I uncheck "render yellow bars" when I'm doing basic editing.  When I'm finished, I check "render yellow bars" and Liquid begins to render.  So far so good.  However, rendering progresses only about half way and goes no further.  The sumation symbol contines to pulse, but the black progress bar never gets beyond about half way, and some of the yellow bars never change to green.  I even let it run over night, but rendering didn't progress beyond where it was when I went to bed.  This has happend several times (actually, it happens all the time.) 

In each instance, I have had to close Liquid.  When I close out, the screen closes, but the "closing application" boxs stays on forever and never closes.  I have to then to a "Ctrl, Alt, Delete" to close the application.  But even that doesn't totally close Liquid because when I try to reopen it, I get an "Application Launch" error saying another copy of Liquid 7 is either running or not fully closed.  I then turn off the PC, reboot, and then reenter Liquid.  When I reenter Liquid, the rendering resumes and finishes in a minute or two and everything seems fine except my frustration level.

I've needed to do this ritual everytime I want to render (check the "render yellow bars") after editing with the comand unchecked.  Rendering always hangs up the first time and won't finish until I do everything above including the shut down, reboot, and reopen Liquid.  Any suggestions?

 Thanks.

 

If I understand your profile correctly, you've overclocked your system. Set it back to normal, and then see if it still hangs.

JohnnyQuest,

When render stucks, open the render window, press "Stop Render" and "Start render".
It this doesn't restart your render process open Windows Task Manager and kill process "RM.exe"

Hope it helps
Priit

Thanks Dave.  I didn't have this problem with previous projects on the same system, so I don't know why overclocking would suddenly be a problem.

Priit, I tried clicking "stop render" and it usually doesn't stop.  Sometimes it does, and when I click restart, it does resume and finishes rendering normally.  However, other times it just locks up my system and I need to shut down and reboot.  Sure is frustrating.

Overclocking can sometimes cause problems far down the line. That's part of the problems with instability; being unstable doesn't mean it won't work. It means it may not work.

In order to analyze the possible issues with the renderer, you first need to reduce the number of variables to a minimum. Setting your system back to normal timings and voltages is the first step.

After that (or even before if you really want) I'd look at possible project corruption. Move the offending sequences over to a new project and see if they render there. On a system which isn't OC'ed this is something I'd probably try first.

Thanks.  When you say setting the system back to "normal settings", I'm not sure what you mean.  My system was factory overclocked so if "normal" means as it came from Gateway, it is in its normal setting.  Based on limited research, it seems that in order to remove the overclock, I need to do hardware modifications or remove a jumper.  I'm really relucant to do that especially since I've had no problem with running Liquid on it prior to this current project.  I guess I need to do more research.  How involved is removing a factory set overclock?

 I've tried isolating the clips that won't render, but I can't seem to find particular clips that are problematic.  It seems to do it with all the clips with effects added.

 

 

If it's factory OC'ed, then leave it alone for now. Create a new project, import a couple of the sequences where you've seen the problems, and see what happens.

Hey Dave,

I see this occasionally too on really large projects with several sequences like weddings.  One thing that I think "triggers" the problem is when I open another sequence when the one I was working on has not completely rendered.  Just speculation, but that's what it seems like.  I don't overclock and am religious about things like HD defragmentation.

One thing that I think can help is the occasional deletion of render files.  I have started to do this as a maintenance practice when I see that the render files become bloated and consume massive amounts of space on the render drive.  If there has been a lot of changes to the project, as is common when trying to tweak color balances between 3 cameras for example, the render files can easily become 30 to 40% bigger than what they really need to be.  Deleting the render files reduces the wasted space and in general, makes editing go faster.

I constantly clean up my render directory; this is a good idea in general.

Thanks a lot Fred and Dave.  I regularly defragment my C drive as well as my media drive.  However, I don't know what you mean by cleaning up your render directory.  Where is that and how do I clean it up?

 

 

As you don´t seem to know anything about the render folder the location of it might not ever have been configured and in that case, it is most likely situated on your system drive, that is propably the reason to your probs.

Create a render folder on your media drive and point to that one from your Liquid control panel

I've always had my render folder on my media drive and I set Liquid to put the render files there.  I've defragmented that drive (as well as my system drive) regularly.  However I don't know what files in the render folder I should delete.  I have files from several projects in the render file as well as those from my current project.  Which should I delete and when/how often should I delete render files when I'm working on  project?  Thanks.

Dave 

 

Ok, then you actually know where the render folder is situated.

