Hi Paul,
sorry to hear you're having problems.
levisurfer501 wrote:The original source material was Hi8 Analogue video, transferred to a DVD at HQ, then imported from the DVD into VS via the "Import Digital Media" option.
I think that Corel have deliberately messed with the MPEG Optimizer and Smart Render from Version 11 on, causing them not to function if the video bitrate is above a certain value - yet that value is well below the permissible limit for the DVD video standard.
I suspect the motivation may be to prevent people smart rendering decrypted commercial footage, but the effect is to make life difficult if you wish to legitimately edit your own DVD recordings.
When I import from a DVD or DVD-VR disc, VS gives a default name to the file, e.g. VS12 might call it _071749~0.mpg. If I try to render that file, I find that neither Smart Render nor the MPEG Optimizer works. If I rename the file, however, removing the "~" tilde symbol, they both do work.
Whilst in VS10, this would always work, with VS11, the MPEG Optimizer will be greyed out, whilst in VS12, it merely shows grey bars, and if you click on the "Show Detail" button of the MPEG Optimizer, it shows the video bitrate (eg VBR - 9800 kbps) in red.
That seems pretty odd when the DVD is fully playable in any set top DVD player or on the pc DVD drive, and the video bitrate, though high, is still within the DVD standard.
levisurfer501 wrote:Project Properties:
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Upper Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
When trying to create the video file I have used the options "Same as Projcet settings" ; settings as follows
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Upper Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 9282 kbps)
Audio data rate: 384 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)
All those properties look fine - but the video bitrate might be enough to give the MPEG Optimizer a conniption and disable Smart Render.
I suggest you take a short sample video. I might import a single chapter from the DVD, and insert that into a new, blank project. Just click "Yes" when prompted to match the project properties to the inserted video clip.
Then trim the video to just a minute or so in length, and try some test output.
First of all, try using the MPEG Optimizer. If the bars are all green, everything should be fine. If the bars are greyed out, however, click on the "Show Detail" button and look for the video bitrate being highlighted in red.
You might then try to output to a video file with the same properties as the first clip. In the "Create Video File" dialogue box that pops up, click on the "Options..." button and make sure that the "Perform SmartRender" box is checked, which it normally will be by default.
Then try creating the file, but make sure to run "Windows Task Manager" set to the "Performance" tab. The one minute long file should be Smart rendered in just a few seconds, with very low cpu usage shown on Task Manager. If you see substantial cpu usage, and the file takes 40 seconds or more to create, you will know that Smart render is not happening.
To be fair, I'm not sure if the file not being Smart Rendered is causing your "insufficient memory" problem, but I think it's worth investigating. Any parts of your video with filters and transitions will not be Smart rendered anyway. Running Task Manager in the "Performance" tab, you can keep an eye on your resources as VS is working, and it might give a clue as to what is going wrong.
You might try turning Smart render off, too, if the parts of your project that use filters, transitions, titles etc make up a substantial portion of the project. I do find that VS12 renders mpeg2 faster than VS10. My old P4 2.8c, which used to render a one minute mpeg2 file in 1.5 minutes with earlier versions of VS can now just about do it in real time.
Like Ken, I've never had much trouble with all of the versions of VS from 7SE onwards, but I'm really hacked off with this apparently built-in refusal of VS to Smart render higher bitrate video!
