Problems with Render on Vista.

[maffeirw]

I've been having problems with rendering, and saving with the render switch on, for some time now on my PC (Vista OS). It seems to get to the same place and then locks up. I have let it go for up to an hour when it reaches that point but eventually I'm forced to kill the app in the Task Manager. Occasionally it actually completes without error but if I render or save, one or two more times, without any other changes, it locks up again.
I can only go back to v4.1.8 before the grid for this sequence gets screwed up, but I'm sure I've been having this problem prior to that version.
If I move all the files to my I7 Laptop (Win 8.1) everything works fine.
I'm curious if anyone else is having similar problems and it's just time to upgrade my desktop or if this is something that can be remedied. I really don't want to spend the money on a new system at the moment, if I can help it.
Thanks,
Ron
 

[Gilrock]

The render time will increase as the number of models rises, the number of layers per model, the number of effects per layer, the number of model groups or whole house models you use.  Without any of that information theres no way we can guess how long your render should take.  If you are importing rgb data and creating 1000's of effects and using a slow machine to render who knows how long that could take.  I had one sequence from a user that took 10 minutes on my really fast machine.  On a slow machine I could see that same sequence taking over an hour.  The bottom line there was it's a bad idea to try to import that much RGB data.  So tell us more about the content of your models and sequence.  Actually you have it working on the I7 laptop so what is the render time for that?  Do you look at task manager when it seems to be locked up?  How much memory do you have and what's the usage while this is running?  Usually I can open task manager and see multiple threads doing work so I know the render is still doing something.

[gerry]

Hello Ron,

Gut feel would be Vista- I was glad to get off that even for normal tasks.
But if you post an indication of what models /channel count you have etc and whether any of your effects were imported into xL and if so how you imported them , that may help.

Not 100 % sure whether using multiple views (4.1.9 onwards) and only having the models open that you wish to be working on via that view will help with when you render.
 

[maffeirw]

I have attached the xml files used by the particular sequence I was referring to in my post. This is a relatively small setup that I am doing for a friend so it has a small number of models and not many effects. 

The render/save time on the I7 box is under 10 seconds and about the same on the rare occasions that it completes on the Vista machine. When it hangs it's after displaying "Done Rendering Main Star" with the Task Manager showing ~26% CPU Utilization and 269,000K memory usage for xLights at that time.
The system has an Intel core 2 Quad CPU with 6GB memory installed. When I'm having the problem, with no other apps running, the total CPU hovers around 27% and memory utilization is at ~3.5 GB, all 4 CPUs show activity.

I am having similar problems with all the sequences on my various setups. Any help would be appreciated
Ron

[Gilrock]

What were you trying to do with the Data Layer?  You have a data layer that consists of the output of the same sequence you are working on.  That doesn't look right so I would delete that layer.  If you actual want a data layer from data that came from another program then you need to choose the file type for the other program and select the file.

[Gilrock]

By the way its all rendering and playing just fine for me but of course I was getting errors about not having the .iseq file for that data layer.

[maffeirw]

The data layer was a holdover from originally moving the sequence over from another setup prior to the implementation of the grid capabilities. I had re-sequenced it all in Nutcracker and failed to delete the layer. I was hoping that deleting the layer would improve the hang up problem, but it didn't.

By the way its all rendering and playing just fine for me but of course I was getting errors about not having the .iseq file for that data layer.

Was this on a Vista box or a later OS?

[Gilrock]

The data layer was a holdover from originally moving the sequence over from another setup prior to the implementation of the grid capabilities. I had re-sequenced it all in Nutcracker and failed to delete the layer. I was hoping that deleting the layer would improve the hang up problem, but it didn't.

By the way its all rendering and playing just fine for me but of course I was getting errors about not having the .iseq file for that data layer.

Was this on a Vista box or a later OS?

No Vista got banned from my house.