"Failed" to export .mp4 video

Aresby

Just tried (several times) to generate (export) my video to .mp4 format (mpeg, 8192bps, 1920x1080, 25fps, audio 128kbps) and it has "failed" several times, despite trying several alternative settings.

I'm getting panicky now that I can't generate this video, what can I do please? (Don't ask me to send you the entire project, it's several GB in size, about 20 mins long). The settings I'm using are the settings I've always used.

Edit: It gets to 100% but the green bar is not quite complete (just a couple of pixels remain) - it's at that point it fails.

Edit2: I've also noticed, but may not be anything do to with this, that my CPU utilisation is no longer 100% when generating the video, but hovers around the 40% mark - this seems odd to me as surely it should be totally occupying the CPU when generating a video (or is it now slower than before?). As I say, this may not be relevant but just something I noticed.

"Failed" doesn't really help me diagnose the issue (nor you, I expect). Is there a log file generated somewhere?

Using 4.58 but will re-install earlier version if required to do so.

c_major_2

Hi Aresby,

Please try export with previous version.

Also, could you send me just the project file(.vpj) without the media files.

Aresby

Happy New Year c_major!

I didn't really expect a reply today but thanks anyway. Yes, I will install the previous version (I only have 4.48 prior to 4.58 - if there is another version you would like me to install let me know asap please and give me a link to the download).

Here's a link to the vpj file (but note that I have now tried to split the project into multiple sequences to see whether I could generate it in separate parts then rejoin it all. Sequence 1 is the full video).

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4owslf2e9g0tamh/AACi3ik8zF_u3RyJvpVMyQ1aa?dl=0

(Ignore the other files in this folder, they are previous files I sent you for an issue which I'm still trying out.)

Aresby

Thanks for that response.

I just reinstalled a previous version (4.48) by running the exe I had in the Program Files (x86) folder and it overwrote my 4.58 version. I didn't re-enter my licence key, it just knew about me. It worked too, so my video can now be generated and much more quickly (just 16 minutes, rather than the 25 minutes or so using 4.58, don't know what's going on there).

Interestingly, I had an older VideoPad folder which had its own version of videopad.exe and that run just fine (alongside my 4.58) but was soooo old it would not open my project file and prompted me to upgrade to a more recent version! But it still indicates that making copies of the installation/runtime folder will allow you to run multiple versions side-by-side?

Unfortunately, the saga doesn't end there (with 4.48 successfully generating my video). The crossfade effect had been changed in 4.58 and was no longer compatible with 4.48 inasmuch that it just truncated bits of the crossfaded video - I've had to go back and ensure the video clips are correctly aligned, what a chore that was.

However, I'm relieved that 4.48 is still useable for me and will wait for 4.59 (?) to appear shortly as 4.48 definitely is a breaking change (well for us two, anyway). In some ways I'm surprised at NCH not giving early access to late beta or Release Candidate versions to real world users (I produce a YouTube video a week) who might find undocumented features more easily than they could. Of course, it would have to run in parallel with our installed released version and be backward / forward compatible so we could revert if required using the same project file.

That said I've produced 3 videos over Xmas with 4.58 and it's only the last one that has caused me problems. So testing could be quite lengthy!

Aresby

c_major wrote:

Hi Aresby,

Please try export with previous version.

OK, re-exported using 4.48 (the only previous version I had) and it worked fine - also a lot quicker than 4.58 which uses just 40% of my CPU which can't be right either - no wonder it's so slow!

Any ideas yet?

borate

Aresby wrote:

OK, re-exported using 4.48 (the only previous version I had) and it worked fine - also a lot quicker than 4.58 which uses just 40% of my CPU which can't be right either - no wonder it's so slow!

Any ideas yet?

In 4.58, look under OPTIONS|Editing tab and UNcheck the "use hardware accelerated video effects" box. Compare a run with your prior results.

Also, under the EXPORT tab, confirm that the "enable video lossless exporting" is not checked.

What are the PC and graphic card specs of the machine?

c_major_2

Hi Aresby,

In 4.48, VP spawn as many as threads regardless the system capability. It will work well on high end machines but less smooth on the others. Also, more thread means more memory usage.

We are trying to make number of threads scale with system capacity and reduce memory consumption(especially for 4K video processing).

We've done a lot of testing for the new changes(that's why it took so long) but something probably still missing.

Thanks for the files, we are working on it.

Edit: Yes, as Borate pointed out, using hardware acceleration will also reduce CPU usage.

c_major_2

Hi Aresby,

I could not repeat the error here by using your project. I've tried use other video/sound clips to recover the project.

Is it possible to share the original clip files? We can also give you the diagnostic build to try on and see if we can find the problem in the trace log.

Aresby

c_major wrote:

Hi Aresby,

In 4.48, VP spawn as many as threads regardless the system capability. It will work well on high end machines but less smooth on the others. Also, more thread means more memory usage.

We are trying to make number of threads scale with system capacity and reduce memory consumption(especially for 4K video processing).

We've done a lot of testing for the new changes(that's why it took so long) but something probably still missing.

Thanks for the files, we are working on it.

Edit: Yes, as Borate pointed out, using hardware acceleration will also reduce CPU usage.

OK, so I switched off hardware acceleration (surely only used when previewing the video not actually generating it)? Whatever, it made no difference to the generation time, nor to the 40% CPU utilisation.

So now my 20 minute video takes 30 minutes to generate instead of a 30 minute video taking 20 minutes to generate (in 4.48). Not good for me and wasting resources on my PC. I think 4.58 needs some further updates or user options to generate sufficient threads to totally utilise the CPU to speed up video generation.

Intel Core i5-3470S Quad 2.90Ghz, 12Gb RAM, Intel HD graphics (but I have no idea of what hardware as I don't play games on my PC so it's of little importance).

Anyway, I will reply to your other response separately.

Aresby

c_major wrote:

Hi Aresby,

I could not repeat the error here by using your project. I've tried use other video/sound clips to recover the project.

Is it possible to share the original clip files? We can also give you the diagnostic build to try on and see if we can find the problem in the trace log.

I'm afraid there is a 'problem' in doing this:

Although I used the same project file I sent you, I had already generated a new .vpj project in an attempt to generate my video. When I use the project file I sent you the video was generated OK (no "failed" message at 100%). I even re-checked the hardware acceleration just to prove it and it generated fine also.

So the 'problem' is the video now generates correctly (albeit very slowly - see my previous answer to you) and I cannot get it to fail again. However, on the day I was generating the video I tried it several times and each time it failed once it reached the 100% point.

As I am not the only one with this issue I am thinking it is perhaps intermittent.

Remember that I used 4.58 to generate three different videos over the Christmas period and only in this last one did I have a problem. But they all exported very s-l-o-w-l-y as previously mentioned.

Not sure what to do now - if I cannot replicate the issue then there is no issue but we know there WAS an issue. Perhaps just log it and wait to see if it happens again - once I can recreate the problem then I can use your diagnostic version?

c_major_2

We've fixed the CPU usage problem. A new version is in testing now and will be released soon.

Please let me know if you get the "failed" message again.

Aresby

c_major wrote:

We've fixed the CPU usage problem. A new version is in testing now and will be released soon.

Please let me know if you get the "failed" message again.

Good news that a new version is in testing (working with old version 4.48 showed me how much version 4.58 has improved).

If I get the "failed" again I will let you know and try not to amend the project but sometimes I'm on a deadline, but we can but try this approach.