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Sorry guys I know this subject has come up previously but I have been unable to find, the somewhat old I think, threads.

I have a 53 minute project, cut down from about 100 minutes from the camera. The vsp file is 800kb or thereabouts. Lots of crossfade transitions, a couple of pan/zoom filters. Nothing fancy in the titles except one animated title from the VS library. A couple of mp3's have been added together with some Smartsound tracks.

I usually render to DV first before conversion to DVD and them burning. This is only through habit as I used to rerecord the finished video back onto tape for storage.

Twice the render to DV has crashed at the 90% mark producing a 11.8Gb DV? file. The first time was the original project. After the first crash I took out all of the Smartsound tracks and tried again with identical results.

I also have the additional problem that the files produced cannot be deleted. I had that problem a couple of years ago but can't remember now how I eventually deleted them.

I am rendering as per the project properties, have downloaded the recent patch and DivX updates. I have not set up this computer for editing as per the old thread - does it still apply to Vista?- but did shut down the Internet.

The only conclusion that I come to is that the project is just too big??

Any suggestions?

Hi Peter,
Just a couple of things to look at.
The MP3s stand out a a possible cause. VS has had trouble with them in the past but not for everyone. Because it is a timecoded, compressed file it can be a weak link in the chain.
To get around it export an audio file from the whole project in PCM format. Then mute everything in the project and import the soundtrack you made...see how that goes. Or, convert the individual MP3s to PCM prior to adding to the project.

The file size your (almost) getting is about right for DV, that usually comes in at around 13gb per hour.

The only other thing I can think of is there were dropped frames on capture and every time you hit that point in the project VS chokes on the missing data.

Do you have plenty of hard drive real estate?

... And just as a footnote, don't even think about the size of the vsp file in relation to either the incoming or outgoing DV (or mpeg or anyother video file). A VSP files is only a text file for the project, a sort of road map which tells VS what video is actually in the project, where it is stored on the computer, what editing has been done to it, what music etc, transitions, titles have been added and where. That sort of thing.

Lance may be correct about the mp3, since DV by itself is normally one of the most stable and easily edited formats, and ditto for the rendering. It sounds to me that something is corrupt and the most likely culprit would be the audio additions if they are mp3.

As for Lance's last suggestion about dropped frames, that another possibility. I personally -- and others here -- use a small freeware program called WinDV to download/capture standard definiton DV. And I do so not because VS can't do it correctly, but because WinDV just does it better, and that includes it almost never having any dropped frames.

And just as an example, I was working on a project last night with a DV-AVI file and a bunch of BMP images, effects, transitions, and a Cool3D object on overlay tracks. I also had a M4a audio file on the timeline. The audio file was a purchased track from iTunes, hence the file type.

A couple of days ago when I first played the rough project after adding the audio file everything played fine. Last night I noticed the audio sounded a little strange, with some pops and such. Then, after the audio played for a few seconds VS would just crash and instantly disappear from the screen. I removed the audio track and then was able to continue my editing without any more crashes. Today I will convert the audio to a WAV file.

And please note that we are not saying that the audio file IS at fault, but only could be. Video clips, transitions video filters, etc. can all cause problems if they become corrupt.

Thanks a lot I will convert the mp3's to wav and try again. The music was actually bought from iTunes and converted to mp3 using some freeware so maybe that is where the problem came from.

WHAT A #@%&*!!? SAGA.

I haven't had any dropped frame issues with my digital camera so didn't think that was the problem.
- Converted the mp3's to wav - no change
- deleted all sound files - no change
- put together a short section with clips trimmed and transitions - worked OK
- put together some stills with transitions and pan/zoom - OOPS video filters had disappeared. Now it got REALLY frustrating.

I read various threads here and ended up, at various times:
- twice running the repair option from the program disc - no effect
- completely uninstalled and reinstalled the program
- video filters kept disappearing
- finally found the data under "Program Data" and made the "X' addition as suggested in one thread
- the filters came back but now uvs.ini was missing
- added "Advance=1" to uvs.ini as suggested in one thread - this seemed to work
- went back and deleted the "X" from the folder title - seemed to work OK

Finally divided the project in half and both halves rendered OK so put the two together.

So it seems that it was a project length/complexity issue after all.

Have yet to burn to disc.