it's a wmv and it shows 5kbs for the file size. I guess that I am out of luck on this one... back to the drawing board.

j razz

I'm curious what project requires a 12 hour render ?

If you were doing a 2-pass render then the first 50% of the rendering time is merely spent analyzing the file for the most efficient allotment of bits. The output .wmv file is created as a placeholder, but nothing is written to it until the second pass starts. Since you indicated 6 hours down and 6 to go, you had probably just gotten to the start of the second pass, hence such a tiny output file.

I think Vegas used to save partial MPEG renders, but doesn't any more. And even when it did, as already pointed out, nothing would (or could) be saved during the first pass, when nothing actually gets rendered.

Actually, I wasn't doing a two pass encode. It was just 1 for previewing purposes (I could not get the YUV to show the video- apparently I have the codec as I can encode to it, but I can't watch it on WMP or WMP Classic).

As for what render takes 12 hours- a complex one- a lot of track motion using 3D fields. Right now I am rendering out an uncompressed avi of 13 minutes (Some of it I can reuse later) and it has been going for 11 hours and says it has 17 to go.

edit: Checked on the render and the cpu was at 2%, the page file at 1.4gigs and the render was counting down but the frame count was not going up. The system is running cool... This is the first time I tried to do multiple veg files that were using track motion in each. Any ideas?

j razz

Your CPU should be pegged. Perhaps there is a bug related to nested VEG files -- I seem to remember something about that. What version of Vegas?

I attempted another render of a widescreen avi dv. It got to 98 percent with about 15 seconds left of actual video left. The processor went down to nothing again and the timer keeps on counting the elapsed time. The approximate time left is 0. It is not consistent in when it poops out, but then again, I haven't been consistent in what I am encoding to- but should that make a difference?

So, I guess my only other option is to render out each veg to avi and then join them up in a seperate project. Anybody else experiencing problems with multiple nested vegs and a seperate audio track?

John, I am using 6d.

j razz

Okay, I was able to get some of what I needed minus the last 15 seconds or so that was showing in the preview window But when I go to watch the file, it only shows 4 minutes or so of the footage, even though the preview window showed that it was near the end of the 12 minute video (within seconds)- what is up with that? Due to it pooping out, did it just cut me short on that? I saved as a dv avi. Question: When you encode to avi is the sound the last thing to be encoded? both times the avi has failed, there has been no sound. Just curious.

j razz

jrazz, this just happened to me last week; there should be a thread about it, (at this time #232, Rendering stops dead . . .)

"I'm curious what project requires a 12 hour render ?"

Wait till you try to render a HDV project :-)

Question: Can you Nest a veg that has another veg nested in it? That is what I was doing. I went back last night and rendered that file out so that I was not layering the nests. Maybe this might help but I am unsure as last night I rendered that file out and it completed, but Vegas was no where to be found. (no, I didn't have the box checked to shut down after rendering).
As for the cooling, I seriously doubt that is my problem as (and this probably sounds ghetto) I have a dryer vent ran from a wall unit piped directly into the computer and it is cold in the case. There is no condensation either, so I know it is not getting moisture in there. Before you ask, I do not usually run it this way, but in trouble shooting, I am about willing to try anything!

j razz

J,

This probably is not helpful at all for this project, but for the sake of conversation, maybe next time (if you have 2 or more pc's) you could use network rendering and render to avi one veg per machine at the same time, then bundle them up in a master render?

Thanks for the suggestion David. I tried it once and I was not able to get network rendering to work for me. I have 1000gigabit ethernet, but I did not get it to work. That is not saying much as I did not put much time into it at all and I just didn't see much of a benefit as I found it only worked for avi and at the time, I was not rendering to avi.

j razz

I've seen this happen lots of times. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you are hitting the same address space limitation that I've been hitting with more complex projects. You mentioned that your virtual memory was up to 1.4 Gigs. That's the key. As is mentioned in a few other threads, Vegas is a 32 bit application, which means it is limited to 2 GB of address space (virtual plus physical RAM used). And the operating system itself takes up some of that 2GB of memory space with system dlls, etc. (In my usage I found that Vegas lost about 600 MB of address space to the 32 bit version of the XP operating system).

I'm running Vegas on 64 bit Windows XP x64. Vegas still has the same 2GB address space limitation (because it's still a 32 bit app), but the operating system doesn't take up any of that memory space. This helps a lot - I am able to use about 600 MB more address space before Vegas craps out. But some of my more complex projects will still cause Vegas to stop rendering.

How can we deal with this and get our projects finished?
Edward Troxel described (in a different forum) a workaround. He said that you break up the project into multiple Veg files, then you go into each Veg file and render it to a new track (within the same Veg file) as an avi. Then you mute all tracks in the nested Veg except for the track with the rendered file. Now when you go to render the master file, you've made it easier because you've already rendered big pieces of it.

I would speculate that this works because the biggest memory hog is the effects, filters, etc, and you aren't tackling this all at once in the master Veg when you've rendered out big chunks to avi in the nested veggies.

It sounds like maybe you've already reached this conclusion - I just wanted to offer some of my own experience (and sympathy!) on the issue.

How Can Sony Fix This in The Long Term
If Sony compiled Vegas as a true 64 bit application and we started running it in 64 bit Windows (XP x64 or Vista), we wouldn't be limited to 2GB of address space.

In the meantime, there is a compiler switch option that the Vegas development team could use when they build the Vegas that we use today. It's called /LARGEADDRESSAWARE and it would allow Vegas to have more address space ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/wz223b1z.aspx ). I don't know why they haven't done it. With this, 32-bit Vegas could use almost 3GB of memory space.