with the exception of very short movies (~30 frames), I can't get Poser to finish an AVI, though it used to just a couple of days ago. Now it progress steadily through each of the 200 frames in the status bar, but then just stops and stays on the final frame until I ctrl+alt+del... AGAIN! I uninstalled/reinstalled Poser and PPP. I adjusted my virtual memory. I tried a few different codecs, all with the same end result (none). I tried picture sequence and about half way through I got a message saying something like 'disc full', but it's not. Argh! I'm frustrated! Any ideas? much appreciated, K

have you tried defragging your hard drive? just a thought :)

yup, I tried that too. forgot to mention that part, but thanks ;-)

Have you installed new media player recently? Could be when Poser finishes making avi, then goes to play it, there is a problem there hooking up with the player. Do you have a 30 plus frame Poser file that you've rendered before, that you could re- render as a test?

You know, I was about to say 'No, I haven't installed any new media players recently.' However, I have just started getting messages from RealMedia when I first boot up, and coincidentally, it seems to be about the same time as this problem started. Do you think that could have something to do with it? (I've often had problems with RM stuff in the past. Not sure why it started showing up again,but I'm going to go get rid of it.) As for your other suggestion, yes, I did re-render a 30+ movie last night, and it worked fine (again, as it did the first time before this started), but then I tried a new movie, and got the same problem of it just stopping on the final frame... Another question: where do these partially completed files go? I started a frame by frame job, got to about frame 80 of 200, then 'apparently' ran out of disc space. Where did those 80 .psd files go? Also, in the past I had been able to stop an AVI job in progress, and I would get the AVI file up to that point. No longer though... Thanks for any and all help! :)

since your re-render played, this is confusing, unless your new movie is significantly bigger file. You might try removing RealMedia player, it has given me problems in the past.

The only real difference is that the 'failure' uses some textures for the floor and background. I used them also in a short 30 frame try and it worked OK... very strange.

Hi K, Sorry to see you're still having this problem. 1. Are you still hearing that "ding-ing" noise? Is it comming through the speakers or from the HD? If it's from the HD, back up anything that is precious on that thing and contact Dell support. You can also test your hardware using a burning test software like Sandra. You can download that from Cnet or from: www.3bsoftware.com/sandra Warning this is a stress test. Use it wisely. 2. If I understand correctly, you have used Mimic before without this problem. Mimic is not a new install? 3. Something may have affected your video drivers. Rendering in Poser is through software, AVI's use the vid card drivers. You might want to try and re-install the video drivers. But that would not account for the drive space warnings when writing Tiffs. So it's unlikely. Good luck, Q

Thanks for your continuing help Q. As far as the dinging, I figured out that it was my screen saver. I had it turned off, as I have heard that is a good idea when rendering things. HOwever, when it was set to go to screen saver mode (at 15 minutes of inactivity) I would get the ding. At least on mystery solved! I just made a new 150 frame movie, w/out mimic, but using the BG textures and it worked. I'll try again by adding a mimic pose now (I also rendered at 160 x 160 instead of 320 x 320 to try to speed things up a bit. Don't know if that would have an effect on the actual success or failure though) I'll post my 'testing' results when I get them. thanks all. K