Render stops at 49%

cliff_622 wrote on 9/23/2008, 8:42 PM
My PC:

-XP 32 bit SP3 (very clean install - editing machine only, not even web browsing)
-Dell Inspiron 530 Intel Q6600 (Core 2 quad)
-3 gigs of RAM
-ATI Radeon 3650 - latest ATI drivers.

My Vegas project.

- Project is 1920x1080i
- 4 min, 35 seconds long
- 2 HDV clips 4 AVCHD clips 1 HD Win Media 9 clip
- 5 mp3 files
- 1 Photoshop .psd file
- Tons of color corectors and MANY sony plugins
- Tons of chroma keying

Problem:

- Project previews fine. Built project in draft resolutions, used "best" quality for fine tuning...absolutely 100% perfect
- Rendering to "any" format causes Vegas to freeze at roughly 49%. Clock still counts but rendering stops.
- Tried HDV, AVCHD, Cineform, WMV and even DV
- Can select any part of project and will render fine but not entire project as a whole.
- Can render 1/3 then 2/3 and lastly 3/3. Renders OK...but not WHOLE project. (nothing in project that can't be rendered in smaller peices)

What the heck is going on? Tried turing off AVI multithreading. Tried changing rendering threads from 4 to 1. Dynamic RAM preview set to 512 then 256 then 64 meg....no luck. Processors run at about 65% or so during render with low & steady disk cashing numbers, low flat line,..then at 49% render processor drops to less than 2% on all 4 and then I need to force Vegas shutdown.

WTF! PLEASE HELP! (I'm going out of my mind here!)

CT

This project is less than 5 lousy min. If I am forced to render in three 90 second peices and stitch together,..I'm gonna be really disapointed.

Comments

Laurence wrote on 9/23/2008, 8:48 PM
You haven't by chance got your system set up with a small pagefile by chance (thinking that you don't need a big one because of how much RAM you have)?

How big is that .psd file? Overly large graphics files will stop a Vegas render.
MTuggy wrote on 9/23/2008, 9:20 PM
Whatever is at or near the 49% mark is the culprit - is that where your PSD file is in the project?

One workaround I have done is to prerender the areas that are likely to make Vegas choke- bit JPG images especially. Vegas has no trouble if it can jump to a prerendered AVI file (most of the time... not all unfortunately).

Mike
Robert W wrote on 9/24/2008, 2:10 AM
Have you tried this render with a one pass render? I have had this problem before with some two pass renders and found it stops at 99% with one pass renders. My workaround has been either to switch the render to different machine with it's own set of Vegas related fall out, or to switch off my second monitor which for some reason resolves a lot of issues. Otherwise, lots of ear wiggling and holding one leg in the air may resolve your problems.
Grazie wrote on 9/24/2008, 2:33 AM
Heat? Much maths = much CPU usage = much heat. How are your fans and general cooling flows within your PC? Check dust and fluff and so on. The 49% could just be the last straw. Just check dust and fluff off of the list.

We have all been here before now.

Grazie
craftech wrote on 9/24/2008, 2:43 AM
Turn off whichever plugins and filters you have applied to the project and see if it works. Then add them back one at a time and re-render.
Third party plugins?

John
Grazie wrote on 9/24/2008, 3:03 AM
. .I'd still like him to check on his physical "innards"

Grazie
ushere wrote on 9/24/2008, 3:21 AM
i'd like him to check his psd - convert it to png and try again

leslie
farss wrote on 9/24/2008, 4:52 AM
Why does everyone pick on PSDs?
I've done some moderately complex projects with compositing and 80% of the media was PSDs. I've also done projects where all media was HUGE stills as jpgs. Back in V4 days I did one of my first paying projects that was all monsterous tiffs, like 30MB per frame, no problems apart from long render times and slooow playback.

If these things are now really causing problems like I hear so often of late it kind of freaks me out. They seem not to have been a problem before, why now?

Aside from that I agree with Grazie, this does kind of smell like something burning. However as well as checking for fluff I'd suggesting checking CPU core temps. I see a few posts elsewhere about how easy it is to not fit the heatsinks properly onto the latest Intel CPUs and that can cause nasty problems. I'm no noob at hardware but the time I fitted the heatsink to my new Quad I'll admit it was such a chore I'm in no hurry to do again.

Bob.
JJKizak wrote on 9/24/2008, 5:17 AM
Typical CPU overheat or Vegas running out of memory. Open task manager processes and remove all unnecessary items, (reboot brings them all back) remove all the XP cutsey things that are not required, add another gig of ram then try again, If that doesn't work render your complex sections to AVI then substitute the AVI's onto the timeline then delete the old events from your project. This will reduce your memory usage to almost ziltch. Make sure you mesh the AVI's properly then render and it should fly through.
JJK
dibbkd wrote on 9/24/2008, 5:28 AM
Your video is 5 minutes, sounds like it's crashing after 2 1/2 min of rendering.

Try selecting 3 min (or so) and render that, see if that works.

This will tell you if it's crashing after 2 1/2 min, or if it's crashing at the half-way point. Maybe then select a little more and see when it crashes. It could be a bad RAM thing.
Ethan Winer wrote on 9/24/2008, 9:05 AM
> Whatever is at or near the 49% mark is the culprit - is that where your PSD file is in the project? <

Agreed. I once had this same problem, and at the spot Vegas stopped I had inserted a very large still photo. Once I reduced the photo to a more normal size the problem went away.

--Ethan
Grazie wrote on 9/24/2008, 9:18 AM
Anybody thinking that 49% is the turnaround point of a 2-Pass render? If this ISN'T a 2-pass then I'm incorrect. Just a thought though.

Grazie
ChipGallo wrote on 9/24/2008, 9:51 AM
I had a similar problem back in May. The solution for me was to render the HD file (Canon HV20) as an SD AVI first, and then include THAT in the time line. Nothing else got me past around 38% on a render to MPEG2 (DVD Architect template).

My system is an Intel 975 "boxer" motherboard, Quad Core Q6600 2.4Ghz CPU, 4GB RAM, Vegas 8b. Now I'm on 8c but I haven't tried mixing SD and HD files in the same project again.
Siby wrote on 9/24/2008, 2:08 PM
Do you have any large size pictures in teh timeline? If yes you to resize to small. I have experienced this problem due to the size of the picture.
fldave wrote on 9/24/2008, 7:18 PM
WMV files are killers. Maybe convert to AVI?

I'm 48 hours into a 76 hour render. I hope as hell the power doesn't go out.

Do you have a heat problem after X # or hours?

edited: Or maybe a FAT32 disk drive instead of HTFS ???
cliff_622 wrote on 9/27/2008, 7:18 PM
Problem solved:

Solution:

1.) Adjusted Windows cache settings (was stunned to see that it was not set for 1.5 times physical RAM)

2.) Reduced the size of .psd still graphic

3.) Lowered rendering threads to 1

4.) Increased RAM preview settings to max (1 gig)

Project render slow. I have a tremendous amount of audio plugins, video plugins and motion graphics (very high amount for a 4 min. video....insane amount of layered AV FX)

That 4 min. video took over three weeks to perfect....whew!

1080i project now renders slowly but perfectly to anything I want.

Thank you Sony Support Team and forum members!

CT : - )