From outside of Liquid, just go into that folder and press delete for the subfolders that you have no use for. 

From inside of Liquid, you have the command, " delete render files " either for a sequense, for an entire project or for a selected clip, do a search for it.

It seems to have gone from bad to worse.  I deleted the render files and did a project clean up and now after nearly two days of restarting and rebooting, the project just won't render all the way through.  The black bar seems to always get stuck about at the 50% mark.  I have about 30 or so yellow bars.  There isn't just one or two that it's getting stuck on.  It seems that the process gets stuck rather than particular clips and it's not always he same clips.

1. Are you sure you have enough room on your render drive?

2. Have you tried closing Liquid and then restarting it to see that allows rendering to restart?

3. Have you tried copying the timeline to a new project and see if that resolves it?

4. Have you tried changing the fuse/render codec to mpeg 422 and see if that renders?

 

You haven´t mentioned in your profile what version of Liquid you are using, I suppose it is 7,2.

If that is the case, run the 7,2 full install file over itself to get a fresh install of Liquid to see if that make things better.

JohnnyQuest:

It seems to have gone from bad to worse.  I deleted the render files and did a project clean up and now after nearly two days of restarting and rebooting, the project just won't render all the way through.  The black bar seems to always get stuck about at the 50% mark.  I have about 30 or so yellow bars.  There isn't just one or two that it's getting stuck on.  It seems that the process gets stuck rather than particular clips and it's not always he same clips.

The only time I have had render issues is when the render files were on the C drive. I would check and confirm where they are going. If you have a raid set up for renders maybe a disc is failing? 

Another way you might debug this, if it's a clip problem, is to right click on each yellow bar individually, and force render.  It's time consuming, but you may find a clip that always stalls the render, and then you can try reimporting that clip to the timeline.

 -Craig

 

JohnnyQuest:

It seems to have gone from bad to worse.  I deleted the render files and did a project clean up and now after nearly two days of restarting and rebooting, the project just won't render all the way through.  The black bar seems to always get stuck about at the 50% mark.  I have about 30 or so yellow bars.  There isn't just one or two that it's getting stuck on.  It seems that the process gets stuck rather than particular clips and it's not always he same clips.

Yes, I would try to clone the project, then start removing stuff or selectively rendering to try to isolate a bad area.  Not always successful, I once had a peculiar problem that jumped around depending on what I removed/disabled.

Do you have any still pics on your timeline?

Are you mixing video formats on the timeline?  If so, sometimes causes problems that can be solved by first putting non-conforming clips in their own project (with same format), and fusing to make a converted clip.  Then put converted clips in original project.

-SB

When I went to bed last night, it seemed to be rendering fine.  It finished this morning without hanging up so at least I’ve had some success.  As of now it’s totally rendered.

1. Are you sure you have enough room on your render drive? 

Yes, my render drive has about 70% unused space.

2. Have you tried closing Liquid and then restarting it to see that allows rendering to restart?

Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing.  When it gets stuck, I close out Liquid.  When I restart, it resumes rendering.  Sometimes it continues thru to the end; other times it only goes so far and stops again.

3. Have you tried copying the timeline to a new project and see if that resolves it?

I have copied it to different sequences within the same timeline, but I haven’t tried copying it to a new project.  I will try that.

4. Have you tried changing the fuse/render codec to mpeg 422 and see if that renders?

I don’t know what that is or how to do it.  Can you explain that further?

You haven´t mentioned in your profile what version of Liquid you are using, I suppose it is 7,2.

I’m using 7.2

If that is the case, run the 7,2 full install file over itself to get a fresh install of Liquid to see if that make things better.

I’ll try that if I still have problems.

The only time I have had render issues is when the render files were on the C drive. I would check and confirm where they are going. If you have a raid set up for renders maybe a disc is failing?

Rendering is definitely going to the media drive.  I do have a raid set up, but wouldn’t a problem manifest itself in other ways too?

Another way you might debug this, if it's a clip problem, is to right click on each yellow bar individually, and force render.  It's time consuming, but you may find a clip that always stalls the render, and then you can try reimporting that clip to the timeline.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem to always hang with one clip.  It seems to be a process problem rather than a problem with a particular location in my timeline.

Do you have any still pics on your timeline?

I do have stills.  Why?

Are you mixing video formats on the timeline?  If so, sometimes causes problems that can be solved by first putting non-conforming clips in their own project (with same format), and fusing to make a converted clip.  Then put converted clips in original project.

I have some SD footage, mostly HD footage, and some stills.  What is a non-conforming clip?

 

Thanks everyone.