RED ALERT! Time sensitive question.

dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 1:43 PM
For the first time Vegas has just stalled out.

9 minute finished project. Video, slides, et al.

The last 15 seconds or so has about 7 layers of still shots aranged across the workspace. Regardless of how small I make these Vegas will not render.

Elapsed time keeps going, but it went nearly 30 minutes to sample render 10 seconds before the frame counter just stopped. And, where it stopped should have been a lighter load in terms of encoding.

This has to finished ASAP.

Is there a limited to the continously displayed number of tracks?


help!

Comments

jkrepner wrote on 6/22/2006, 2:08 PM
Are you rendering to .AVI or encoding to .MPEG (or something)?

If encoding: I'd render the entire thing to one track, then encode that.
jrazz wrote on 6/22/2006, 2:09 PM
No limit that I know of. What are you encoding to? If you are not doing avi, try rendering to uncompressed avi so that way if it does it again, you can pick up where you left off and reattach and render to your desired encode from the avi file. This will effectively take the load off during the render.... that is if you can get the avi to render. What are the pics you are using? When you say Regardless of how small I make these [pics]... what does "small" mean?

j razz
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/22/2006, 2:10 PM
nest, perhaps, the 7 layer composite as a a nested project and just put it where it's supposed to be on the TL.

Dave
Former user wrote on 6/22/2006, 2:14 PM
Can you render just that 15 second section? If so, then render it out to whatever your project settings are (e.g. NTSC DV AVI) then either drop the resulting rendered AVI on a new track above the same area, or move the problematic 15 second chunk of your project down the timeline a little way and drop the AVI in it's place.
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 2:14 PM
I was just about to render it to mpg-2.

broken into pieces it will preview render okay, but when I try to do that who "breath" it loses it.

I've never tried nesting before.

While I'm looking into that, are we talking rendering that segment, only to re-insert back into the timeline? I'm sure you'll have an answer before I get back.

Thanks,

btw, it previews (draft, of course on my box) with only minimal lag.




Ok, nesting.

If I were to try this how would I separate this material from the existing project's timeline? fortunately, it's the last things seen if that helps.

Could I save the project under a different name, and then delete all but what's needed...then use that as the new nested material?
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/22/2006, 2:39 PM
"Could I save the project under a different name, and then delete all but what's needed...then use that as the new nested material?"

BINGO!!

just save it as 2 different project names - one with the ending only and one with everything else. Then just open a new timeline and drop the two nested projects on it (it will involve no re-rendering at all). Drag the ends to their appropriate positions and render.

Dave
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 3:50 PM
I'll try that and get back you guys.

FWIW, the jackets came out very well.
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 4:21 PM
I can't figure this out.

It's a 9 minute presentation with only about 30 seconds of video, and it's saying 5+ hours to render!

I've never had this happen before, even with 1/2 hour projects of the same type.

I nested the two halves and put them on the timeline, but at this rate I doubt I'll see the end of the project where the original problem lay.

(i'm so in trouble on this one)
busterkeaton wrote on 6/22/2006, 4:33 PM
how big are the still shots?
How much memory does the machine have?
Are you running out of disk space? That may cause pagefile wierdness.

Are you able to render just the bit with the pics? I think I would try to render just that part to avi and see what that gets me.
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 4:35 PM
The still shots are between 700k and 2mb, depending on the amount of cleanup I had to do.

I've got 2gb of DDR 333 and 135gb of free drive space at the moment.


dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 5:03 PM
QUESTION: Does "reduce interlace flicker" affect rendering performance?


It's the only difference in approach I've taken on this project.

Checking it off in DVDA worked well on a test, so I wanted to see the difference in Vegas.
johnmeyer wrote on 6/22/2006, 5:28 PM
This may help:

Reasons for Slow Renders
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 6:05 PM
Hey JM,

The first half is still rendering so I can't get in there and look, but i'd like to run that script (never done that before either).

Here are some things I've done differently than last time:

1. made an avi of a 30 sec slideshow behind a "film strip" frame so I could insert it on its own track in the new project and rotate it around the Y axis, while slowing cropping in toward it. this technique is at minutes :01 and :09 in the project.

2. used the composite envelope several times for a few seconds at at time

3. adjusted the volume envelope on one track

4. used the "mask" automation for a track's compositing for a few seconds (10 or so)....twice.

