Pinnacle studio problem Uggggg

[sseligson]

I have been having problems rendering in any format AVI and MPEG. What happens is that the rendering starts and then just hangs in the same place for hours and hours until I quit. If I delete the scene that is stops on, it finds another place to stop. If I delete all of the transitions the rendering works fine. But why do I need pinnacle if I can't edit and add transitions. I contacted tech support and got the following answer.

There is more than one type of render hang problem. To identify the solutions you need to try, please look at the 3 failure modes below and follow the troubleshooting steps under that heading.

The failure modes are.

Case 1. Rendering stops immediately after it starts
Case 2. Rendering stops randomly in a project. It typically does not stop in the same spot if rendering is attempted multiple times.
Case 3. Render stops at the same spot in a project no matter how many times rendering is attempted. There is more than one cause of this failure mode.


Case 1. Rendering stops immediately after it starts

If the hang is immediately after pressing the "Create" button, them there is some configuration problem(2) on the system. Try rendering the demo file Photoshoot.mpg and if this fails, then the problem is confirmed as a system issue. (Since we have not been able to reproduce a render problem with the photoshoot file with our in-house testing).

Solutions
- (C1.1) uninstall, regdelete and reinstall Studio,
- (C1.2) uninstall other software that might conflict with Studio (i.e other video editing software, other video codecs, etc.),
- (C1.3) make sure that you have installed any Service Pack for the version of Windows you are running.
- (C1.4) reinstall Windows on top of itself. In XP this is called Repair.


Case #2 Rendering stops randomly in a project.

If the render hangs are random, even on the same project, then this failure may be due to background tasks, power management or a thermal problem in the computer.

Solutions would be to
- (C2.1) check the hard drive for errors and defrag it,
- (C2.2) end any background tasks (i.e. virus checkers, fax modems, etc.)
- (C2.3) turn off any power management,
- (C2.4) install cooling fans in the computer case.

Case #3. Render stops at the same spot in a project no matter how many times rendering is attempted.

If the render hangs at the same spot on a particular project you can try the following
3A. Try different projects. If only one project hangs, the project may have become corrupt.
3B. If other projects also hang, what are the similarities between these projects.

Solutions to this this type of failure depend to some degree on if the user can identify the item in the project that is causing the render to stop. Removing the item or trimming it (if it is a video clip) may allow the rendering to complete. Some users will have the render now stop at some other spot in the project.
Some customer on the webboard have solved their render hangs by.

We have posted a beta on our discussion forums that has a few render hang fixes. Try using the new Studio 8 beta patch from our discussion forums. It is located just below the beta Forum heading on the following link.

http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/read_forums.asp?WebboardID=1&ForumID=704&lng=1&SectionID=143

C3.1. Looking at the clips in the project for corrupt video frames. They may show up as gray, black, blocky or distorted frames. If you find any delete the distortion by triming the clip to exclude the frames. You can also try to recapture the footage.
C3.2 defragging your hard drive.
C3.3. making sure you have 10's of Gigabytes of storage on your video disk. Rendering may take up large amounts of storage and running out of disk space (or running low) may cause the render to stop.
C3.4. If you have a separate capture disk, make sure to move the Aux folder to the capture disk.
C3.5. Trim the video or remove the effect at the point where the rendering stops. It may just fail further along.
C3.6. Copy the section where the render stops and put it into a new project. Typically you would want to copy 15 to 30 seconds before and after the point where the render stops. See if you can render this portion of your project to an AVI file and if this renders without problems, use this new AVI file to replace the section in your project where the render stops.
C3.7. Render the entire project to a AVI file and then create an new project and import this AVI file. If you are making a disc, you can now add chapter marks and menus. This workaround works best with NTFS partitions to avoid the 4GB file limit (18 minutes of DV video).

We recommend you close down ALL background programs before installing or uninstalling anything on your system, and before starting any capture or editing software. (This includes virus scanners, backup software and screen savers).
If you have 98SE or ME, then you can click Cntrl-ALT-Delete and ‘End Task’ to everything other than Systray and Explorer. What's your percentage of available system resources in your Computer Properties? With the background applications off, this number should be at 80% at least, and preferably closer to 90%.
If you have Windows XP, go to Performance Settings under System Properties: Advanced, and set the system to optimize for Best Performance.

