I'm a relative novice in animation and am wondering if anybody can help me. I've had Poser 7 for some while and have no trouble until I try to make an avi movie. The animation appears fine and works well in preview. When I try to render it into a movie however, after saving a certain number of frames, without any warning, Poser 7 crashes.I've tried using different codecs but the same thing always happens. My computer is by no means short of memory and I have a Dual Core Processor 2.40 GHz and 2.00 GB of RAM.
Any help would be appreciated.

 Render to single images instead and assemble it in some sort of editing software.

Poser, in all versions, have memory issues, meaning the memory leak gets worse over time.

Just out of curiosity.. how many frames are you able to render before it crashes?

I had the same with Poser and Vue. Reinstalling DivX codec resolved problem. I'm not sure if that was Divx, because uninstalled all codecs one after one.

I've found it best to render with no compression at all and then bring the file size down in the video ediitng. Certainly the quality of the final product is far better -- and I've not had issues with crashing.

However, as TG asks, how many frames are you trying to get out?

Thank you for your replies. The last attempt was with 200 frames although the same thing has happened with120 frames

Hmm. Okay, I guess the next question is: how much stuff are you putting in the scene? Can you put up a screenshot of one of the frames? It could be your overtaxing the system with too many pieces.

You can try render "ranges of frames" 0-120, 135-265, etc.

You may want to consider "pre-editing" your shots. With the exception of establishing shots, movie and television shots are rarely longer than a few seconds. Try shorter shots with more camera angles.

Thanks once again. You're probably right in that there's too much stuff in my scene.
I'll certainlly try your suggestion replicand  of rendering a small range of frames. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "pre-editing", could you please elucidate.

Quote - You can try render "ranges of frames" 0-120, 135-265, etc.

You may want to consider "pre-editing" your shots. With the exception of establishing shots, movie and television shots are rarely longer than a few seconds. Try shorter shots with more camera angles.

I agree with this advice

Cheers

By "pre-editing", he means laying out your shots as to how they'll go into the master sequence. For example:

(1) closeup of eyes
(2) medium shot of door
(3) hand moving left to right
(4) closeup of doorpull, tracking in
(5) hand moving to doorpull, arm pulling back
(6) door opening (character's POV)
(7) character's face, eyes widen
(8) long side shot: character and open doorway, light floods in

None of these would be any longer than 3-5 seconds, which means none would be longer than 90-150 frames. Plan your shots accordingly, then put them together into the final sequence.

Regarding pre-editing:

Let's say you're a film director working on 35mm film. If your movie is 90 minutes long, you'll probably shoot 16 hours of footage, which you would craft in the editing room into a 90 minute film.

Because rendering is a time-consuming and CPU intensive process, you'll want to "pre-edit", perhaps more commonly known as an animatic. In pre-editing, all of your shots are blocked out with their (time) lengths established before any animating is begun. So if you know your shot will only 4.5 seconds long, you won't render out ten seconds to later decide that you only need half of it.

Don't know if that makes sense.

Your problem, if it is memory related , can be fixed by rendering in a separate process. This usually resolve memory leakage since FFRender, while rendering separate from Poser, will open and close as necessary, thus Poser's memory usage remains steady. Though, FFRender can sometimes remain open and begin eating your memory if there are too many items in your scene that have a texture greater than 3000 x 3000. I don't know why and neither did E-frontier.

I stopped rendering out to individual Tiffs a long time ago simply because I hardly ever had issues with the finished product of the animation engine. Animating to Tiffs took more time due to the assembly process. I have found that if your scene is properly setup and when all is ready to be animated, simply setting every frame for every component in the scene as a key frame solves a lot of unexpected problems. I won first place for my 45 minute sci fi presentation, beating out others using high end programs. Their features were much shorter in length because of all the procedures that went into creating their projects. I can create so much more because I don't fiddle with what I have found to be unnecessary; Thus 45.2 minutes of footage as compared to 20 minutes. Of course, I was made fun of for using Poser 7, the runner ups saying things like "why would they give credit to a button pusher" and "you shouldn't win if you don't have to work at it". You get the idea. I guess they weren't paying any attention to the story, another thing I had more time to work on instead of model construction and frame by frame micro-assembly.

I had seen recently , a person here claiming that if you use the render engine of Poser to make your movie then you're "doom from the start". That simply is not true. Rendering to Tiffs is fine if you have the time for assembly and it appears that your project is personal and not professional... so you do have the time. Try it both ways and see what is best for you. As for the pre-editing advise, that is the most important thing you can ever do. My features include some long, panoramic shots lasting about 20 seconds (600 frames). I ONLY do this for the 'Awe' value or for when the scene must capture the audience. Otherwise, the shots are much shorter in length. It might seem like there would be no substance to a short shot but I can tell you from experience, a slew of long, protracted scenes will put you audience to sleep.

