Render crashes

dpvollmer wrote on 4/28/2006, 7:48 AM
I have about a 45 minute video made up of 10 nested veg files. After two errors the project rendered fine, including the ac3 audio track.

After making a couple of changes in the original veg files, I attempted again to render to ac3 and mpg2 files. The ac3 went without a hitch but I am on my fourth or fifth try rendering the mpg2.

The rendering is being done to the C drive and the media and veg files are on another drive. Both drives were defragmented (although Windows said they didn't need to be) prior to rendering.

The rendering stops at different places with the latest getting to 54% of completion. The first attempt stopped before it reached 2%.

I copied and pasted the error message content and thought that I had sent it to myself at the office but must have closed Outlook before it was sent. Before leaving this morning I stopped my virus/firewall software and disconnected my PC from the router to prevent any Internet traffic.

I don't know if those changes helped and won't until I get home but if you have any suggestions I would most certainly welcome them including another way to accomplish what I need. I am doing a senior video for a high school and the deadline was today. Thankfully the previous render will work as far as getting the principal's and teachers' approval, but I need the edited version to work when the students view it next week.

Should I render each veg to an AVI and then compile a new veg containing the avis? This particular video is to be run as a single movie but I will have an expanded version that will contain several movies and a menu.

I have the latest versions of Vegas and DVD Architect and am using a new HP AMD dual processor PC. I do have several firewire drives but am not using any of them for this project.

All suggestions are appreciated!!
David

Comments

DavidMcKnight wrote on 4/28/2006, 8:11 AM
Should I render each veg to an AVI and then compile a new veg containing the avis?

This is my normal workflow, FWIW. I started doing this in Vegas before nested timelines were available. It's one of the features I just haven't embraced (yet).

When you can, post the exact error message (I understand you're away from it now). It sounds like it's failing at different veg files. Do these files render successfully on their own? Do any of them contain photos? Some folks have had problems with vegs containing lots of hi-res photos. If you couple that with nesting lots of vegs, that might be an issue (I'm only offering possibilities, I haven't run into any of these myself).
dpvollmer wrote on 4/28/2006, 9:12 AM
David, thank you for responding. Yes, almost all of the veg files have photos that are panned and scanned. Some of them are probably higher res than needed and most of them are png.

I haven't tried rendering each veg individually to either an AVI or MPG2, but certainly can try that. lf I am able to do that successfully can I still assemble a single movie in DVD Architect either from the AVIs or MPGs? I didn't think I could, or that is the way I would have done it in the first place.

I have read that if I render to AVIs and then assemble them together in a new veg that the quality of rendering those AVIs to an MPG2 will not be as good as the nested method. If not, that is probably the way I want to do it.

Thank you!
DavidMcKnight wrote on 4/28/2006, 9:20 AM
I haven't tried rendering each veg individually to either an AVI or MPG2, but certainly can try that. lf I am able to do that successfully can I still assemble a single movie in DVD Architect either from the AVIs or MPGs? I

Yes. What I do is render each file as an AVI, then bring those in on a new timeline as a master project. This I render to mpeg 2 and ac3 using the NTSC dvda templates in the Render As dialog box for use in DVDA.

As far as a quality loss when doing it this way, I've heard yes and no. In fact, I'm going to research something I think Spot said a while back and will reply later...
DavidMcKnight wrote on 4/28/2006, 9:50 AM
Here is a lengthy discussion on rendering to avi vs. mpg2 -

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=293384

Pretty heady stuff dealing with colorspace and all that. The jist of it, as I understand it, is that anything that is being generated by Vegas such as titles, lower thirds, and generated media - will suffer if you go the route of rendering to an avi and then to an mpg2. Straight dv footage (unless it has a lot of action and movement) is less likely to be noticeably affected.
dpvollmer wrote on 4/28/2006, 10:35 AM
I will read the link in just a bit, thank you. I do have some titles such as fading in and out each person's name and announcing each scene change. I also have a credit roll at the end that is really dull looking and am looking at using some other titler software to produce that.

So, what is another way to render multiple veg files together as a single MPG?
johnmeyer wrote on 4/28/2006, 11:08 AM
So, what is another way to render multiple veg files together as a single MPG?

Render to individual MPEGs and then combine with a product like Womble.

You can render to DV AVI files, put these on a timeline, but then you lose colorspace. Another option is to render to a lossless, or nearly lossless format, put these on the timeline, and then render to MPEG. Takes a lot of disk space, and adds a little time to your render (basically the time it takes your computer to copy files the size of the AVI files you create). The HuffYUV codec or any MJPEG codec, or even "uncompressed" will work.

To the extent the crashes you are having are related to the large number of high-res still photos, that is a bug that crept in somewhere around Vegas 5, and while I am not sure it was ever completely eliminated, upgrading to Vegas 6.0d, if you haven't done so already, will help. If that is not possible (or even if it is), setting Dynamic RAM Preview to zero prior to rendering can sometimes help.
dpvollmer wrote on 4/28/2006, 11:56 AM
Thank you, Johnmeyer, I will search for Womble and/or try rendering lossless and will also set Dynamic RAM preview to zero.

Is there a maximum resolution that I should stay at or below with my pictures? I almost alway zoom and pan and also use mostly pngs which are much larger than the jpgs I started with. I do have the 6d upgrade already.

Thank you.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 4/28/2006, 12:19 PM
I typically do 300 dpi or if it's a really small picture I'll do 600.

But, I have not experimented with different res's so you may be able to go with less.
johnmeyer wrote on 4/28/2006, 12:23 PM
Short answer: Resolution should be slightly larger than project resolution times maximum zoom factor for each picture. Thus, if you have 720x480 (NTSC DV video) project resolution, and you plan to zoom into a picture by a factor of 2x, you'd need a resolution of 1440x960. Any larger than that will simply slow things down, although it is usually a good idea to err on the side of having slightly too much resolution. Certainly, if you are scanning photos at 4000x3000 (which is OK), you should down-res before importing to Vegas.

More info that may be helpful can be found here:

Scanner questions (for photographs)


dpvollmer wrote on 4/28/2006, 1:15 PM
Thanks for the info and the link. Good info there!