Project starts to render then stops

[jparnold]

I am attempting to re-render a project using the characteristics of the 'first video clip' ie AVCHD 1920X1080X50p - I had incorrectly rendered it to an MPEG 1920x1080x25 output in the past.

I have attempted to do this a few times and the result is the same.
It starts to render with the 'output status bar' showing 'rendering 0% complete" and then slowly all the way to over 80% (I only looked at it a few times so don't know exactly how for its gets).
During rendering a file appears in the folder where it is supposed to be BUT then somewhere at the end of rendering it stops , there is NO ERROR displayed, there is NO window displayed stating that the file has been rendered and the file in the folder has disappeared. There seems to be plenty of spare space on the drive (eg free space is 32GB and the length of the video is around 21 minutes so I expect the filesize would be no more than 5GB.
Any ideas what the problem could be? Is there a log file created which would contain any errors and/or reason for failure?

[lata]

Hi John
Where are you saving the file to
If its a USB memory stick then that will be Fat32 file format as such has a 4 Gb file limit
formatting the usb to NTSF would avoid the 4Gb limit, but I doubt the tv would read NTSF, maybe worth a try.

As you say the file should be 5Gb then I guess the 4 Gb limit would be approx 80%



I think this may be another stumbling block in your attempt to play the video on the tv

As a thought If you have a Smart TV connected to your home network, could you stream the video from PC to TV.

[jparnold]

Hi Trevor
NO not a usb stick and in any case when you format a usb stick to NTFS file system you can place files larger than 4GB on them as you point out.
I was rendering to a hard drive which also is NTFS.
I am sure it has something to do with this particular project as I have been 'converting' other old projects and re-rendering some with even larger files which work ok.
Since I created this thread I have found something VERY interesting which might explain it AND it shows that changing project properties does something the the contents of the project which I though was not supposed to happen.
Compare the next two images which are screen shots of the END of the project the first one when the project properties were DVD (the original) and the second image of the SAME project AFTER I changed the project properties to AVCHD. NOTE that the VIDEO on the timeline has SHRUNK in length by 10 seconds.
Could it have anything to do with the fact that there are a few clips on the video track from my GoPro look alike camera which has different video characteristics (eg fps is not 25 or 50) from the majority? And would this be causing VS to 'bomb out' at the end of rendering?

[lata]

Very strange……….
As far as I know when we change the project properties frame rate the durations of our videos remain the same, the program will add frames to the video to retain the length
For your older project you used DVD properties 25fps was used, adding a 50P video and the program deletes every alternate frame, video durations would not be changed
Now you update the project properties to 50P, the program now adds the frames to the timeline, as those are available in the original video file those are used and no duplicates.
So changing the frame rate should not affect the length of video clips, something you have proven incorrect.
I do not know what is going on here.
Looks like a 3 second shift
If you set the project back to DVD 25fps, then render to 1920 x 1080 x 50P does that complete without error.

There is something you could try it is using a nesting process, we add a VSP to the library, then we can drag that clip to the timelines which opens showing all clips and edits in a new project, First I will have to test that using X10

[lata]

Ok I tested the X10 nesting process and it worked ok
Try this
1 / create a new library folder to hold the old VSP
2 / open the old project the DVD 25fps to make sure it works without any re-link errors.
3 / File New Project to clear the timelines
4 / Import the DVD 25fps to the library in the same way as importing any video file.
5 / Set the Project Properties to match your 1920 x 1080 50P, simply import a 1920 video to Show Messages
6 / Remove the clip to clear the timeline
7 / Drag the DVD 25fps VSP from the library to the timeline, that should import the clips and look identical to the original project.
8 / Save the project giving it a slightly different name, then render

You can now compare the length of the library clip and the project length, when I tested this they were identical.

As an aside, note that if you have used Mercalli stabilisation then you will have to analyse the clips again, simply changing the frame rate will cause that.

[jparnold]

Thanks Trevor,
I have discovered the reason which is most strange.
Firstly this is a flow chart of what I did and what I found and fixed -

I now have tried to render the project WITHOUT changing the project properties to AVCHD, XAVC S MP4 HD and MPEG-4 AVC (the last successful type I did a few months ago) and each one ended up exactly the same. No error message, no message to indicate to the rendering was complete, and no output file.
This got me concerned as I wondered how was I able to successfully render to MPEG4 in the past.

I decided to remove the video clips from my Go Pro look alike and try again but in looking for where they were in the project/time line I found something EXTREMELY interesting which I am thinking is the problem. There was ONE missing video clip and one which was a fraction of a second long (instead of about 3 seconds). The transitions (cross fade) were still on the timeline.

I decided to remove the extremely short clip and add the clips back.
When I did that I remembered that I had originally changed the playback speed (shortened the playback speed as it is of a boat in a lock) of one of the clips after splitting the audio so that it was not affected by speeding up the video.

So what could have caused one these two video clips to disappear and be replaced with just an empty area in the timeline and the length of the other to a fraction of a second?

I then rendered to AVCHD without changing the project properties and IT WORKED!

Below is a screen shot of the timeline where the clips went missing - just blank spaces! How can this happen I wonder?

[lata]

Hi John
Thats good to find the problem.

I was there with you regarding the Speed Timelapse, that was gonna be my next query, I don't think it would like changing the project frame rate and for your project it didnt.
I had tested that with my test 25 DVD project but could not see any difference, could be that the project was created with the X10 timelapse, must admit i did not try that.

Not to worry its working, strange though.