These are the only things I've done differently that I can think of.

**************

It must be something in the last 4 minutes of the project.

The first 5 rendered to an avi in about 01:20:00


johnmeyer wrote on 6/22/2006, 6:34 PM
If you can post the VEG or email it to me, I'll take a look. I was able to track down a few problems like this before. One of them turned out to be a bug in Vegas, which I emailed to Sony.

All I need is the VEG.
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 6:38 PM
coming.
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 7:19 PM
sent you an email with mine. attachment is ready to go.
johnmeyer wrote on 6/22/2006, 9:11 PM
OK, the problem is pretty clearly the fact that 3D Compositing Mode is on almost every track. You have eleven video tracks, and ten of them have the Compositing Mode set to 3D. With this setup, I doubt that the render will ever finish. This is especially true if you have an older version of Vegas. Which version of Vegas are you using? In any version prior to Vegas 6.0d (although maybe this was fixed in 6.0c or 6.0b -- I can't remember), if you have ANY 3D compositing on any track, the whole darn project gets composited in 3D. Rendering times go off the chart, even if you only are using the 3D on a few seconds of the video.

Thus, my first recommendation is to go to the track header for each track, and set the compositing mode back to the default, which is "Source Alpha." Leave it enabled on track 2 and track 8, because you actually are using 3D compositing on those tracks. Also, don't forget to turn it off for the parent mode on track 3. (Actually, in looking closer at track 8 and its child track (track 9), I don't see any reason for 3D on either of those tracks either).

My second recommendation is to insert a track motion keyframe at around 50 seconds into the project (on track 2), and reset that keyframe to the default. I don't know whether this will help Vegas realize that it doesn't have to do any 3D compositing until it gets to the nine minute mark of your project, but it wouldn't hurt.

There is absolutely nothing else in the project that is a problem: The event fX on your photos and video are quite normal, and nothing that would stress the system.

OK ... let me do a quick experiment. I just set up a five second loop over 1-2 of your pictures --- yup, it is going to take over ten minutes to do that five seconds.

Cancel that ...

Now, I went back and changed all the 3D headers, per my recommendations above, and that 5-second chunk just rendered in 27 seconds.

Voila!

P.S. My guess is that what got you into this fix is that you enabled 3D track motion and then copied that track, thus proliferating that setting.

busterkeaton wrote on 6/22/2006, 9:37 PM
Nice sleuthing John.

3d is definitely a big render hit with Vegas. I think I remember a discussion that said if you were going to 3D in Vegas for only part of the project, then that project is an excellent candidate for nested projects. Make the 3d into a subproject and then nest it and it should go quicker.
johnmeyer wrote on 6/22/2006, 9:41 PM
Make the 3d into a subproject and then nest it and it should go quicker.

Neat idea.

It is probably a good workaround, especially if you have the earlier versions of Vegas that had the nasty bug I mentioned. May not be needed in 6.0d, but having said that, I think it is something I would recommend as well, if rendering times start to skyrocket.
dornier wrote on 6/22/2006, 9:53 PM
And the award for the most bone-headed oversight goes to.....

I'll be changing my username after this one.

Thanks a boatload john. I've got them all (save the actual 3D track) back to source, except for the mask.


I'm going to experiment with the nesting to see what kind of time I can shave off.


Always informative here....
Laurence wrote on 6/23/2006, 7:36 AM
I did exactly this just about two weeks ago! I ended up getting a project in about two days late because of it! You are not the only one. What I ended up doing is rendering the actual part where I needed this effect as a separate clip and inserting this clip into the larger overall project.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/23/2006, 8:19 AM
Watch the size of the still images. The less work Vegas has to do the quicker it can do it. Our new Cannon digital SLR camera is 8 mega-pixel and those pictures take longer to render than my old camera. I recently did a photo montage and I batch resized all of the images with DCE AutoEnhance down to 1440x960 (DV x2) and the project renders faster now. Also, increasing your RAM preview memory seems to help still images render a bit faster too. Every little bit helps.

~jr
Former user wrote on 6/23/2006, 8:39 AM
You also use Irfanview or Xnview, both free programs, for batch conversion (size or format).

Dave T2