In the image sequence I did, there was one problem which may be related to this, so I reported that to Smith Micro as well.
One thing you should try is to increase or decrease the bucketsize and number of threads (not by much to 16 or 64 and 3 or 5 threads instead of 4). Often animations will work. Not a solution, but maybe a workaround.

 

I just tried it with a 180 frame animation, but unfortunately the problem does not appear.I know that the problem does not only exist on your configuration because I have had it a couple of times as well.
I just hoped we had a reproducable scenario which Smith Micro then could easily solve

Do you render to a movie or to an image sequence?

Poser 8 works fine with Windows 7 64 bit (pre release version) on the i7. It is faster as the quad, but more important, it has 8 cores and you can limit Poser 8 to 7 cores  for rendering and still use the machine without delays for other tasks. Poser 8 itself is still 32bit, but in the 64bit Windows 7 (and vista and xp64) you have 4GB available within the application, which goes up from 2GB in the 32bit versions.
In the next PoserPro there will probably.a 64bit render engine which allows larger renders.

If you can afford it, go for the i7 with 64bit Windows 7

Aeilkema: To quote from your post: "Whatever you do never use the 3GB /Large switch on XP32! It's for XP64 only!"

This is plainly nonsense. The 3GB switch is for XP32 and should NOT be used on XP64

If you add another ground plane (high res square) to cast the shadows on, the problem disappears,
(or you can increase the size of the prop, which is probably not what you want)

pzDB is primarily focused on searching the library/libraries and does a very good job of that.
P3dO is a runtime browser and file viewer with a large set of integrated tools for Poser and other 3D applications.
I use both of them plus the P8 library because they each can do things the others cannot. And nothing prevents you from using them all at the same time.

The Poser 8 figures have many morphs - not just 3

Early adaptors always pay more - that is the way our economy works. Not only with Smith Micro but also with Intel and even with every CD and/or DVD you buy
And what do you gain?
You get to play earlier with it as other people who prefer to wait and pay less.
 

The python settings for IDL are documented in the Python reference manual and the settings them selves can be set with a python script delivered with Poser 8 and available from the scripts menu.

I don't understand - Indirect Lighting (IDL) is an option in the Render settings. It is default off and you have to turn it on to use it.
 

If you go for Poser 8 you will loose the ability to render with the P4 render engine. That is something you might use. PoserPro still has it, but the successor probably not.
Document viewport size in Poser 8 depends on the UI. If you have a docked preview window it takes it size from its surroundings. If you set it to floating it keeps the same size until you change it - it is now part of the UI settings. It does not take its size from the scene file anymore.

Gamma correction in PoserPro and Tone mapping in Poser 8 are both optional features. If you do not turn them on, older scenes will render the same as in previous versions.

I still use scenes from 2004 and update them with the new features to make them look better, so loading or importing is not a problem either.

P8 works great, I haven't touched PoserPro since I installed P8.
PoserPro renders larger scenes, but P8 comes a long way in that direction too - much larger as Poser 6.
Indirect lighting makes it much easier to set up lighting a scene - especially with outdoor scenery. Often 1 or 2 lights are enough to get great results. PoserPro does not have that yet.
The new UI is a matter of taste. For me the library is working much faster as the old one since you can directly access the folders and items you want without going up and down through the runtime hierarchy, The improvements in SR1 makes the icons larger and easier to use. New improvements are promised for later releases.

For me - and many others - Poser 8 is stable and and is a great improvement over Poser 7 and - depending on your needs - over Poser Pro.

I assumed the collect script would work. The only thing odd about the props is that every prop has all the textures of all the props referenced, but - of course - uses only the material zones which are present in the props. By writing the scene with the collect inventory it will rewrite all the references and now probably the way Poser wants it. In the "normal" scene file it keeps the old references.

About the double references: I have seen that once in a while since Poser 4 I believe. I have no idea why - it probably is a quirk in Poser. The second set does not exist on disk. It probably has something to do with the way Poser caches its textures and the order in which it finds things. It only happens with certain props.

There are other things in Poser which take longer to write a message about as to correct it. Some jpg files cannot be read by Poser (they seem to come mosly from the japanes freebies). If you convert them with an image editor they work. Once you know this, it is a matter of seconds.

Regarding the original problem: I am pretty sure if you save the props back to the library after you loaded them, they will work in the future without ffrender crash.
But it all does not explain why it crashes on your macine in the first place

I tried exactly the same settings as you had and  everything renders fine without crashes. My result is virtually the same (only the reflection seems slightly less). If I look at my texture cache it seems as if all the textures are loaded twice but the second set does not exist (I have seen this type of thing ever since I discovered the texture cache). If you point at one of the two, the right texture is selected automatically and will work. But all that does not help with discovering why ffrender crashes on your system.with these set of textures. One more question. After you made the collecting script and created a new scenefile. Did you try to restart poser and loaded the new scene directly? The new scene file has all new references in it to the new location. Does that render OK? Unfortunately all obj files are encapsulated in the new pz3 otherwise you could have send it to me. If that collected scene does not work, it must be something specific to your machine or to the poser configuration.

Regarding the brightness: If you increase the irradiance cache the whole scene gets much brighter. I had it set much higher.
Regarding the blotches with the inverse square falloff:Move the point light away from the ceiling. If it is too close you get the blotches. If it is 15-30 cm lower most of the blotches are gone and increasing the quality a bit gets rid of most of the others.

I now use the same light and props (I assume you have the fall-off set to inverse square otherwise you get too much light). Everything works fine. Only thing which may be different is the IDL and other render settings.

I checked the texture references and they all seem to be fine too, so - unless you happen to have textures in the P8 library with the same name, which is unlikely give the german names - that should be ok too.

Let me know the render settings