Hi Mark,

I've added a short video to show you the steps I take. I split the file in this instance at 49 minutes and a bit, as it was a convenient place. Note that on the drop down export menu mine is set up for pal but if you are in ntsc land you options may well be Full HD 30p and 60p. Just noticed that when you set the bit rate in the advanced menu, it is Average and Max not Minimum and Max as I said previously.

When you set it to the folder you want to export it to, VPX always seems to default to the same file name no matter what you enter as the name, so I just rename after exporting.

Roger

Many thanks Roger. Gonna try this. MARK

I find that my wedding clients are very happy with the quality of the mp4s, but if you want a higher quality just increase the average and maximum bit rates. Just don't forget that increased BR will give larger files so you will have to shorten the sections to stay within the 4Gb limit.

I should also add that I write my mp4 files to the client folder on the PC first as it is faster, then copy to the USB stick once I have checked them. I also supply the files on USB2 sticks which take longer to copy to but will play on just about anything.

Roger

Thanks Roger. I can't try this out immediately... earlier I decided to attempt a burn to DVD. Hours later, it apparently has ground to a halt while "Loading" at 90 per cent. Might have to cancel.

Hi

. . . . . each time, many hours into the process, the export fails and a warning message advises me to change the settings . . . .

If this is on a new PC if so what specification is it?

John EB

Hello John. No, the PC is not new, although I have upgraded the graphics card. I have had to abandon the burn... resolutely stuck at 90 per cent. Not a great day! Wanted to burn to Blu-Ray, only to realise that the cable is missing. And no shops near here stock one. Nor do any of them sell Blu-Ray rewriters. So I've had to order a new one!

Are the specs good enough?

WINDOWS 10 HOME 64-BIT

INTER CORE i5-2310 2.9GHz

8gb RAM

NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 Ti

QUAD CORE

Mark

Hi Mark

. . . . the PC is not new, although I have upgraded the graphics card. . . . .

Afraid not - this has already been covered in the topic you posted on the 7/11/2017.

. . . . . Decided to go for MP4 (should it be AVI?) . . . .

No you will be in a worse position - the AVI will be a bigger file size for the same quality level, also device compatibility can be an issue - mp4 is almost universally supported, AVI not - none Windows devices either need Quicktime (with extra plugins if necessary), or an OS supported version of VLC to play the AVI file format.

. . . . . Am exporting to a USB stick which has more than 1TB of space . . . . .

Free space on the USB stick is not an issue here, although as Roger has advised you the format may. The free space on your system drive is of importance - the video is first pre-rendered to this before being copied into the mp4 file on the USB stick.

IIRC the free space for the pre-render is at least 2x the size of the final video, if you do not have this the render can fail.

If the render fails at the same point/time every time then there also may be an issue within the project at that time, eg if the render fails at 60 mins into the timeline, there may be a problem with an image, video clip, effect etc at that time on the timeline.

HTH

John EB

Hi Mark,

Two problems I can see immediately from the spec you posted. If you intend to work in 4k, you really need as much ram and fastest processor possible. You really need to be looking at a 6th generation i7 as a minimum and 16Gb ram, but preferably 32Gb. Your lack of ram and processor speed are where the bottleneck is. Your graphics card is fine but with a new i7 you can use the Intel graphics on the CPU. Upgrading you ram to 16Gb would help, but you would still be stuck with the processor.

However, at the moment working with what you have, I would break your timeline into smaller sections as I suggested earlier by setting ranges, then export to mp4. As you will be rendering smaller sections your system should handle it better. Once you have made mp4s of each section, if you have already set up your menus on the project timeline, make a copy of it under a new name, delete all the original files from that new timeline and drop your new mp4s into it. That will preserve your menu structure, but all the pre rendering will have been done so you should have no problem producing a dvd from the new mp4 timeline.

Hope that helps,

Roger

The film is being screened in a cinema in a few weeks, and I need to have it available for HD or 4K viewing. So I'm off to try to buy a new Blu-Ray writer tomorrow. Can you help with the following:

1. Do Blu-Ray writers burn 4k as well as HD?
2. If so, do they take normal Blu-Ray discs?

Mark

4k Bluray writers start at about £150 and you cannot use standard Bluray discs you will need Bluray M depending on the writer. You will also need to be absolutely certain that the disc you write is compatible with the playback system, which will have to be a 4k Bluray player not a standard Bluray one. Not all 4k Bluray discs are compatible with all 4k players. Sounds like a bit of a risky strategy to me.

