Strange memory issues

jrcasey wrote on 11/17/2014, 9:19 AM

I really like the DVDA program in terms of features and flexibility, but I've run into some major problems.

My setup: Win7 Pro 64 bit, Phenom II, 16GB RAM, fast SATA drives, DVDA Pro 6.0.

I encode my own h264 files with Adobe Media Encoder and import them into DVDA as .avc files without problem--up to a point. Usually by the time I've got about 9-10 menu items imported, I begin to see crashes and "out of memory," "render failure" messages over my graphics items. I am only importing video and audio files.

Strangely, I can import uncompressed AVIs and WAVE files and not see these memory issues. I just created a BRD using DVDA's encoder and it took over 10 hours just to render the disc image! I can encode the avc files in Adobe Media Encoder in a fraction of that time, hence my reason to use it in my preferred workload. For some reason, the image is also darker when encoded by the DVDA encoder compared to AME.

I've been reading about similar issues on this forum, and I've tried a few things including the large address patch, but nothing seems to help.

The AVC files are encoded as Main Concept 4.0 2 pass VBR at 25-30 Mb/sec and play fine on the blu ray once I get one to burn. The projects themselves usually contain 15-20 GB of files on a 25 GB BD-R. The uncompressed files are 1920x1080 AVI.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

I know that the program is 32 bit and that places some memory constraints but I wouldn't think these problems would occur with a paucity of menu items I use on my discs.

Comments

Jack S wrote on 11/18/2014, 5:12 AM

I had a similar problem when creating my first Blu-Ray. My projects are small, anything between 7 minutes and 15 minutes long. This was Ok for DVDs because it didn't take a lot of projects to fill a DVD. Blu-Ray though is a different matter. I found I had 31 titles (projects) to import. I'm using DVDAS 5.2 and it really struggled with this number of titles. My solution, concatenate all the .avc files into one .avc using the DOS binary copy command, then all the .wav files into one .wav using Sound Forge. DVDAS accepted these two files with no problem.

PeterDuke wrote on 11/18/2014, 6:00 PM

jrcasey, when you say 9-10 menu items, do you mean 9-10 separate video and audio files, or are these chapters or scenes within a single or few files? If the former, then that would tie in with the comment from Jack-S's post.

Is DVDA re-rendering your H.264 files produced by Adobe Media Encoder? If so, that is undesirable because it takes a long time and you lose some quality. Are you able to encode using Sony Vegas, using a BD template? If so, that would avoid the re-encode.

How are you creating your menu(s) in DVDA? Are you starting with a Menu-based project and dragging your files one at a time to the top menu? Do you have a top menu and a scene sub-menu?

PeterDuke wrote on 11/20/2014, 6:51 AM

I tried using DVDA Pro 6 to create a BD ISO file based on 20 AVCHD clips, each about 1 GB in size. The 20 menu buttons were text only.

The menu render took 16 minutes and the ISO prepare took a further 1 hour (phew!!!), but there was no error message.

I at least did not reach any memory limit. (My PC has 12 GB of RAM.)

jrcasey wrote on 11/20/2014, 3:49 PM

Peter:

Sorry that I didn't present my information in a more organized fashion.

I'm using one of the DVDA menu templates (BD).

I am indeed using Adobe ME and DVDA does not require recoding of these files.

In terms of building my project, I only have 2 menu pages; 1 as main(top) menu to play 11 titles, a second for supplements which includes 3 videos and links to second audio tracks. I have been dragging the videos (1 at a time) from the explorer onto the menu pages. The format for the videos is button with text with a still frame within the button. I don't have any scene/chapter stop menus as these are all short films (ranging from 1.5 to 15 minutes in length).

The problem predictably begins when I start on the supplement menu, I guess more around the 12th video item. Graphics on the menu begin blanking out with the message over them: "out of memory" and "render error."

I am experimenting with the 4Gb patching mentioned elsewhere on these boards to see if that helps. Otherwise, I guess my only other option is to do as you guys suggest and make everything into longer segments and make chapter stops for the individual short films.

Thanks so much for looking at my posts and offering suggestions.

jrcasey wrote on 11/20/2014, 4:10 PM

Jack:

When you concatenated the avc and wave files, I assume you ended up with the individual files back to back. Were you able to somehow separate these titles within DVDA or create chapter marks for the beginning of each title, or a start point for each title linked to a text or button menu item?

Thanks for replying.

PeterDuke wrote on 11/20/2014, 4:44 PM

I meant to comment earlier about concatenation. It seems a dubious practice unless the files had originated from a single shoot that had been arbitrarily split, as happens in AVCHD video cameras, because the file system cannot accommodate files longer than 2 GB or 4 GB.

