MPEG 1 Rendering Problem

whmcniven wrote on 6/18/2005, 6:53 AM
Hi. I'm cutting on Sony Vegas 5.0. I'm still fairly new at this but in the past I've had problem rendering MPEG1's. Now, after several attempts, my 4 minute video will not render as an MPEG1. It quits about 25% into the process and dialogue window appears telling me "An error occured while creating the media file....... (name of file) and then second sentence tells me "The reason for the error could not be determined. (great!)

Has this happenned to anyone else? If so, did you find a resolution.

I'd be most grateful for any tips on how to resolve this.

Thank you

Comments

rs170a wrote on 6/18/2005, 7:17 AM
A quick search turned up several other folks with the same problem and, unfortunately, no real solution. The usual recommendation is to render out as a dv-avi and then use TMPGEnc (mpeg-1 version is free) to do the conversion as it does a better job than Vegas at this.

Mike
whmcniven wrote on 6/18/2005, 7:31 AM
Thanks for the tip. I will see if I can do that. Is there any difference between a dv-avi and an avi (which I have used to render previous videos)?

In my initial post, I meant to say that rendering videos to MPEG-1 was never a problem for me prior to today. With this particular video I attempted to render it 3 times as an MPEG-1 and it quit at the exact same time into the video for all three attempts. Interestingly enough, the video rendered fine as an MGEG-2 and a WMV. Go figure.
rs170a wrote on 6/18/2005, 9:13 AM
...any difference between a dv-avi and an avi...

Sorry for the confusion. What I should've said was the NTSC DV option when you select avi (which, I'm sure, is what you do).

...it quit at the exact same time into the video...

Try rendering out a small section of the timeline right around the problem area. Does it still quit? Is there anything specific happening at that moment (filters, FX, titles, etc.)?

Mike
whmcniven wrote on 6/19/2005, 11:57 AM
The problem appears to have been caused by two JPEG photos in the top video track. I removed the dissolve between them but this didn't resolve the problem. Then I tried just one photo, trying each separately and this didn't work either. So I ended up replacing the JPEG photos with video and that resolved the problem... and yet, I used other JPEG photos throughout the 4 minute piece and they did cause any problem. Thanks for all the help. I will still try the NTSC avi route and the 3rd party application to render.
rs170a wrote on 6/19/2005, 8:39 PM
Glad you figured out you problem. Try loading the problem jpegs into your paint program, re-saving them in a different format (png for example) and loading them back in. I recall folks here saying that, for some strange reason, jpegs can get corrupted. They will view OK but give your NLE a headache :-)

Mike
farss wrote on 6/19/2005, 10:37 PM
I'd also add that even if it didn't crash the MC mpeg encoder that ships with Vegas does not excel at mpeg-1. As mentioned before TMPGEnc does a quite nice job of encoding mpeg-1 (it's been used to encode many games) and the mpeg-1 only version is free.
You can also frameserve from the Vegas T/L to TMPGEnc if you want to avoid the intermediate render.
whmcniven wrote on 6/20/2005, 9:52 AM
Per Mike's recommendation, I rendered my original version as an AVI then used the TMPGEnc to render the AVI version to an MPEG1 and this worked very well for my purposes (I then use a program called CD-Start Dummy, which needs the MPEG-1 in order to make multiple CD's for distribution. CD-Start Dummy ensures that the video CD starts up automatically in just about every computer once the users inserts the disc)

Also per Mike's suggestion, I will next try to save those errant JPEG's as another type of file and see what happens.

Farss, with regard to "frameserve", I don't understand what this is or how you'd accomplish it but I'm willing to experiment if you point me in the right direction.

Thank you Mike for the TMPGEnc tip, that allowed me to keep the original version, which was what the clients all saw and were in agreement upon.
rs170a wrote on 6/20/2005, 10:19 AM
Glad to have been of help.

As far as frameserving goes, get Satish's Debugmode FrameServer and read the instructions.
I've never tried frameserving before but a lot of folks here have done it and find it quite easy.

BTW, there was no need to buy a program if all you need to do is autostart an mpeg-1 file. Just follow these instructions and you're all set.

On the root of the CD:
autorun.inf
mplayer2.exe
myvideo.mpg

Use Notepad to create the autorun file.
Make sure to do a "Save as type" - "All Files" when saving it or else ".txt"
gets added to the filename.

The autorun file reads exactly as follows (pay close attention to the extra
spaces after some words - they threw me off the first time I attempted this
as well):

[autorun]
open=mplayer2.exe /fullscreen /play /close \myvideo.mpg

OR

[autorun]
open=mplayer2.exe /fullscreen /play /close myvideo.mpg

leaving out the backslash before the video filename.

Substitute the name of your file for "myvideo.mpg".
This will make it play full screen on the monitor.
mplayer2.exe is MediaPlayer 6.4 (only 5K in size).
In comparison, MediaPlayer 8 is 508K in size.

Mike