VS 10 gives up rendering

[ranazarian]

Well my love hate relationship with this product goes on...

Me: VS 10 SP1 XP SP2 Intel Pentium D 2GHZ 2GB DDR 100 GB HD

The love part:
I have pieced together a decent project of video clips, stills, transitions, and graphics. It's about 20 minutes long. In my estimation VS10 has many nice and powerful features.

The hate part:
The program now crashes in timeline mode about every 5 minutes. My PC is quite new. My drive is defragged. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the software twice following the instructions on this board, with no net effect. Now an even greater problem. It will no longer render an output video. I'm aiming for MPEG-2. It starts up and gets to about 30% then just stops. It doesn't crash. It doesn't complain. It just stops rendering and puts out nothing. I've read through most of the relevant messages and tried many of the things (switching to a different destination and working drive, swap file size, reinstall, shut down all other apps, antivirus, etc.) Now a chance to vent. I am in a technical field, and if we released a product that appears to be as routinely unstable as this, we would not have jobs. Many thanks to the people on this board who are trying to help. I appreciate it.

[Ron P.]

Hi Ranazarian,

This can be very frustrating, however if the program is so unstable then I would think I would not be able to run it. I've been running the program since before it's release (beta tested) and have not experienced this sort of problem.

What we need to do to figure this out is determine the following:

1. Where did your video clips come from and how did you get them onto your computer? (Camcorder, VCR, DVD, internet download)
2. What are the video properties of your video clips?(With a clip on the timeline, right-click, select properties and post them)
3. What are your Project Properties? Go to File>Project Properties or press Alt + Enter. Please Post them.
4. We know you have a 100gig HDD, how much Free Space? The amount of space needed to edit video can be enormous depending on the format being used. Full uncompressed AVI, uses about 65 gig per hour of video, DV is slightly compressed and uses 13 gig. Then to work or edit the video you will need at least double that amount of free, unfragmented space.

Just for future use, the board has provided a information section in your profile. Completing that information allows us to review your system for possible conflicts, and you would not have to retype it each time. Just pressing that System button opens a pop-up window revealing that information.

[ranazarian]

Thanks Ron - I will update my system info. Answers to the other questions.
1. The clips come primarily from digital camcorders from which others have made MPEG 2 discs. There are also a number of MP3 clips in the audio tracks.
2. They are from different sources and have differing bit rates all above 4500. They are upper field first and MPG layer 2 audio. I also have a small amount of AVI (maybe 30 seconds). There are lots of stills in JPG format at about 2MB per still.
3. Project properties - NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Upper Field First
(DVD-NTSC), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 6000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo
4. I have 60GB + free on this drive and my other drive that I've tried has 90GB + free. My resultant video from the last time it rendered completely, is about 1.1GB. It has successfully rendered the whole thing before. I was just adjusting the audio levels when it decided to give up. I could try walking out my changes but it takes about 45 minutes to find out if it's going to render or not.

As always - thanks for the help

[ranazarian]

PS: I know that with stills Ulead recommends using frame based. I have tried frame based and it does not seem to make a difference for my issues.

[Ron P.]

Ok first you seem to be mixing differing formats. One such mixture that could cause problems during the render, is MPEG2 and AVI unless it is full uncompressed, is only a container or wrapper, that could contain any number of formats, such as MPEG-4, DivX, or Xvid. The latter 2 can really cause a problem, since they are highly compressed and not intended to be edited. When you mix one of those formats with any other in a timeline, and then try to render VS will probably choke.

For example when VS is recoding the MPEG2, then comes to a DivX clip, it will need to uncompress it, then re-encode to MPEG2 if that is your intended final format.

If you follow the recommended procedures laid out in the top sticky of this forum, you will find that the project properties need to match the video clip properties throughout your editing. Failing to do so, may produce out of sync and reverse field order issues.

Next I noticed the usage of MP3 audio. While there are those that manage to use MP3, others have reported problems. The recommended audio file format to use with VS is *.WAV. This has been noted to be a cause for VS not being able to render a file.

Using a separate physical hard drive as the working folder is recommended. This lessens the strain on a single drive, to do all the read/write during editing and rendering. While the drive that hosts your program reads, the working folder drive would be writing.

If your final product is to be DVD, and since you are located in NTSC area, then you should not use MPEG audio Layer-2. DVD compliant audio for NTSC is either PCM (LPCM) or Dolby. LPCM (Linear Pulse Code Modulation) is like a bitmap image file, uncompressed, and requires more disc space, thus taking from the availble space for video. Dolby however produces very good quality audio with smaller file sizes.

[GuyL]

Try rendering out the different formatted files on their own to the same properties as your main project. Then insert them where they need to be and render the final file. I would also recommend the same for audio that is a different format.

While some have been successful with multiple formats in a project it can cause problems.

[ranazarian]

OK so the recommendation is get everything in the same format before trying to render it all out. I'll go to work on that. I may be mistating this, but my AVI's came from camcorders and are DV type 2. I will convert them to MPEG-2 then reinsert them matching my project properties. Is it important that they all have the same bit rate or max bit rate? I'll also convert my MP3's to wav and target Dolby for the final output because I eventually want to get to DVD. Thoughts on frame based vs. upper field first? I think I've seen that lower field first is recommended, but many of the clips came to me already as upper first.

Thanks - for all the help

[Ron P.]

This is where it can get confusing, when you have many different sources.