But if it works for you, then good luck.

There are many video joining utilities that respect the structure of the containers and their streams. I would use one of them.

Jack S wrote on 11/21/2014, 6:31 AM

jr. There are two methods of handling this. The one I use is to simply create chapter markers at the junction where each original titles started and finished (I failed to mention in my original post that it is important to have about 1-2 seconds of empty media at the end of each title to avoid possible issues with the concatenation). The other way is to pull into DVDAS as many occurrences of the concatenated file as there are original titles then adjust the start and end points accordingly (a little messy in my opinion, but has its advantages - see below).
Then create buttons for the chapter points (first method) or titles (second method). The advantage of the second method is that you can set an end action for the original titles whereas you can't with the first method.

jrcasey wrote on 11/21/2014, 1:23 PM

Jack:
Thanks for the details. I may need to use your method if everything else I'm trying fails.

Both Peter & Jack:
Update. I've been using the 4gb memory patch and seeing some success. I was able to add of my media to the menus without any memory errors thus far. Task manager shows only 1.1 gigs of RAM used, while before it was off the charts. I still have some buttons to add/create and links to complete, but I don't think those will require that much more memory usage.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I'll post back after I render out the project and let you know if there are any errors.

jrcasey wrote on 11/24/2014, 11:16 AM

Reporting back that there are now no disc creation glitches at all! The 4GB RAM memory patch (and a reinstall of DVDA) appears to have solved my problems completely. Wonder if Sony will ever release DVDA Pro 7.0? Looks doubtful and that's too bad, because it is one of the best prosumer disc authoring programs on the market, and one of the few that allows multiple audio tracks, subtitle tracks, etc. Not to mention the professional looking menu templates. I looked at another program recently that allowed multiple audio tracks, but their menu templates looked like they were designed by a first grader.

PeterDuke wrote on 11/24/2014, 5:01 PM

"their menu templates looked like they were designed by a first grader."

I have always held the view that the movie content was king. Menus are but a means to an end. But then, I hold similar views about motor cars and wrist watches, that I know some others don't share.

What was the other authoring program? Have you tried TMPGEnc Authoring Works? It has some things that DVDA doesn't.

jrcasey wrote on 11/25/2014, 12:40 PM

Peter:

OMG! The program I mentioned WAS TMPGEnc Authoring Works 5.0! I've really stuck my foot in my mouth now!!

I trialed it trying to find a disc authoring program that met my minimal needs of multiple audio tracks. I came across TMPGEnc in my search and ended up buying it. I never could really get it to author a blu ray as "60p" (progressive sequential frames), only as interlaced. To top it off, I really didn't like any of their menu designs, although I know that those artistically inclined could create their own.

They have a message board for support, but I could never get my question answered. I felt like there was maybe two other users in the whole world!

I guess this comes down to "everybody's tastes and needs are different." Or, more likely, I'm just not smart enough to use TMPGEnc Authoring Works!!!

PeterDuke wrote on 11/25/2014, 4:35 PM

1920x1080-60p is not part of the Blu-ray spec, so you can't author it for BD. However, TAW5 has a mode "AVCHD for Progressive" that will create an AVCHD folder structure that you can play on your PC with either Cyberlink PowerDVD or Nero Blu-ray Player. I have yet to find a suitable way to play such a folder directly on my TV, however. One irritation I have with the menu is that the top menu only has a button to access the scene menu, so you have to click twice before you can play your movie. In contrast, a BD top menu has both a play button and a scene menu button. I took this up with the company, and they said that there was no play button on the top menu because it was not part of the AVCHD spec, but that they would "consider" it (or words to that effect).

MultiAVCHD is a free program that will create a progressive AVCHD folder that DOES have a play button on the top menu. However it is no longer being developed, apparently, and seems a little buggy. (I tried creating a project with three scenes, but buttons for only two appeared on the menu.)

Yep wrote on 12/17/2014, 5:09 AM

Hi there. I'm having very similar problems with a BD project. Everything is fine until I add my 12th title on the second menu page. Then all the buttons blank out with a "Render Failure" message.

I'd like to try the "memory patching" you mentioned - but I don't know what that is. I tried doing a search for it but couldn't find anything. Could you elaborate a little bit on memory patching and how to go about it.

TIA

Lou van Wijhe wrote on 1/11/2015, 5:49 AM

Yep,

You can download the patch from here. I patched DVDA with it and my memory problems were gone!

Lou