Making CFHD AVI just hangs

[Dave Campbell]

Okay, I am stuck. I have just finished my Family Christmas video in PPro2 using ProspectHD. It is 1:40 minutes long. I am now trying to export a movie to make a single AVI with CFHD codec. I leave all the defaults alone with the settings.

So, the first time I try it, it gets to 97.05% in about 4 hours and then stops rendering. The time clock continues to count for time elapsed. I leave it alone thinking it cant be hung. So, 3 hours later when I get up for the 12am new years noise, nothing has changed. So, I reboot the computer and start again. So, its done the same thing, except it stopped at 1.28%, and the time elapsed is still running at 6:27 and counting.

Okay, I just tried a third time. Changed from project to work space. Stopped at 40.53%

Another data point is in both cases, an output file stated to be written, both were 128k in size.

Now what? :o( Am dead in the water.

Dave

[David Newman]

Contact support who will be back tomorrow. A do some tests, like can you export a 5 minute segment on this production? If you have any large still images, Premiere has a bug when using floating point, which you can try turning it off in the playback settings.

[Dave Campbell]

David, I just tried to export 10 seconds. It completes the takes, opens the file name at 131K, but looks like it doesnt write anything to the file.

So, I do 10 seconds, it completes without a failure. I look at the file size, and it seems to not have done anything other than open the file. I try to import into premiere and it saves corrupted file.

I do have still images, but not sure if they are "large" and they are in my ultra footage.

I also have a lot of Ultra footage in.

So, I just did 3 seconds of a Ppro2 title. It completes. But, nothing other than the header file is written to the disc. And, after each try of anything, PPro basically locks up and I have to manually kill it.

I have opened a support ticket, but I really wanted to get a pass done with my last day off. Darn. :o(

Dave

[David Newman]

Sounds like you don't have an encoder installed.

Make sure you have these files:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\CineForm\CFEncode.ax
C:\Program Files\Common Files\CineForm\CFEncoder2.ax

If you don't have both, uninstall Prospect HD, reboot, then reinstall PHD. Otherwise it is support issue for tomorrow.

[Dave Campbell]

Now, I just made a brand new project, and grabbed just one of the Ultra clips I made. I did a 3 second work area output, and it worked just fine. :o( It also does not lock up PPro2 when it works correctly.

Both of those files are there also.

So, its something in my large project. :o(

Thanks for the help.

Dave

[Douglas Turner]

Hi Dave and David,

I'm getting EXACTLY the same problem.

I have a 1hr 25min feature film - trying to Export->Movie using Cineform HD export preset.

Have raised ticket with Cineform, and Jake is looking into it.

"Trying to Export as Cineform HD Export. This crashes at 40% through (at the 34 min mark) - Premiere Pro is still counting the Time Left etc, but frame stays at 52072 (have left this overnight and it never completes), according to Task Manager, Premiere Pro is not doing anything."

I've created another Aspect HD preset project using only one 15 min clip repeated to make up a 1hr 30min project, and this exports perfectly.

It's something to do with a large project maybe.

Fingers crossed Cineform and Jake come up with something :)

When Premiere Pro hangs (it still counts Time Left, but does nothing else) I have to close using Task Manager. Then when reload Premiere Pro and try again it seems to hang/crash even earlier - sounds like memory leak or something?

Cheers, Doug.

[Dave Campbell]

Cool. I was told I was the only one seeing this, so makes it hard to justify their priority. Also, I could never get it down to any single clip or anything.
I thought the same thing about how many folks do large projects. My guess is few, but it is what I do.

I can export this project with other outputs with no failures. This is why my life now is so hard is I am having to try and use non standard processes since I could not get CFHD to work.

But, one thing I will say, of ALL the companies I work with, CF is the post for support!!! But, if they can not reproduce the failure, I know they are stuck.

Dave

[Dave Campbell]

Okay, what does this mean. I just spent the last hour taking all the clips out of the project, group by group, and trying to export. It would not write. I was then getting these PPro failures, like memory stuff, PPro lower on memory, etc.

So, I got to the point where I had everything gone except the black intro, which did not work. So, for some reason, I rebooted the machine and tried it again with just the black, and it worked. Now, what in the world does this mean, and how do I debug this?

Dave

[Dave Campbell]

This is what I sent to support. Thought some might be interested in trying to get to root cause.

