Render Freezes on same frame every time? Help!

Austin wrote on 2/2/2008, 7:38 AM

Running XP standard, 3gb ram, Standard Processor, all Windows and Sony Upadates

I'm working on a 2+ hour project with some simple fades and medium amount of panning/cropping. There are some color correction/saturation/contrast effects, but nothing much.

My problem is that whenever I render, It freezes on the exact same frame every time! I tried copying the timeline into a new project, and it did the same thing on the same frame it appears, but this one was a different percent. There is no effect or change that happens during the part that freezes, its just a solid chunk of unedited .VOB (a renamed .MOD from HDD Vid. Cam.). I don't think that its the renaming of the MOD to VOB because other VOB's have and currently are working and rendering just fine.

Could that video be corrupted from that frame onward?
I've tried many different render files and settings. to no avail.
I'm aming for MPEG-2
Could my HD be running out of space? I'm rendering to a external with 250gb free, but the files are on my c and g drives, and the project is on the g, with only 30gb free space. I've tried to render to my internal f drive with 50gb free, but same exact problem.

Any help is VERY much appriciated!
Thanks!
-Austin

Comments

Jim H wrote on 2/2/2008, 8:37 PM

Austin,

I've run into similar problems with long HD videos. I did run out of HD space one time and it took me a while to figure that out, but the usual problem is a freeze where the clock keeps going after the countdown hits zero. The only way I could fix the problem was to render the project in two parts using a lossless format and then render the two parts together for the final. It's not a perfect solution, but it worked.

Udi wrote on 2/3/2008, 12:26 AM

Can you render only the area around the "faulty" frame - try to place a loop region around it and render only this small section. You can try to avi DV format.
If it does, you can replace the rendered resut with the faulty section.
If is does not render - try to cut the faulty section out.

Udi

Austin wrote on 2/6/2008, 3:41 PM

I am trying to do this, but it seems that there is not one definite frame or group that is causeing trouble. It keeps stopping on various frames after about frame 95,190. I've tried very small renders with just a few minutes of video and same thing.

The display always goes black, and the countdown continues to count down to zero, elapsed time keeps going up, cancel doesn't work, so I have to ctrl>atl>delete and kill Vegas.

This is getting frustrating as others are getting impatient while awaiting this video!

Thanks
-Austin

MTuggy wrote on 2/6/2008, 7:16 PM

I had the same problem when trying to render anything HD - usually after 2-3 minutes into the project. I fiddled around with all kinds of settings in Vegas and with the operating system. Here is my solution so far though I still need to test several more projects to see what has actually done the trick.

First, the problem is some kind of memory leak issue from what I can tell and if you watch Vegas' memory usage, you'll see it ramps up and locks up the program or your system entirely with over a GB of memory usage or close to it.

So, what I found that corrected the problem was this:
1. Set your threads to 1 in the Vegas preferences (Dual Core system)
2. In your system settings, make sure Windows is managing your Page File on your hard drives (in my case, drive C and D).

I messed with all kinds of settings (RAM preview settings - why should that make a difference? but it seemed to make the lock ups happen later in a project). Only the two things above have corrected the problem so far. I still have some more render tests to do to see if indeed the threads have to be that low.

Let me know if it works for you.

Mike

Austin wrote on 2/6/2008, 8:45 PM

I have a single core processor, so do I still need to make any changes? (Like lowering thread priority)

And I have all drives net to auto page file size. But still locking up. Hmm.

Could the MOD / VOB files be the problem?
Of is it most likely the HD video that mixes in with it in the middle?
Although its now freezing before it gets to the HD parts.
Arg! Such a Great Program with such a huge flaw of some sort!!

owlsroost wrote on 2/7/2008, 1:19 AM

Have you tried generating a replacement source MPEG file by smart-rendering the original source file out from Vegas ? (just in case there is problem with the original file, although this sounds like a Vegas internal problem.....)

There's a few pointers about smart-rendering SD MPEG in this thread - [url=http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=571225]

With MPEG smart-rendering it's possible to join shorter files together with no quality loss, so you could try rendering the project out in smaller pieces and then join them together in another project to create the final MPEG file.

Tony

Sab wrote on 2/7/2008, 7:04 AM

I had the exact same issue come up a few weeks ago. Mine was on a standard SD project with a lot of track motion and several layers. I tried everything suggested here but the problem remained. I ended up redoing the project in V7 with absolutely no problems. Go figure.

Mike

Sab wrote on 2/7/2008, 7:05 AM

Austin wrote on 2/7/2008, 7:19 PM

It seems like exporting sections of 5,000 frames or less at a time will allow it to run smoothly a couple times, then It locks up and I have to kill the process and start up where I left off.

owlsroost wrote on 2/8/2008, 12:29 AM

Mmm, this does rather sound like a 'memory leak' problem as Mike suggested - maybe you should log this as a support issue with Sony.

The 'threads' setting might still be relevant on a single-core CPU - an application can still spawn multiple threads, it just means that Windows manages the processing balance between them instead of the app itself.

Tony