Ah, Thankyou Roger. This is really helpful. I will consult with the venues on Monday, so will know quickly where the land lies. Cheers.

I now have a working Blu-Ray writer. Bearing in mind that the film was all shot in 4k, do I need to downscale to HD before burning to Blu-Ray, or is this automatic?

Hi mark,

If it's not a 4k BluRay writer, VPX should scale it automatically when writing to BluRay, however your system may still run into bottleneck problems as it still needs to convert your video from 4k. If you still have problems, you will need to convert in smaller segments first, in the way I described earlier.

Roger

Hi Roger

I do like the idea of breaking the project into smaller chunks, as you previously advised. That is my next step. Is setting ranges easy?

I reformatted the USB drive as you suggested and, sure enough, this worked. But, as you also warned, the resulting MP4 file is being rejected as unsupported by every TV, laptop and PC in the house. Is there scope to move the MP4 to different media, or is the damage done?

Hi Mark,

If you have formatted the usb to Fat32 and you are unable to read the file you have written, can you give details of that file or better still screen grabs of your file settings.

Ranges are easy to set, I set one on the video I posted if you go back to it. If you have difficulty with range setting, there is good instruction in the manual accessed from the help tab -manual pdf. If you can't follow that I'll do you a short video tomorrow(Monday) as it is 1.30am in the UK now 😩

Rather than making long time consuming files, set a range of about 30 secs and export that to the same settings as the file I set up in the video.

Roger

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Hi Mark,

You can set the range in and out points with the cursor by dragging the beginning to where you want and then right-clicking in the range line where you want the out point.

The easiest and most precise way that I know is to set the playback marker exactly where you want the range to start, press on the letter "I" for in, move the playback marker to where you want the range to stop and press on the letter "O" for out. There are many uses of ranges and you should learn them. This is just one of them. Remember to check the box in the export window for exporting the range only.

John CB

i have attached a screen grab of the file details for the uncooperative MP4 file. Does this tell you anything?

Hi Mark,

Yes it shows quite clearly that your mp4 file is 12.4Gbs which is way bigger than the 4Gb files that will play on a Fat 32 USB. See my first post to your original question.

You need to make a file which is about 30secs long, then you can see if it will play properly or not before proceeding any further and wasting time on bigger files.

Roger

Hi Roger

But I re-formatted it to exFat.

Mark

Hi Mark,

Why did you do that?

What I said was that your file size will be limited to 4Gbs if you format to Fat32, but it should be readable by just about everything. If you format to ExFat or NTSF, you will be able to copy bigger files to it but just as you are finding, many systems just won't read it.

Your file size shown in your screen grab is 12.4Gbs, which is clearly more than the 4Gb files you can play in Fat32 Just to be absolutely clear, each of your mp4 video files needs to be no more than 4Gbs and your USB stick formatted to Fat32. You can of course put as many sub 4Gb files on to your usb as the capacity will allow.

If you make a much shorter file, perhaps just 30 secs, you can use it as a test file to make sure that it is playing ok when you put it on an Fat32 formatted usb stick.If that plays OK you can then go ahead and break your main timeline down into sections of a maximum of 4Gbs each, before exporting them to mp4.

Roger

I am taking the advice and exporting the movie piece by piece as MP4 files. It is taking forever - been at it four hours and exported just 23 mins of footage - but if it works, it will be well worth it. Have been told that my PC'S motherboard does not support expansion, so would need a new one on top of the new processor and extra RAM. The shop has estimated a total cost of £800. Ouch.

Four hours for 23 minutes!!!! I've just exported 49 minutes from 3x 4k streams with complex editing including horizontal corrections, zooms and pans from 4k, colour correction and a number of clips with Mercalli. The export to Mp4 took 35 minutes. I then exported another 30 minute clip with far less correction but lots of transitions etc and that took 11 minutes. Man you've got to chuck your board in the skip!

Did you take my advice and render a 30 second clip first to test?

Roger