Render Problem

jeffagwm wrote on 12/2/2010, 7:02 PM
I am suddenly having difficulty rendering a file an wonder if any one can help with a solution.

The project I am working on is very complex with multiple layers of video, one track has Chroma Key, some tracks contain PNG image sequences with Alpha and also several of the tracks are not at full opacity. I will also be using Magic Bullet effect on the final render. I understand that what I am trying to do processor intensive and will take time to render. To make it easier my normal work flow is to render the multiple tracks down to a single file in short 10-12 sec segments. Then once I have rendered the entire sequence into a series of short clips I put them all onto an new track on the top of the timeline, mute all other tracks and and then apply the magic bullet effect. This has always worked well in the past.

The current project started well but now when ever I try to render a clip, the render process starts ok but just seems to stop somewhere part way through, though Vegas doesn't seem to realise it has stopped. The elapsed time is still counting up, the approximate time left counts down, but the frame number being rendered is no longer increasing. Eventually the remaining time counts down to zero and will just sit there until I eventually cancel the render and have to then restart Vegas to get it to function again. I am using Vegas Pro 9.0 on an Intel Core 2 Duo T7800 26.6 with 4GB Ram on Vista Ultimate 32 bit. All media files are on an external drive.

I tried moving my files to a new hard drive thinking that maybe there was a problem with the drive but get the same result. The file does not stop at the same frame every time. I have tried other clips from with in the same time line with the same result. I have how already successfully completed some renders from the same time line before the problem started.

I do have Vegas 10 on this same machine but am working in 9.0e since when I have finished the veg files needs to go on another machine as part of a larger project and that machine does not yet have v10.

I appreciate any insight people may have.

Thanks

Comments

Steve Mann wrote on 12/2/2010, 7:30 PM
I had the same thing happen to me in Vegas 5, and it turned out to be unused media in my project. Try clicking on the lightning bolt in the Project Media window.

Do you have enough hard disk space for your temp directory?
jeffagwm wrote on 12/2/2010, 9:17 PM
I have plenty of space available on the hard drive for my temp files. I will try removing any unused media from the project and see if that makes any difference. The confusing thing is that I have already rendered several sections from this time line.

When I do finally hit cancel, it doesn't seem to want to do anything and when I try to close and reopen Vegas I get the error message saying it is doing a background operation. It obviously thinks it is still rendering even though it isn't.
jeffagwm wrote on 12/2/2010, 11:02 PM
It seems I have not found a solution but have found a work around. There is plenty of room in my temp file and removing unused clips did not make any difference in trying to render in V9.0e. However if I open the project in V10 and save as a different name so I have both a v10 and a v9 version. I can render in the V10 version then import bring the rendered clips into v9 so I have a v9 version of the project to load on to my other machine. Not sure why I can render this project in v10 but suddenly not in v9.
Alf Hanna wrote on 12/2/2010, 11:11 PM
Hey APMM, my initial take on this is that you are trying to do really complex stuff, given your first pargraph. A processor intensive workload on a relatively underpowered machine. While there certainly may be other issues here, 4 GBs of RAM on a core duo in 32 bit seems like it might be struggling. Have you checked your perfmon during rendering?

Throwing 64 Bit 4 or 8 cores at it with 6 to 12 GBs or RAM might really help.

You may want to start planning an upgrade, or at least find a friend who might help test my hypothesis on a different machine. If I was in the area I'd be glad to have you bundle this stuff onto a hard drive and bring it over. Not sure your area, but I'm in the upper left hand corner of the map, not many folks here but us chickens and orcas.