should I apply service pack for Pro X3

[Black Lab]

Ok ... so the project now renders in DV - 16:9 ....

Now I can get back to trying to render in a higher resolution.

Going back to earlier in this thread, why are you trying to render to HD when you are using MPEG1 video clips and photos? You can't make something out of nothing. It's no surprise to me that it is failing to convert MPEG1 to HD!

[slyttle]

Well ... life is good again. It rendered in both HDV - 720p and HDV - 1080i

Your suggestion of separating the video and sound in to two files and then laying them down in a separate project is a great debugging technique that I will use in the future.

I am still getting used to all the tricks / quirks of this program ...

I will still put in the time to figure out why I can't render in other formats like BlueRay - MPEG2, because sooner or later I am going to need those.

But in the mean time I am a happy camper.

Thanks for all your help and support.

-Sheldon

[slyttle]

I was a bit premature in saying everything was fine ...

For some bizarre reason, it completed rendering, but missed one image and a key transition (the album flip transition) ... it rendered both fine in DV

.... that was yesterday ...

Today, it seems to render that picture, but after adding more to the video last night, it started crashing on a EVERY transition (MaskE- Mask, and Paper Collage, disolve) in the middle of the project ... an area that I definitely didn't touch....

At least I am able to issolate the problem thanks to Trevor's suggestion of separating the audio and video, and then I can selectively pull out bits in issolation to narrow down the problem.

However, if transitions are crashing, I really have no idea how to overcome this.

RE: Jeff's observation, the MPEG1 only represents 25 seconds out of 15 minutes, and most of the pictures have high resolution.... trust me, it looks MUCH better in HD .... also, it isn't crashing in the MPEG1 section, and seems to render it just fine.

-Sheldon

[slyttle]

Ok ... I finally got it to render on HDV by using a trick that I believe Trevor mentioned in another thread ....

Not only did I split the auto and video apart, but I broke the video into two section and rendered them separately.

Then I reconstituted everything back into one file by creating a new project, adding the two rendered MPEG videos and the single audio track together.

I combined the two MPEGs with the same transition that got deleted when I split the video, and then rendered them all together.

Pretty cumbersome, but at least it seemed to work ....

As to why I couldn't render it all in one file ... well .. who knows ... I guess you can't expect a $100 product to perform like one that costs ten times as much..... it still does pretty well.

-Sheldon