Thanks for all your replies. I think I've got the idea now.

Just to insert the geek angle, have you tested your RAM? Graphics programs of any type stress system ram more than nearly any other application, and tend to gobble up address space higher than just about anything. All it takes is one weak bit to crash a render in progress. There are several free apps you can download that will help determine if your system's ram is up to the task you're demanding of it.

Also, is there adequate ventilation? Rendering drives your system temp up considerably; and unlike a game, which can make your video card cook, it stresses processor, northbridge, southbridge, hard drives, and any other component. Laptops are particularly vulnerable, as they have minimal airflow a the best of times, and people tend to treat them like typewriters, and not extremely delicate tech (one young lassie of my aquaintance came wailing to me about her relatively new laptop being dead. Boy, was it. After a few questions, I found out she tended to plop the thing on a pillow she put on her lap. So easy for bed, and she -liked- how warm it kept her legs.....sigh. I quietly suggested to her parents that they get her a desktop unit; cheaper and sturdier, if not as cool vis-a-vis her friends.... If she needed portable, netbooks are the current coolness.....). 

Quote -  Render to single images instead and assemble it in some sort of editing software.

Poser, in all versions, have memory issues, meaning the memory leak gets worse over time.

Just out of curiosity.. how many frames are you able to render before it crashes?

Well Poser 6 doesn't leak! I just finished watching an 801 frame animation rendered directly to DivX from Poser. Task Manager showed the memory being used never exceeded 560Megs!! The only problem is my sound file was 6 seconds too short and cuts off so now I have another three days to render it again. God I hope they fix the leak in SR1 for Poser 8!

Oh and for the record, I now have Poser 7 rendering the exact same animation file and it's looking to be at least three times as fast as Poser 6 and I don't see any leaks yet in Task Manager on Frame 125 of 801 so far.

So, my conculsion is "Not ALL versions of Poser have the memory leaks" when rendering animations. Not saying they don't all have some memory issues, but the animation leak seems to be in Poser 8 only for me so far. I haven't tried rendering the animation in Poser Pro yet.

Quote - You can try render "ranges of frames" 0-120, 135-265, etc.

You may want to consider "pre-editing" your shots. With the exception of establishing shots, movie and television shots are rarely longer than a few seconds. Try shorter shots with more camera angles.

For another record, my 801 frame animation is only 26 seconds long when rendered out. Hardly a long continuous shot.

Steve you're forgetting the MTV generation. 26 seconds is a LONG time.

 One of my few animations were made as short clips edited together (with DDClip) after they were rendered out as single, short  .avi files - I suppose that's an example of "pre-editing"  - http://trekkiegrrrl.dk/TheMonsterUnderTheBed.WMV

Still, it shouldn't be too long for the software to render. And for what it's worth, this 26 second shot is a paning shot where the camera is panning around a robot walking guard duty on a space ship which shows the whole interior of the main deck. I see these shots in Sci-Fi all the time.

As for the MTV generation? Meh! Tell em' to get off my lawn! LOL! Not EVERYONE over 20 has stopped watching movies. Some of us still enjoy movies that require an attention span that isn't measured in miliseconds. :tt2:

I think the point about scene length is being missed here. I too use long, protracted shots but only when the scene requires it. Here is an example. Right now, I am animating a combat sequence where a sniper is firing upon many soldiers from a great distance away. The scenes are of the sniper as well as following the teams on the battlefield. There are only two protracted scenes, each lasting between 15 and 20 seconds. those being the scenes where the sniper adjusts, takes aim and fires (21 second, dramatic scene with muffled ambient sound, heart beating sound  and slow breathing) and the second being a mobilization towards the snipers position (15 second action with running and "Private Ryan" jittering camera). The "Fire and Impact" scenes would not be very intense if they were also long and drawn out. These scenes are very short as well as being visually intense.

The point I am trying to make is that you're not one of the MTV crowd if your using the appropriate length for your scene. Most scenes do not require 15 to 20 seconds to get the point across to the audience. BTW, I'm 44, I hate MTV and I have been making independent film for eighteen years now. Currently, I am attempting to acquire the rights to produce "Syndicate Wars" from EA Games. They have been sitting on that property for a decade now so it shouldn't be too difficult since they seem to have ZERO plans for it. Wish me luck.