Chocking, chocking..gasp

starboard

I have a small sized scene which I am rendering..about 170 Mb,.  and 12 seconds long. (the scene consists of an M4 character and with a aniblock walk cycle, and some props. I have no problem rendering  6 or seven seconds of the scene..but when I try to render  the whole animation,12 seconds the render stops at about seven or 8 seconds and Carrara freezes. Nothing I can do can get it going again. If I abort the render, Carrara freezes afterwards and I have to force quit it and Quicktime 32.  I have lived with this for quite a while and have just broke the scenes down into 6 second segments and joined them in After Effects. This prevents any long overnight renders or batch renders... Has anybody else had this problem.. ?  I am rendering out to QT in Animation codec.

In the preferences I have used my second hard drive for the scratch disk and have the Texture spooling set for  1.70 GB.

I am using a Mac Mini, late 2012, El Capitan, and 16 GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB.  Lots of space on 2nd disk.

Thanks, for any thoughts on this.

That Other Persona

I like the convenience of exporting as a movie, but there have been hiccups at times.  Not ideal, but have you tried exporting as a sequence and then reconstucting as a movie?  

You are on a mini... does it whir and get hot?  I have a mini that I sometimes use as a render node and it can get pretty hot pretty fast.

You might also try using the primary disk as the scratch disk; it is possible that the 2nd disk is spooling down while the frame is being rendered.  I dunno about htis, but it is a thought.

One more thing: have you tried any other codecs?   You can always convert later.  I use H.264 and can render longer animations fine.  Apple none would do, but it will create a huge file that you will want to deal with soon.  Just ran a very simple test and got 401KB for H.264 and a pleasant 147MB for Apple nonw for the same clip.  Apple nonne will convert nicely later.  AE may be able to do the conversion (I don't have AE) or Apple's Compressor makes it simple to create multiple versions.

evilproducer

Is this a 64 bit version of Carrara on a 64 bit Mac Mini?

The reason I ask is two-fold. The first thing I am thinking is that if you are using a 64 bit version of Carrara, then DAZ_Spooky has said in the past that ideally 64 bit versions of Carrara should have the texture spooling turned off. I don't remember the technical aspects of why, and the thread is lost in the rotting corpse of the old forum.

The other reason is because if you are running a 64 bit build of Carrara, and rendering to QT, this could also be the issue. If you turn off texture spooling, and the issue persists, try rendering to an image sequence to see if it keeps occurring. Since you are using AE, you should be able to compile the sequence there (if I recall correctly). If you are rendering with an alpha channel, those will still be respected, provided you render to an image format that supports them.

starboard

Thanks guys for getting back to me...I could not answer sooner..(taking my wife to dinner/ movie....)

No the mini does not get too hot...

When I click the top upper left icon, it tells me that its Carrara 8.5 Pro Build 243 (64 bit).  However, when  Carrara crashes or freezes, and I have to "force quit" Carrara,  I am informed in the panel that Carrara is using 32 bit Quicktime. I have seen reference on this forum that Macs do not have 64 bit only 32 bit.  What all this means is a mystery to me..Is there a 32 bit Carrara 8.5 Pro that I should be using ? 

I tried exporting as a targa and Tiff sequence..a couple of weeks ago...It did not at that time make much difference.. it still froze after about 7 seconds.  I went back to the Animation codec as it was a night mare having all those long sequences, not to mention getting them into AE.

Evil, I will turn off texture spooling and see what that does... Next I  will try an image sequence. Also I will try H,264

Thanks guys for your help, I will stay with it..

That Other Persona

I think my mini is the same or just previous version.  It can run 64-bit.

The Carrara app is 64-bit.  QuickTime is 32-bit.  So all is fine.  Apple has never bothered to make a 64-bit QT encoder.  When you use Carrara, use the 64-bit; when it renders, it calls on the QT 32-bit encoder.  Send Apple some feedback beccause it is they who are not supporting this.

When you go to make a sequence, first make a new folder on your desktop and drop the Carrara file into it.  The images will then be saved neatly in place.  I once saved to the desktop and boy was that fun!  Once the render is done, move the Carrara file out; I also remove the file that ends in .cseqm.  QT 7 can open the sequence and save it; it is a free download at Apple.  Again, why they removed this functionality from the latest versions beats me.  If you want to spend just a little, Compressor isn't expensive and has lots of benefits over QT7.  You can batch render the same video to different formats, etc.

 

 

evilproducer

The issue is that the QT 32 bit thing you're seeing is a bridge to convert the uncompressed output Carrara generates to the QT codec you are using. This can be buggy from what I have read.

Another thing to try is to render through the Batch Queue, as you don't need to have the scene open which can lead to extra system overhead.

That Other Persona is correct about creating a folder for the image sequences, except for one point. You can create a folder for the image sequences and there is no need to have the Carrara scene in that folder. In the Render room you can define the location that the image sequence (or any render) is sent/stored. Simply look under File Name, and enable the, Named File, option. A dialogue will open asking you to name the file and from there you can set the location as well. I've had the folder on a completely different drive than the scene with no problems.

If you still have problems, you can still run a 32 bit version of Carrara. In your available downloads from DAZ, there should be a Standard 32 bit Carrara application. If you download and install it, but enter the Pro serial number, it will un-lock the pro features in the 32 bit standard version. When I had a 64 bit iMac, I found it helpful to have both installed for troubleshooting. I never used it much, unless I wanted to test a scene or see if something worked in 32 bit that I was having trouble with in 64 bit, which was rare.

starboard

Turning off the texture spooling may have done it.  The render ran through the 12 secs.  I have a second render running overnight....Won't know until tomorrow.... Thanks for the information on QT  It is starting to make sense to me..  I will explore the image sequences tomorrow.

Thanks guys for all the information..I'm off to bed.

evilproducer

Personally, I had no issues with running C8.5 64 bit and rendering to QT movie, but I didn't do anything complex, just a few tests.

starboard

Evil,

That fixed it..turning spooling off. It ran the render without a problem...I  am beginning to wonder if the other problem I had with my computer going asleep during a long render was not caused by this spooling problem also. If Carrara froze during a render because of the spooling..then nothing was happening..no work was being done..if nothing was happening..then nauturally the mac would go asleep..... May not have needed Caffeine at all ?   

Thanks Evil and That Other Persona ..for the great analysis and sleuthing..... Really appreciate your help.

evilproducer

I'm glad you got it working. I wish I could remember the technical reasons for turning off the spooling, but at the time I hadn't used a 64 bit Carrara, and really only made a mental note that it should be off.

Milo

you can get hitfilm express still for free for putting together, I know thats not answering the QT issue but HitFilm is nice (Mac and Windows), also Quicktime standalone if you have the pro version will take a fold of images and put them into a movie.

garbanzolasvegas

I have found there is an issue with SLEEP mode with newer macs even if you turn everything to NEVER SLEEP! Get an APP called CAFIENE from APPLE and instal it. It will fix the QT 32-64 issue!

evilproducer

He's the one that pointed at Caffeine originally, and mentioned it again in this thread. This was a separate issue.

Mistara

thanks!  for the hitfilm express linkie waiting for them to send d/l email.

can it convert avi to mov?

PhilW

For anything but short demo sequences, I would render to individual frames and then compile the animation separately from them. Then if you have render issues, you haven't lost a lot of the rendering work you have done, and repeatedly appending extra frames to long animations can cause issues in itself.