Yes, my hardware is functioning fine. My TEMP file is on an SSD with roughly 50GB of free space and no errors reported by CHKDSK.

My DVDA project is BluRay disk with 5 menu screens with 4 - 8 links to separate video files on each page. All the rendered video came from Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Ver. 13 and plays back with no problem.

Note that I am using DVDA to create an ISO file on an HDD, not a physical BluRay disk. Creating a different DVDA project will not help me because I need to get all my content onto one BluRay disk.

How does DVDA crash? Grey-screen, PC shut off?

Vegas uses a lot of folders for temp files, including the boot device by default. Here's how you can see where they are to make sure you aren't running out of HDD space:

http://mmdv.com/vegastips/index.php?title=Main_Page#Check_paths_used_by_Vegas

DVDA simply disappears - no screen message, no leftover/partial ISO file, no Blue Screen, nothing. It just disappears. Windows Task Manager shows nothing either.

I am aware of the Internal tab on Vegas Options and I am not running out of disk space. (I wish it was something that simple.)

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling DVDA?

What type of video file are you using? If say AVC (.m2ts) try MPEG2 to see if the file type is significant. Also if file size is significant.

Nope - not done a re-install yet. Might try that tomorrow though. Problem is it takes 2 hours to see if the problem is still there.

My input videos are all 1920x1080 rendered by the Sony AVC template (M2TS files) or the "Send to DVD Architect" method. Those are M2V type files. The total size of the final BluRay disk is only 12GB - at least that's what DVDA tells me.

I've made a number of BluRay disks this same way in the past. So it's got to be something rather obscure..

"50GB of free space" isn't a great deal for a BD. Seem to remember reading that you need twice the size of the BD when DVDA is creating it. That wouldn't leave a lot left for other processes. Can anyone confirm/trash this?

I about choked when I saw the OP's reply that there was nothing wrong with his system and the he had that 50gb of free space! Huh?

50gb of space on what drive? out of how much total volume size on what drive?
where are your DVDApro temp directories?
What is your distribution of program files, data sources, and data destinations?

Let's get back to basics please!

Here is my drive layout with current free space

C: 128GB SSD with 73 GB free (All programs installed here)

F: 500 GB HDD with 78 GB free (All rendered video input to DVDA located here)

G: 1 TB HDD with 430 GB free (ISO files located here)

X: 64 GB SSd with 54GB free (My Docs + My Pics/Vids + All Temp files here)

If DVDA crashed with a shortage of disk space wouldn't it leave it's temp files behind somewhere? I've looked but can't find anything peculiar.

I don't recall seeing anything about DVDA requiring any specific amount of disk free space, but if there is something I'd like to have the reference.

Thank you Birk for responding - what we are examining is the methodology of your system - this may or may not lead to a solution of your current problem.

Overall I characterize your system as built on horribly small SSD footprints. I would choose nothing less than a 500GB SSD drive for any current build.

The ratio for drive C is virtually at the margin of safety and depending on how many temp files and how many small files are really there - I would upgrade.

Drive F is way overfull - your margin for a data drive should leave at least 35% free

Drive G is of no consequence as a destination drive

Drive X is not suitable - discard and replace

The answer is no and reference only by experience on the system build

Thanks for your reply VideoIT guy, I appreciate your feedback. But I do have some questions:


The ratio for drive C is virtually at the margin of safety and depending on how many temp files and how many small files are really there - I would upgrade.

There are no temp files on the C: drive because I have set the TMP/TEMP parameters to point to my X: drive. So I'm not clear on what "margin of sfety" you are referring to.


Drive F is way overfull - your margin for a data drive should leave at least 35% free

I know, I've been considering replacing it with a larger one because I just keep filling it up with new stuff. However, it's just a data drive, so what is the risk of filling it up even more? Seems to me as long as there is sufficient space for doing edits on individual files there should be no problems.


Drive X is not suitable - discard and replace

But why? Since it is an SSD it gives good R/W performance (which is why I put temp files there) and I've never had any problems since I moved all the TMP/TEMP off my C:

PS:

I'm re-running the DVDA ISO file creation right now. It's been running for 2:17:40 and is showing 24% Making Disk complete, 49% Rendering complete for one of the video files, and 10:56.33 time remaining. Right now my X: has 51.8 GB free and C: has 73.3 GB free.

Birk, I shall only respond to you in this way - my post above speaks for itself - you can ask why, why, why - but you pretty much answer your own questions. Trust me on this - your system particulary for temp file creation is really not what it should be.

Well, the first re-run crashed the same as before (which is what I expected.) So I changed the DVDA Temp pointer to point to my G: drive which has over 400GB of free space and ran it again. Needless to say it crashed the same way.