So... I have case three. I have tried all of the soloutions including going out and purchasing an 120 gig HD with 8 meg cache buffer. STILL SAME PROBLEM.

I have a PIII 500 with 512 megs ram.

Could my coputer be too slow?

I have no idea what to do?

Anyone else have this problem?

[lukeb]

I have a P3 system with 512MB of RAM also. I am running Windows XP on one 40GB hard disk (Fat32) and have a second 40GB hard disk for video capture (NTFS).

Generally Studio 8 seems to operate OK but I have had several unexplained crashes and it has caused me a bit of frustration.
Pinnacle's Web site is not too good and I have yet to be able to send them any email or ask any questions. I registered the product and got a user id and password but it doesn't work. Can't find an email link.

In my case, I found that my combination Firewire/USB2 card was causing a problem. I had a scanner connected to a USB2 port of the card and my DV Camcoder to the firewire port and found that Studio would consistantly close itself after about 7 minutes of Preview quality capture. After much head scratching I unplugged the scanner from the USB port and the problem went away.

Have you downloaded the patch to Studio 8.5.5?

I run my monitor at 1280x1024 and this patch fixed a display problem I had. Does not seem to be able to maximize it to full screen though.

I have managed to capture, edit and make a complete project of about 20 minutes duration and created a SVCD successfully. It even played on my DVD player. I don't have a DVD burner.

I have had a few problems during the make movie stage where Studio can't establish a connection with the camcorder, but changing to capture mode allows me to fully control the camcorder. Very strange.

It's early days for me yet and I'm sure that I'll have more frustrations as I try to do more.

If I can help with any info just post a reply.
Best regards.

[donpedro]

So what were results of different steps ? Please post them so we can learn from your example.

And my recomemdation ? Fresh install of Windows (whatever version you have) in separate partition and do not install anything that you don't need for Studio.

Here is what I do and it works:

Pinnacle Studio 8 and DV home video editing

[lukeb]

My experience with Studio 8 is just begining and I'll post infomation as I progress.

I haven't had any major editing or rendering problems so far. My only problems were as discussed earlier and appeared to be caused by my firewire/USB2 card. Still don't know why.

So far I have only captured video at full quality resolution.
I dragged the resulting scenes onto the timeline and performed my edits.
The unedited length was about 25 minutes.
I did all the editing, added a menu, transitions, a couple of effects and a music track. This cut the finished runtime down to about 12 minutes.
I ran the entire movie a few times and then went to Make movie.
The first time I produced a SVCD and rendering took about 2 hours but everything worked fine.
I then made a tape and that worked fine as well.
I also made a VCD version which also completed without any problems.

I am currently working on another project where I have captured the video using only Preview resolution. It will be interesting to see how the program controls the camera to find and capture the full quality video after I have finished all the editing.

As far as your solution of re-installing Windows over itself... This would be a solution of last resort for me. From my past experience this approach rarely works. But it does have the advantage of cleaning out the registry and other rubbish.

I went for the two hard disk approach (one 40GB NTFS just for video) to speed up disk access by reducing the number of seeks to other parts of the disk as occurrs when everything (Windows etc) is on one disk.

I suppose if you are going to use the computer mainly for video production then setting it up specifically for Studio would definately be the best way to go but I would think that most of us would have many applicatins on the one machine. I can't see much point in using a program if the only way it can be made to work is to dedicate an entire machine to it. This would make the software very expensive indeed.

A reasonable compromise I think, is to adjuct the operating environment by disabling all background programs such as virus checkers, etc when ever I use Studio. I believe that all programs should also be removed from the quick start bar, including the time clock.

That's all I can think of for now. I'll post more as I get deeper into the program.

So far I'm pretty happy with Studio 8.

Good luck.

[donpedro]

lukeb, Good luck.

...and just comment... I lost only 5GB (or 8 ? not sure now) of my 40GB hard drive for an extra partition with clean WinXP. So it is not that expensive

[sseligson]

Don,

I was thinking of making a separate partition with windows XP for just Pinnacle. I have one question though. How do I boot the computer from the new partition?

[donpedro]

OK. All the info about dual boot that I needed was on Microsoft web site. Trick is in some file (I don't remember name but I can look it up on Friday) that you need to edit. I think "boot.ini" ??? I am not sure. And then when your computer starts you can just select different than default boot partition. Does it make sense ?

[donpedro]

Here is example from boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect