Out of memory error happens IF batch render

Jayster wrote on 1/20/2006, 12:46 PM
I wanted to share my own experience for those who are having the "out of memory" error.

I have about 35 minutes of HDV footage from my Sony HVR-Z1U camera that I'm wanting to render into WMV9HD @ 1080i (6MBS, CBR, 1440x1080). I'm using the Cineform codec (full retail, latest version); I never even tried using the .m2t files in Vegas.

Using Vegas 5.0d I got "out of memory" errors every single time. Farthest it ever got was 15 minutes of video rendered.

I downloaded a trial of Vegas 6 and was able to successfully do the render (all 35 minutes of it). That's when I decided it was necessary to spring for the $250 upgrade (Vegas 6 +DVDA3).

Now I've installed the new software and find that I was getting the "out of memory" error again. What did I do differently from the successful run with the trial version? I divided the footage into two regions and did a batch render from the scripts menu. Using this method, it fails after rendering no more than 3-4 minutes of video.

So I went back to doing "Render As" on the whole project. (Also created a veg file from what I wanted to be region 1). Now it does the render all the way through.

Needless to say, I am quite surprised that doing a render from the scripts/batch render would send it over the edge. Maybe some sort of scripting engine gets called and soaks up too much memory space.

Also, I have 2GB of RAM and Vegas 6 was never using more than about 950 MB of it. And the virtual memory was peaking at about 1.2 GB, so apparently it was the 2GB wall that was breaking the renders.

I would think that if there is a 2GB limit, wouldn't it make renders faster if more of this 2GB is in RAM instead of the slower hard disk?

I hope if there is an upcoming Vegas 7 that it will run on 64-bit machines and overcome the 2GB limitation. I don't have 64-bit hardware, but eventually I will.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 1/20/2006, 1:07 PM
A few things to try:

1. Re-boot just prior to rendering with the batch script. There were several issues in previous releases where rendering AC-3 files from the script would take 10x normal time, or would simply hang. Yet, if I re-booted first and then ran the script, all went just fine.

2. Upgrade to 6.0c. Some of these issues went away in the latest release.

3. Upgrade to the latest Microsoft .NET software. This is what the scripting engine uses, and the later releases are more stable.

4. Check the "Dynamic RAM Preview" setting and make sure it is either set to zero or to a number that is 128MB or greater. There were several posts about a month ago where someone did testing that showed rendering went slower with numbers greater than zero, but less than 128MB. I don't know whether this would cause a hang, but it is an interesting tip, even if it doesn't solve the hang problem
roger_74 wrote on 1/20/2006, 3:24 PM
Just to clarify, the latest .NET won't matter since Vegas 6 forces the use of .NET v1.1. You can force it to use a newer version through vegas60.exe.config but that will disable the media manager (and possibly the internal video capture, I haven't checked).

Are you able to tell if the out of memory error comes from the script or if it's an "internal" Vegas error?
Jayster wrote on 1/20/2006, 3:29 PM
For #1, I was using WMA9.1 in the render (no AC-3).

For #2, I just purchased, so I do have 6.0c

#3, I'm not sure what version of .NET I have installed. I had pulled it off the Windows Download site about a month ago, but don't remember the version. I'll check that out.

#4, I had the RAM Preview set to 0 on one occasion and 16 on another. I didn't know about the 1-127 MB being slower tip, though. Thanks for passing that on!

It was interesting that batch render would only output about 3-4 minutes of video before this "out-of-memory" error happened. Seeing how so many people have experience the memory problem, I thought perhaps it would be worth sharing for any insights that can be gained...

It would also be interested if Vegas could somehow overcome the 2GB memory space limitation by rendering with 2 instances of Vegas. And, (even though I don't have a powerful 2nd machine) I wonder if network rendering improves the situation.
Jayster wrote on 1/20/2006, 3:31 PM
Roger_74, the "out of memory error" looks identical to the one I saw in Vegas 5.0. It didn't specify anything about the scripting engine.