I checked the G: drive and there was nothing left other than a few empty directory names. Looks like I'll have to wait to hear back from Sony support to get to the next step.

You're going to have a long wait for Sony to fix your PC.

Go to the Reliability Monitor, double click on the critical event corresponding to DVDA stopping and see if there's a clue in the fault signature.

Does it always take two hours to crash? That sure sounds like some resource is being consumed.

Use the Resource Monitor to watch the memory. Select the memory tab then single-click on dvdarch in the process tab. Watch the Commit (kb) value. Note the number then come back after an hour. It should not change.

There's not much that can just abruptly end a program. Here's a long shot - Open the Task Manager, Processes tab, click on "View" then "Select Columns". Check the box for GDI Objects then OK.

In the Applications tab, right click on DVDA, then "Go To Process". Watch the GDI Objects value for the DVDA process. Once any process hits 10,000 GDI Objects, it’s terminated. As I said unlikely, it is a way that a program can end abruptly.

Thanks Steve, I'm beginning to think it has something to do with one of my input video files, but I have no idea which one it might be - there are about 8 of them. They were all generated from Movie Studio 13 and play ok individually.

Yes, it seems like DVDA always take around 2 1/2 hours to fail. I don't sit and watch so I'm not really sure of the exact time.

I like your ideas about using Resource Monitor to check on DVDA's status. I've not done anything like that before, but it is sure worth a try. SysInternals makes a very detailed Process Monitor program too, but it's a bit tricky to use. I might try that also. The problem is it logs everything and that would make a huge file considering DVDA has to run for more than 2 hours before it crashes. Maybe I can just start it at the 2 hour mark.

I checked Reliability Monitor but there is no data there. I think I may have shut that service off - I'll check that later today.

I've reported problems to Sony in the past and they have always got back to me and been of some help. In most cases I was able to figure out a resolution myself, but they sometimes got me on the right track when I was lost in the weeds.

I got all the resource monitoring software running OK and DVDA has been running for about an hour and a half now. Currently it's showing the following (slightly rounded) usages:

GDI Objects: 325 for the program, 18 for the renderer
Committed Memory: 778KB for the program, 94KB for the renderer
Used physical memory (total): 24% (My system has 16GB RAM)
Disk I/O: 89,500 bytes/sec
Reliability Monitor - no data (yet!)

It will be interesting to see what happens in another half hour or so.

WOW!

I was watching PerfMon's disk activity with DVDA open in the background when all of a sudden DVDA just disappeared. Boom! Gone.

And no traces left behind except a folder in my Temp directory called ~bdmux4916. This folder is 3.02 GB in size and has some sub-folders that look like a temporary BluRay disk layout. The MEDIA folder has 63 files of type avc, mui, tmp, m2v, and log.

I looked at the most recent log file - it was timestamped about 2 hours ago - and it had info about successfully rendering individual video frames. This doesn't seem to be at all connected with the current crash.

The most recent files are m2v, m2v.mui, and m2v.sfl files. If I can figure out which of my source video files these relate to I might have a clue about what to look at next.

" OR most likely you have some hidden damage in the video file preparation somewhere in the runtime timeline. Create a different disk for test with just a segment of the original file." that is from my first post in this thread in answer to your needs.

Take one timeline in VegasPro at a time - render the 1st half of it only to a Blu-ray stream etc... until you test all portions of your video segments.

Darn! I thought I had it - but I was wrong.

When I looked at the most recent m2v file in the Temp directory I saw that is was 2 seconds of one of my menu pages. This page has plain text title, 6 links to different locations in a single 2.3 GB m2ts file, and a background image that is a very large (26 MB) panorama jpg file. I thought maybe the file size was the problem so I resized it to 1920 pixels wide. This reduced the file size to about 0.85 MB. But DVDA still crashed the same way.

Oh well - nice try.

I'm now going to try videoITguy's suggesstion and create an ISO file from each of my input video files. There are 4 of these - 4.31 GB, 3.64 GB, 2.30 GB, and 1.35 GB.

If all 4 files render OK I'll still be stuck, but at least I'll know that's not the problem. If DVDA crashes on one of the files I'll go back to Movie Studio 13 and re-render it in a different format.

DVDA created ISO files OK from each of my 4 video files. So this tells me there is something in the original project's menu structure (main screen, 4 sub-menus) that is choking DVDA.

This project is the first one where I've used things like a live background and live link images, so I'll go over those first and see if I can find anything odd.

I know in the DVD spec there is a finite limitation to the menu structure ( remember its get rendered out as a special video of its own) - what I don't recall is if this limitation applies as tightly to a Blu-ray - but it could possibly.

So the hint here - a menu background must be of a very small and efficient size - take for example a near lossless PNG file of minimum size. Then the icons for menu links if animated must also be small samples within of itself.