Stop Anime Studio Pro Crashing? URGENT!!!!

wolldo · Post by **wolldo** » Sun May 10, 2009 11:01 am

Okay, I have been working for the last 2 weeks on a short movie that is currently 15 000 & something frames long. I only finished it just before, and since it doesn't last this many frames (only 14 304) i want to change it. However, whenever I open project settings and press Okay after it's change, it always comes up 'Anime Studio Pro has caused an error' and something about sending an error report to microsoft. this also happens when i try to add a new soundtrack to the animation or to change the size (Pal, Web, etc).

I have tried rendering at the current specifications & when it gets right to the end (i did a few tests of only around 1-48 frames) it quits and when I open the file it always comes up as 'corrupted'.

How do I fix this? My computer is pretty decent - 2GB Ram, 320GB Hard Drive, whats wrong? Please I need urgent help - this needs to be rendered by this friday!!!!! THANKS!!!!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 10, 2009 11:17 am

I would go back to the original file that worked. Render as much as you can before it crashes and do a save as to make additional changes to a shorter file. It could be you just have too much in there.

Did you say 15000 frames or 15 seconds? 15 seconds should go without a hitch... 15000 frames is 15 minutes.. yikes.

Try deleting stuff like audio and layers until you can find what is causing the crash. If it worked before then you must have added something or changed something that is causing the troubles.

If you have a deadline the issue will not be "fixing" the crashes but trying to find what specific thing is causing it and working around it to get your project finished.

What settings are you changing in the project settings? The length? The size? What else? When you changed the size what did you change it to? Is it larger? Did you update QT recently? What codec are you using?

I've never seen AS crash when changing project settings. Sounds like you may have pushed it further than it can go even with a powerful machine. The only solution for you now would be to carefully track down what specific thing is causing the crash. Once you locate that layer, shape, sound file, whatever, eliminate it, find a way to work around it.

If worse comes to worse try and post the file for someone to look at. Maybe we can find the problem. If the file contains audio and image layers zip it up in a folder. If it's too big for that at least post the .anme file. There might be something there we can find that might be causing trouble.

-vern

wolldo · Post by **wolldo** » Sun May 10, 2009 11:23 am

Hi,
Sorry... its 15000 frames and its just under 10 minutes. I'll upload the file in a second... it has images, audio, particle effects, etc in it, a lot of camera movement, and yeah.

Oh, and I let it render for a little while, and at the start I have an image of a moon, and instead its just a massive black & white D off to the side, with the introductory credits over the top. What the hell???

Thanks for your help.

wolldo · Post by **wolldo** » Sun May 10, 2009 11:43 am

Okay, I'll edit this post with the download link - because it has pictures & a soundtrack, they wont show up, but im guessing you'll need as pro to use it with.

and this is some weird thing thats happening:

in the animation window, it looks like this:
http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img2z.png

but when its rendering, it looks like this: ??????
http://img16.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img1r.png

What the hell?

Thanks for your help so much, i appreciate it, im panicking!!!!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 10, 2009 12:01 pm

First DON'T PANIC! When I hear about dead line nightmares and things like this I automatically jump in to "help" mode.

The first thing you must do is SPLIT THAT HUGE FILE INTO SMALLER CHUNKS. 10 minutes is WAY too much to render from one file. Not just because it sucks up the resources or is "too big". It has to do with problems exactly like this. If you use a bunch of smaller files you can narrow down problems. The whole thing in one huge file means you are stuck with that huge file. 90% may render fine but one problem in one section could break it.

I would advise breaking that big file into at leas 3 smaller files a few minutes in length.

The render problem you see in that moon image is that AS is "losing" the reference to the image location. Most likely due to the large size of the file. It shows in the preview but when you render all the memory is being sucked up and it can't display the image. OR it could be that overall the size of the file is too big and NOTHING is getting rendered. I have not encountered this myself even with huge complex multilayer files because generally I never have a file over a few minutes in length... 3 to 4 tops.

The next thing to check is image size or "resolution". Make sure your images aren't bigger than they need to be for your final output. Whatever size an image layer is rendered to in the final animation is the max size it needs to be when placed in AS. For example if you render out to 640 x 480 and the image fits that size and doesn't zoom or is not scaled the image file only needs to be 640 x 480. Making it larger than that only wastes time and resources.

If you have time and the image is "simple" you may want to trace over it and make it a vector layer. This would be a last resort but would entirely eliminate any "missing image" problems. It looks like that "Moon" screen shot is an image? The second screen shot indicates a missing image file but the original image looks "vector" to me. Or at least could be vector and would render 10 times faster. Things like that can speed up and simplify the file.

Bottom line... break that huge file into smaller more easily manageable files. That will go a long way to getting this done.

-vern

wolldo · Post by **wolldo** » Sun May 10, 2009 12:05 pm

how do you split it into 3 different files? im not really 'experienced' at this, so thanks so much for your help!!!!!

EDIT: also, is it possible to prioritize the animation rendering over the other resources of the windows system so that it directs all memory to rendering instead of other things (now thats something i sorta know about)??

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 10, 2009 12:09 pm

More tips...

Audio files. If you have the option of adding audio in post after rendering this might help as well. If you timed the animation to your audio you can easily drop it in using anther application. QT pro for example. Just one option. It only costs $30. If that isn't an option I am sure there are free programs out there that do something as simple as "stitch" together a few video files and drop in an audio track.

