nVidia Driver v.6.14.10.9185; QuickTime v7.50.61.0; All current updates to CS3 and to Win XP.
With Open GL enabled, AE is crashing on renders after a few minutes (usually around 300-400 frames). Also crashing on RAM previews when disabling proxies (proxies are PSD stills). RAM previews run fine if no QT files are involved. So it seems the crashing is happening when QuickTime files are involved. Using Avid DNxHD codec but already found on the Avid forum that many users are using this codec on AE CS3 with no problems.
We decided to disable OpenGL and for the first time it made it all the way through a render. Haven't had enough time yet to try RAM previews with Open GL turned off.
But obviously want to use Open GL for faster workflow.
I have tried the most current nVidia driver and several older versions with no success. It's been suggested on the Avid forum that this is an nVidia driver issue and that in fact nVidia needs to update its drivers to fix the QT issue.
Re: CS3 crashing on renders & RAM preview by Rick Meredith on Jul 8, 2008 at 3:19:16 pm
I guess we were just lucky to get that one good render. Trying a couple more renders with Open GL off, it still crashed on both attempts. Message: "Error invoking Advanced 3D"
Re: CS3 crashing on renders & RAM preview by Kevin Camp on Jul 8, 2008 at 3:24:30 pm
since you have multiple cores, you may get faster previews (or nearly as fast) with opengl disabled (preferences>previews, uncheck the 'use opengl' option) and enabling multiprocessing (preferences>multiprocessing, check the option for 'render multiple frames simultaneously').
since you only have 2gb of ram, you may need to adjust the max ram cache to around 50% (preferences>memory & cache) to get both cores rendering, but i think that even with only 1gb of ram per core, you may get as fast or faster previews without opengl -- note that opengl is not compatible with multiprocessing, so you can't use them both, and opengl only accelerates about a dozen standard ae effects, blending modes and motion blur, where 'render multiple frames simultaneously' will accelerate pretty much all of a render. plus, multiprocessing seems to be more stable (fewer crashes) than opengl.
Re: CS3 crashing on renders & RAM preview by Rick Meredith on Jul 8, 2008 at 3:33:50 pm
I only have 2GB RAM because I thought WinXP would not recognize any more. I am adding one extra Gig this afternoon because I also run Avid and Avid has a patch allowing 3GB to be recognized. If I add more than 3GB will it be of any use with AE? I would happily add more if I knew it would be useful. There are plenty of open RAM slots on this machine.
Re: CS3 crashing on renders & RAM preview by Kevin Camp on Jul 8, 2008 at 3:51:04 pm
i'm on a mac, but i believe there is a patch that will allow 32-bit xp to use 4gb of ram. i think 1gb is designated for the os, but the other 3gb can be used by an application...
you can search teh cow for more info on this, or hopefully someone on windows can help you more...
Re: CS3 crashing on renders & RAM preview by Kevin Camp on Jul 8, 2008 at 3:35:29 pm
I guess we were just lucky to get that one good render. Trying a couple more renders with Open GL off, it still crashed on both attempts. Message: "Error invoking Advanced 3D"
if you are getting crashes during renders, then opengl is most likely not the problem... by default, ae only uses opengl acceleration for previews... ae uses it's standard software renderer for final renders, unless you have enable the 'use opengl renderer' in the render settings.
i've seen that error before using older effects, you might see if there are any updates for any effects that you are using in that comp...
if previews are fine with opengl on, you could try enabling the opengl for render in the render settings (i wouldn't normally recommend this, but it might be worth seeing if it helps).
