. The stock thermal pad that comes with Intel processors (I’m not familiar with AMD) does an adequate job of thermal transfer under normal loads (i.e., word processing) but runs very hot for things like renders. I replaced my pad with a good thermal paste and my CPU idles 8C degrees cooler and now renders at around 50C instead of 65C with the stock pad. Just something to think about if your PC was not built for heavy processor loads.

There is also a possibility that your power supply cannot carry the load. Many hardware stability problems can be caused by an underpowered PSU. Some Dell computers, for example, come with a barely minimal 250W PSU. As soon as you add a large hard drive or two, the PSU can’t take the load. Your PSU should be at least 350W and from a quality company. Some cheap PSU’s say they are rated at 350W but that’s really a peak rating and not their continuous power. I have a 480W Antec PSU in my PC.

~jr

paultomkins wrote on 2/10/2005, 8:49 AM

Thank you JohnnyRoy. I am looking it the suggestions now. I shall report back the findings for the benefit of everybody else.

Paul

paultomkins wrote on 2/24/2005, 5:12 AM

I am now reporting back. I took off the computer case to see what PSU I had and I installed the motherboard monitoring software. I then tried to render again and surprisingly everything worked. Thinking that I may have an overheating problem I replaced to computer case and tried again. Again, the render completed without a hitch. I can only assume then that the motherboard monitoring software has somehow resolved the issue. So, I should like to say a big thank you to all of you who kindly took their time to help me out.

Thank you ever so much.

Paul

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 2/24/2005, 7:27 AM

Just so that you know, there's a free software called PC Wizard out there that will monitor temps of everything pretty much in your computer - great for keeping an eye on how things are going (plus it will let you do some benchmarking etc... and performance testing). It's good, and it's FREE!!!!!! (the best price for anytyhing)

Dave

cervama wrote on 2/24/2005, 8:46 AM

Paul, I think the problem has to do with your powersupply. I had that problem with my computer where it would shut off after several minutes.

I took it back and they changed the powersupply with a 430 powersupply and walla it works awesome now.

I hope this helps.

MAC