Render Size Limit?

RicCed wrote on 9/26/2005, 8:25 PM
This might be a simple one but there is nothing in the manual that talks about rendering size file limits...........

I have a video approximately 1.5 hours in length. I let it render the other night and it broke the file into 4 seperate avi files - the first three approx 4.188 GB and the last one 2.5 GB.

Is it normal for the file to be broken into several files? I'd rather all be one file so when I use DVDA, it is easier to set chapter points, etc.

If any of you know what I need to do to render to one file, please help. I'd like to rerender tonight if possible.

Thanks!

Ric

Comments

Tim L wrote on 9/26/2005, 8:52 PM
I think you are running up against a FAT32 disk format limitation. I believe that FAT32 has a max file size of 4GB.

With NTFS (NT File System) -- which Windows XP supports, and which probably is supported by a few others (Win2k?) -- individual files can be much larger. I don't know how large (I'm sure Google could tell us), but I think the size limit is well beyond what we need for video editing.

However, I think VMS and other editing programs are pretty good at automatically handling these multiple files, and treating them as though they were a single large file.

(But to be honest, I've never actually dealt with them that way, so I don't really know what problems you might encounter...)

Tim L
RicCed wrote on 9/26/2005, 9:04 PM
Tim -

Thanks for your reply. I guess I should have given a few more specs:

AMD2800+
512MB RAM
2x80G Hard Drives
Windows XP Home

I did a quick search and there was a 4 Gig restriction on FAT32. But according to my specs, I shouldn't be running into this??

I really appreciate your feedback. Has anyone else run into this and, if so, what did you do to fix it?

Thanks again!
RicCed wrote on 9/26/2005, 9:24 PM
Well, after searching the forum for the FAT32 issue, it turns out I probably need to reformat my hard drive to the proper format (seems like the dopes that put this machine together didn't use the most up to date format).

Anyway, time to go out and get that external backup (finally) and thanks for the guidance Tim and I'll take it from here.

Ric
Chienworks wrote on 9/27/2005, 5:00 AM
Windows XP has a utility built in to convert the format from FAT32 to NTSF without losing any data. I've used this successfully quite a few times and never a hitch yet. It does take a while so you'll probably want to let it run overnight.

WARNING! Just because i've never seen this utility lose data doesn't mean that it's safe. ALWAYS BACKUP before running something like this just to be safe. The convenience is that, if it does work properly, and it should, all your files will still be intact afterwards and you won't have to restore.

Liam Vegas posted these instructions from Windows Help a while back:
djcc wrote on 9/27/2005, 6:32 PM
Yup - agree with Chienworks.
RicCed wrote on 9/28/2005, 5:05 AM
Thanks everyone for you help!! This was a very easy fix and I would have never figured it out without your assistance.

The file rendered last night (19.5 GB) with no issues!

Ric