1. The preferred format for editing is DV/AVI. So I would do all editing to the video clips that are DV/AVI in that format, then render that to DVD compatible MPEG-2. Now if you want to join that file with the other MPEG-2 files, start a new project, and bring in all your MPEG-2 video clips.

DV/AVI type 2 takes a computer with considerable muscle to handle it. Most video from DV camcorders use DV-AVI type-1.

Now comes the possibility of the real trouble maker... UFF (upper field first), LFF (lower field first), or Frame Based field orders. The General Rule of Thumb is that DV is always LFF, while Analogue is UFF. This is dictated by your source. If you captured from a DV camcorder, (digital source) then the field order should be LFF. Capturing from a VCR, which is generally analogue, would be UFF. If you are using still images only, and/or just going to play the video on a PC, then you would use Frame Based. Confused yet??? Well you might be in a second...

Now if you hook your VCR to your Digital camcorder that has Pass-through, or a device such as a Canopus Pro-Coder, or AdsTech, something that has the capability of digitizing (converting analogue to digital) then you would use LFF. Even though your original source was analogue, it was converted to digital, before it was transfered to your PC, so therefore the field order would be LFF, and not UFF. However just like everything else there are exceptions to the rule.

So now we know that the formats should match, and the field orders. Should the bitrates match too? Yes, as much as possible. This is just my opinion, but if you can not keep the bitrates the same as your project and any other clips then try using the VBR during your render. It may or may not help.

[GuyL]

OK so the recommendation is get everything in the same format before trying to render it all out. I'll go to work on that. I may be mistating this, but my AVI's came from camcorders and are DV type 2. I will convert them to MPEG-2 then reinsert them matching my project properties. Is it important that they all have the same bit rate or max bit rate? I'll also convert my MP3's to wav and target Dolby for the final output because I eventually want to get to DVD. Thoughts on frame based vs. upper field first? I think I've seen that lower field first is recommended, but many of the clips came to me already as upper first.

Thanks - for all the help

Actually, you want your project and video clips to be DV/AVI and all your clips inserted into the project to be of the same format if you can help it.

[Ken Berry]

To carry on Ron's comments about Field Order, that is the first thing I noticed in your original post: "where did the Upper Field First property come from", I asked myself.

Ron's explanation was accurate, but didn't include the really vital bit: if you have a project which includes both upper and lower field first video, you are heading automatically for trouble. One or the other will not play properly. You can have video which uses UFF on the same disc as one using LFF, but they cannot be in a single project. They have to be handled separately (or one has to be converted to the other before combining them in one project).

One other thing that wasn't totally clear to me was whether you are, after editing, going to Share > Create Video File > DVD, or jumping that and going straight to Share > Create Disc > DVD? The latter would not be following our recommended procedure and requires VS to render your project on the fly into DVD-compatible mpeg-2, as well as the already complicated task of multiplexing the video and audio, preparing the menus and burning the disc. If you add to that the complications caused by mixing two incompatible formats/field orders in the same project, then you are simply asking for trouble.

[ranazarian]

My UFF clips are coming from NTSC DVD's that others have provided me. Although they started in digital camcorders, this is how they are coming to me. I still have a couple of questions:
1. Should I convert all the MPEG-2's to AVI for editing or should I convert everything to UFF since that's where 80%+ of my clips are coming from? It appears the guidance is get everything into uncompressed AVI?
2. Is there something I'm doing wrong when I grab my clips from DVD that's causing me to get UFF? It doesn't seem that I really have a choice.
3. When working with AVI as the editing format, I assume I don't want any compression. I have about 20 compression choices - I take it the point here is to use NONE until ready to output.

Up til now, I have not tried to make DVD's - I'm only interested in computer playback. Eventually I will go to DVD and I will follow the guidelines and do it in two steps. I can't seem to find a tutorial that ponders the possibility of having so many format sources (I have DV from camcorders, UFF off of DVD - I assume because that was analog, and LFF MPEG2 clips from discs in addition to my JPEGs). Thanks for helping me sort this out.

[GuyL]

What is important is to be consistent. For trouble free processing you want to have the clips used in the project to match the project properties. As far as converting file formats and field order, it can be done but usually degrades the quality of the original.

My recommendation would be to set your project properties to match the main content track. With that said, if you plan on doing major editing then some have had issues with editing MPEG in a significant way - myself included.

[ranazarian]

Thanks Guy. This is the rub of the whole thing I think. Most of my video is UFF MPEG-2 coming from NTSC DVD. So, to minimize conversion, I took the 20% that wasn't and converted it to MPEG-2 UFF. I do have 1 or 2 small AVI clips. I have then set my project properties to MPEG-2UFF and that's what I've been editing in. But Ulead seems to be choking on this. It crashes every 10 minutes or so in timeline mode. Do others think I would be more stable converting it all to AVI and working in that? That's going to be painful for me.

[GuyL]

I'll let others who currently edit in MPEG answer that as they are probably more qualified on the current version of video studio.

I use to edit exclusively in MPEG a few years ago before hard disk space was problem. I did create several great projects but I frequently saved (for fear of crashes) and I did have to redo several projects for audio sync problems and "noisy" video.

This was back in version 7 so I'm not sure what has or hasn't changed. I can say that since I've switched to AVI, and subsequently DV/AVI (I use to capture analog footage using huffyuv AVI), I've had little problems in VS7, VS9, and now VS10. I did have some problems in VS10 that seem to have been fixed by the recent service pack.