FFmpegX will not encode (again!)

[Stendec]

Quite a while back I posted a thread here in which I said that FFmpegX never worked for me and always froze my computer.

Since then I have completely erased my harddrive and reinstalled everything from scratch. Unfortunatley I still had some problems, so I took out some RAM that I had suspected as being bad for a while. This seemed to work and I was able to use FFmpegX with almost no problems, until now.

For the past few days I have tried encoding all different types of video with all different types of settings and I have had no luck at all. I almost certain now that this is a hardware problem (the problem isn't just with FFmpegX, I haven't been able to encode any long video with any app) and I have a few questions.


* Can RAM "ware out"? The one stick of RAM I have in my computer now (512Mb) shipped with the computer and has never caused me problems before, but since I have taken out all the other RAM I'm not sure if this one has "died".
* Does the video card have anything to do with FFmpegX? Part of me says yes because it's dealing with video, but the other part says no because it's just processing data and not doing anything with the display.
* Could this be a problem with my actual processor? and if it is, how screwed am I?

If anyone has any other theories as to why I'm having this problem, software or hardware, please feel free to share them.

Thanks

[major]

The RAM may fault as any other electronic component. FfmpegX does not use the video card to encode, as it's just processing data as you correctly say. If the problem happen randomly and is not precisely repeatable with one specific application, even after having reinstalled a fresh OSX and zapped the PRAM (by holding the P and R keys at restart time), it could be best to show the problem to a technician for further inspection.

[Stendec]

OK, so I tried zapping the PRAM and that seems to have helped a lot, the encoding gets much further now, but now I'm getting a "CRC check failed!" error in the progress window. What does this mean?

[Mechcozmo]

If you have the Apple Hardware Test CD that came with your computer, insert it into the optical drive and restart. Press and hold "C" to start up off of the disk. Run the intensive test. See what it tells you. You can add in the other stick of RAM if you wish to confirm that it is really bad, if you desire.