Render to an image sequence. This is always a good idea but for a 15 project can suck up hard drive space. However an image sequence doesn't put a strain on the computer during render. If the render fails you still have all the frames up to the point it stopped. You can "fix" and restart at that point and haven't lost anything.

-vern

wolldo · Post by **wolldo** » Sun May 10, 2009 12:11 pm

is it possible to prioritize the animation rendering over the other resources of the windows system so that it directs all memory to rendering instead of other things (now thats something i sorta know about)??

dueyftw · Post by **dueyftw** » Sun May 10, 2009 12:12 pm

One quick thing to try is pick frames and render those sections. 1 to 500, 501 to 1000 etc. You large file is sucking the life out of your computer as vern says. With out changing anything else, see if this works. AS puts everything into your computers memory and even with high specs, you can over load you computer.

Dale

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 10, 2009 12:26 pm

wolldo wrote:how do you split it into 3 different files? im not really 'experienced' at this, so thanks so much for your help!!!!!

Okay this might get tricky depending on how your file is set up and key framed.

Find the frames in the file for each "part" of the ifile. Find a spot where it makes sense to end a "section". Maybe a cut scene or somewhere the scene changes entirely. Put keys for EVERYTHING at each of those frames. Anything that is moving... or well... everything if it isn't too much work. You want to make sure this "base" file is split into 3 distinct sections with keys for each element at each section. Those keys define the end and start of each section.

Once this is done you want to save that file with a different name. Call it a "base" file or something. Keep the other file. Save this as a new file. It is your "back up".

Do another save as and name it "part 1" or something like that. Delete all the key frames after the key frame you set at the end of part 1.

Delete all the layers NOT USED in that first part. Any layers that are never seen in the first part should be deleted to make the file more efficient.

Now open that "base file" again. Do a save as for "part 2". Now you want to delete all the key frames BEFORE the start of part 2 and after THE END of part 2. Once again delete any layers not used or seen in this part. At this point you can slide all of the key frames to frame 1 or not. Up to you. You could just set the start of this section to the frame that part 2 starts on.

Repeat for section 3.

The key to all of this is the key frames. If things are not "stopped" at the start and end of each section you must key frame those layers and elements so they line up. A lot of this is going to depend on how your animation "flows" if you have 15 minutes of "constant movement" it's going to be a lot harder to break it into sections because you need to maintain that flow. I would hope you wouldn't have 15 minutes of continuous motion. Each section doesn't have to be "equal" in time. The trick is to just get each one down to a more manageable size for rendering.

-vern

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 10, 2009 12:33 pm

dueyftw wrote:One quick thing to try is pick frames and render those sections. 1 to 500, 501 to 1000 etc. You large file is sucking the life out of your computer as vern says. With out changing anything else, see if this works. AS puts everything into your computers memory and even with high specs, you can over load you computer.

Dale

Yes try this first!!! However I've found that a huge file with lots of complex layers still suffers even if the whole thing isn't rendered. All the layers still use memory.

Also any layers not seen or covered can be set to "off" or "not visible" in the layer options. It's that "eyeball" on the TIME LINE not on the layer. The visibility channel. You can click on it in the time line to add a key that "toggles" visibility. If a layer is covered by other layers and not seen during a section turn it off. This will prevent it from being rendered. You can see how AS renders each layer even if it is totally covered by other layers. Hiding those layers can improve render speed and performance.

-vern

wolldo · Post by **wolldo** » Sun May 10, 2009 10:53 pm

dueyftw wrote:One quick thing to try is pick frames and render those sections. 1 to 500, 501 to 1000 etc. You large file is sucking the life out of your computer as vern says. With out changing anything else, see if this works. AS puts everything into your computers memory and even with high specs, you can over load you computer.

Dale

Hi,
thanks, i did that and let it render all last night - 1-4000 frames. All the images were rendering normally in the Export Animation as it flashed each frame, however, when it opened in Media Player, it cut off a section of the top and plonked it down underneath the section that wasn't cut off.

Is this just windows media player, or would I be best to import it into my video editing program (Pinnacle Studio Plus 11). I started to render it again 1-3500 frames, so i'll let that happen.

and BTW, I am exporting as AVI - uncompressed frames (not MOV). Thanks for your help!!!!!!

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Mon May 11, 2009 12:26 am

Well, there's your problem.

It's undoubtedly an AVI issue. I'll bet you a dollar if you simply render to BMP frames and then assemble elsewhere (as all pros do and most savvy amateurs do) you'll be just fine.

NO ONE should be rendering to a movie format, for exactly these reasons. Render out in chunks if you must, but don't render to an AVI or MOV or any other kind of animation format (single frames only, always -- only animation amateurs will make this mistake).

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Mon May 11, 2009 3:09 am

Either way, most media players will choke, in some way, on uncompressed files. They're not meant to handle that much data. If you import the uncompressed to a good video editor, it'll play fine. Or just follow Mike's suggestion.

dueyftw · Post by **dueyftw** » Mon May 11, 2009 6:17 am

I use older compressor codec's. Microshoft video 1, Cinepak. My stuff ends up on Youtube and I have dial up. The new lossless (search the internet) don't like the older software I use. If your going to author a DVD do the single pic out.

Dale