Premiere crashes exporting

[acridnym.livejournal.com]

I am using many avs files with Premiere 6.5 (never a good idea...) on a Dell Inspiron 9400 with Windows XP, a 100 GB harddrive (12 GB free) and 2 GB RAM. Intel Core 2 CPU T7200 2.00 GHz.

When exporting, I get the “memory could not be ‘read’” error. It always crashes somewhere between frames 1428 and 1515. (I also got this error constantly when working on the timeline but always managed to work around it by restarting from archived project files).

I have SetMemoryMax(16) at the top of all my scripts. I've tried restarting and exporting with no other programs or windows open, turning virtual memory up to 4 GB, turning on the “optimize stills” option, deleting archived projects and preview files I didn't need, turning off the view thumbnails and wavelengths in the timeline options, and deleting unneeded mattes and clips.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

(x-posted to vidding_tech)

Comments

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Have you tried exporting in chunks, and then reassembling the pieces for a final full export?

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

Exactly what I was going to say. I have pretty much exactly the same hardware/software specs as you, and whenever this happens I know it's time to split the project into several smaller projects. :)

[heresluck]

Thirded. The pieces can either be reassembled in Premiere and re-exported or just re-linked by making another .avs file, loading in VDub, and exporting as direct stream copy.

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

or just re-linked by making another .avs file
Oooh, how do you do that? I never learned how to make multiple AVI files into one .avs file. Teachies please? :) :)

[heresluck]

It's easy! :) Just keep adding file names. The first line of the .avs will look something like this:

AVISource("D:\viddingdirectory\file1.avi","D:\viddingdirectory\file2.avi","D:\viddingdirectory\file3.avi","D:\viddingdirectory\file4.avi")

...where the drive letter and directory and filenames should of course be changed to reflect the actual paths on your computer.

For linking chunks of vid export together, my experience has been that the best thing to do is export the video chunks from Premiere WITHOUT audio, export the audio separately as a .wav, make the .avs to link the video chunks, load that.avs in VDub, then use VDub to add the audio stream: Audio --> Audio from other file. Then Video --> Direct Stream Copy, and it should be ready to export as a new .avi.

I've also found that linking a bunch of .avi files together with a single .avs is really handy when I'm vidding from DivX files (although there are potential pitfalls if the frame sizes or, worse, frame rates don't match) -- it means I can load up, say, 20 eps of something with just 4 or 5 .avs files, which makes Premiere much less likely to choke. If I'm doing this, I usually strip out the audio as well, which is just adding a single command to the end of that first line of the script, so it would look like this:

AVISource("D:\viddingdirectory\file1.avi","D:\viddingdirectory\file2.avi","D:\viddingdirectory\file3.avi","D:\viddingdirectory\file4.avi",false)

Hope that's clear, but if not, tell me and I'll try again! And of course ask questions if you need to; my AviSynth knowledge is far from exhaustive, but I have tinkered around with it a bit (and, uh, pestered Ian a lot).

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

Neat! I always export my DVD sources in giant-ass .avs files, but never knew that you could also load up multiple AVIs like that so it has been painful editing downloaded source. But no longer! Thank you very much for the teachings, o wise one! :D

FWIW, I found that it was easiest to export my video chunks uncompressed WITH audio and then just reassemble them in Premiere and re-export as one file. But it's nice to know you can also do it via VDub.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Forthed - a recent vid I made had over 50 scripts (yes I know NOW it was a bad idea) and I had to export in many many many chunks with many reboots in between.

[acridnym.livejournal.com]

It's unanimous! Thank you for your replies, everyone. And thank you for the quick tutorial, heresluck.