Okay, I have spent another day trying to isolate what is going on.
Here is the best I have gotten it to. As I took out files, I kept getting errors about an instruction trying to write at address 0x000000.
I then looked at the failure detail, and it always stated modname:
cfencoder2.ax offset 0003bc0f.

But, as I got to just one clip, and it still did the above, I was seeing it was starting to write an avi file, but it died. The left behind avi was corrupted because anytime I in explore to see the folder, the avi, which tried to be read in thumbnail, kept killing explorer.
So, I am attaching the .proj file since it seems something in this .proj file has gone nuts. There is only one clip left and it still does not work.
I will send another message that makes this more strange.
Again, this .proj file, has one clip left, and it dies trying to reference memery at 0x0000.
(I sent the .proj file that fails)


Okay, after getting the big project to one clip, and have it always dying and start writing and avi that is corrupted, I said lets make a brand new project with the one clip. So, I copied the clip into a new folker and made a brand new project. Guess what, it worked fine.
So, I am attaching the .proj file that is the exact same clip that is left in the other that fails.

Dave

[Douglas Turner]

I must be driving Jake and Cineform nuts...

When they think they're getting somewhere I seem to be able to prove the clip being rendered at the time of the Premiere hang isn't to blame... I'm just going round in circles.

Unfortunately it seems I'm spending more time rendering and testing than actually editing - so I hope this problem is fixed by the time I complete the edit and want to render out the project in order to write to DVD, HD-DVD, Bluray and HD WMV :)

I do still get random Premiere "Sorry, unexpected error.." etc. I do find that it really helps to reboot the machine if I have one error - otherwise other errors seems to follow thick and fast - even if Premiere has been restarted.

If David's reading... what would you suggest in the meantime, render out to Uncompressed MOV at 1920x1080? Desperate not to lose any picture quality.

Thanks, Doug.

[Dave Campbell]

Doug, I understand. I bet I have spend 4 solid days trying to get CF data to reproduce the error. I now gave them a project file that fails 100% of the time, and one that does not. Hope they can figure something out from this, since it took me a long time to get to that.

Now, I had to also get my video done, so what format are your producing in?
I put a post on asking how to get the best SD from HD. I followed the process that was suggested. This is dumping out an AVI uncompressed from PPro. My 1.5 hour project make a 900 gig avi file!! I then used virtualdub to sharpen it, and resize. I then used Tmpgenc to make the DVD mpeg stream. I then used ReelDVD to author. I just watched the final product last night and it came out GREAT!!!!! So, I suggest you may want to try the process that was documented. It worked perfect for me, just need lots of disc storage.

Dave

[Douglas Turner]

900GB?! Blimey!!

I have about 1.2TB in total (and 800GB backup) - but most of the drives are already pretty full, not sure where I'll be finding the extra 900GB... I assume you've got a couple of drives JABOD RAID config (just a bunch of drives?!) to get 900GB contigous.

My wife's getting p!ssed off, cos we really have to get this feature edited before she drops the sprog... so the more time I spend creating new projects, importing timelines, exporting tests (each takes hours) - the less time I'm spending doing anything of any worth :(

Film was shot on 1440x1080 50i Sony Z1/FX1 - as we're looking for international distribution we'll be looking at producing anamorphic SD DVDs PAL (25fps) and NTSC (24fps) as well as 24fps HD DVD and BluRay (prob 1080) - I'm not up to speed with international (US vs UK/Aus) differences between HD formats yet... if you create a 24fps 1080 HD DVD, will it work worldwide without any problems (apart from region coding)?

Blimey.... more formats to think about!!!

Cheers, Doug.

[Dave Campbell]

You are in front of my trying to get an HD-DVD to work. Who are your clients? I still feel all the optical media formats are going to fail! Look at Netflix who just announced there on demand downloading. Thats what I am working towards, all on line stuff.

Yes, I have some 750gig drives in raid 0. Can not do more that 2 since the limit is 2 terabytes per partition. :o(

Dave

[Giroud Francois]

exporting uncompressed HD is not really a good thing , especially if it is just to make SD.
you could try huffyuv codec that is almost uncompressed-like quality.
or keep cineform codec since it works in virtualdub.
I sometime use uncompressed video when i need to avoid problems, but never on movie longer than few minutes.

[Dave Campbell]

I would have used CFHD if we can find why it never writes on my project.

I just start the process, and let it run for 24 hours. :o)

Dave