[jparnold]

Yes I was glad to track down the problem but it still has me scratching my head especially I was able to render a (DVD) movie last year using the same vsp project and now it is 'broken'. I just checked out the backup (to an external SSD drive) I have and it too is 'affected'. I had not done anything with that project since I successfully originally rendered it last year.

If it was caused by applying 'speed/timelapse change' to video clips then maybe I have found a BUG? Should I report it? Where?

Maybe I should bight the bullet and accept Corel's upgrade to 2020 for just $A38 and load it into 2020 to see if the problem still exists OR do you think that the problem is within the vsp file and therefore the problem started when I saved the project?

It would be absolutely great to be able to 'disect' a vsp file and get every video and audio clip showing the filename, length and any filters applied eg what I would call the file DISASSEMBLED.
Having said that is there a method to search a project for say a particular video clip instead of having to slowly go through the project looking for it eg 'find xxxx.mts'. I know that clips in the library are marked with a green tick to denote that they are in the project but that doesn't tell me where.
I 'looked' at the vsp project file using a hexadecimal/binary editor but the only 'data' which was legible (as alpha/numerics) was the names of the audio clips I had used.

I am now wondering if this was caused by the fact that the projects were created with an earlier version of VS (X6 I think) and now I am importing it into VS10 as I have also noted that I used Picture in Picture (to zoom video clips in the overlay track) in some other projects and the rendered video does not display the same as it used to. I have now changed picture in picture to use Advanced Motion instead. Is it a known fact that projects created with earlier versions don't work the same in later versions of VS?

[lata]

Hi John
I have had problems with crashes when using project from X10 to open in 2020, yet new projects using the same video files created with 2020 work quite well, so yes the problem may be the fact that the project was made with X6 and opened in X10. I had not realised the original program was X6, I assumed all were using X10. Then the project settings are being changed from SD to HD may not help, that is the reason why I gave you details of using the Nesting options.

Speed Timelapse could be the problem, in fact any effects we use, the newer program could have had updates to Speed Timelapse which your old vsp does not support, and that goes for many of the plugins where they have been updated. Boris Graffiti for instance is no longer provided with 2020.

Report it as a bug, I doubt Corel would do anything as it’s X10 as its 4 years old and no longer receiving updates, in fact a X6 project.

Ok when you said you checked the backup on the SSD drive, was that project the original DVD project before changing the project settings to HD?

Updating to 2020, I think you will have the same issues.
One thing of note, any projects opened using 2020 and saved or any new 2020 projects cannot be opened in an earlier version.
Give the trial version a run, it has its limitations, I doubt the trial will open your projects, if you try, create a copy of your project to test with 2020
$A38 is not a bad deal, Its whether you need a new version.

[jparnold]

Thanks Trevor,
I think the problems I have found using picture in picture and the speed timelapse have nothing to do with changing the project properties as when I loaded the backup vsp file the project properties were as I had used (ie DVD) YET the problems were present before I did anything.
I must then assume that while Corel state that projects created with older versions are (generally) compatible with recent versions (but not the opposite 'direction' as you also mentioned) it isn't perfectly true. Yes you can load them but some things such as video filters may not be correct.

I won't advise Corel as they probably aren't interested in 'issues' in X10 and I won't update to 2020 as at this point in time X10 has as many features as I want.

I found that I still had VS6 installed on my older PC so loaded the project which I had problems with for two video clips which I had applied an increased speed to. There were NO problems when Ioaded the same project into VS6 (only when loaded into VS10.
That sort of proves to me that there are 'issues' loading projects into VS10 which were created using VS6.

I also noted that (VS6) within project properties there are only two 'formats' available to choose from MPEG and AVI and that is why when loaded into VS10 they show as DVD I guess. All the projects I created before this year I did with VS6.
Also in SHARE VIDEO (VS6) there is not the ability to select/change the video data rate and as such VS10 is better BUT only if you don't try to import a project created using VS6 unless you scan the entire timeline looking for 'problems.
Lastly I also noted that you can drag the scrubber along the timeline as fast as you can but in VS10 it is quite slow even though I have quite a fact system. Maybe VS10 does some sort of rendering as you do this.

In paying back the rendered video (done with VS10) on my TV through my BuRay player (to plug in the USB memory stick) I noticed a few times that the video was not playing smoothly especially when there was a lot of movement and also when there were transitions (cross fade). What could cause this? Rendered at a video data rate too high for the playback equipment? Some of my re rendered videos were done with maximum bit rate of 28000Kbps instead of 25000kbps?

Lastly (I didn't want to start another thread). According to the manual for my video camera the VBR (video data rate) at 50p (recording/playback mode) is 28Mbps. If I convert that to Kbps it is 3500000 kB/s. The default video bit rate for AVCHD (in VS10) seems to be 25000kbs which is less than 1%. Surely this is not the same as the VBR for recording/playback mode with my camera.
I just want to set the maximum (variable) data rate during rendering to the maximum my camera can record so I don't loose any detail. What do you use?


Stay safe and hopefully the vaccine will be released sooner than later.

[jparnold]

I found a good web site which has explained a few things about video bit rates and it is at https://help.encoding.com/knowledge-bas ... deo-files/. Worth a read especially as it states that VBR gives better video results than CBR which seems to be 'handled' by VS ok. I remember the 'old days' when using TMPGEnc when it was up to the user to select how to render - do you?
There is another wb site which shows how to determine a video file's data bit rate (easy using properties of a file) https://www.howtogeek.com/323686/how-to ... and-macos/. I had downloaded a few apps such as BitRateViewer and MediaInfo.