-
Hitting 4 GB file limit with Compressor
Aloha All,
We are trying to create a couple of .264 AVC transport streams to use in creating a blu-ray disc for replication.
Our work flow consists of editing XDCAM footage in FCP (FCS3) and rendering out a QT movie in XDCAM codec (though we also tried it with ProRes 422HQ and LT). We then drop the QT file in compressor and set it for blu-ray and have varied the avg/max mbps from 30/35 to 25/30. We are using the latest version of Compressor on a brand new 12-core MacPro.
What happens is when we finish encoding the .264 file, we move it into NetBlender DoStudio running under Bootcamp and mux it. We’re using Arcsoft theater to view both the original .264 file and the muxed file and both show that the encode stopped at 4 GB (varies from about 20-25 minutes in depending on the encode rate) and then starts over again from the beginning from that point in time.
This is clearly coming from Compressor as the raw .264 shows this as well as the muxed version. Does anyone have any thoughts on what might be causing a 4 GB file limit in Commpressor?Thanks,
Ken
-
10 Replies
-
-
Reformat your drive to MacOS Extended.
Many drives come preformatted to FAT 32, which is an old PC format that has a 4GB file size limit.
-
Aloha John and Rafael,
Thanks for the replies. If it were only so easy : ) Sorry I should have said that we were only writing to HFS MacOS extended drives, no FAT32 drives anywhere. The output file is 7GB in size, its just that compressor returns to the beginning everytime hits the 4 GB mark. That is our show begins to repeat internally.
We tried every combination writing between two different 5TB Sata arrays and the boot drive. All produced the same result. Near as I can figure this is going on in compressor or bootcamp, but I can’t figure out what’s causing it.
I also have already used Digital Rebellions compressor fixer with no change. And I followed Apple’s instructions and manually removed everything related to Compressor, Qmaster, and Motion and reinstalled them all, no change.
Something is limiting Compressor to only using the first 4GB of the QT movie and it’s like the sun rising everyday, totally repeatable, I just can’t figure out where the gremlin is hiding. I’ve trashed all my preferences, I guess the next thing is to uninstall FCS completely and reinstall it. The one thing I will say is that I’m a total amatuer in regards to Qmaster as we just moved up from an old G5 Quad (we’ve been using FCP and DVDSP for about 6 years and have replicated thousands of DVDs, so we’re not total newbies on that front at least)
Aloha,
Ken
-
Too many variables here. Did you check the Compressor file after encoding? If you don’t know if it is Compressor or the muxing software you are running under Windows (I presume that is what is happening when you mention bootcamp), then it is really easy to check the pre muxed Qt file before you reboot.
Is there any particular reason not to mux it in Compressor?
-
Hi Ken
Close and reopen Compressor.
Then clean the “History window” before start any job.
Some time ago was a bug that made Compressor re-take old jobs that they were stopped or so.
Yesterday somebody else was complaining about similar issue.
rafael -
Aloha Michael (nice avatar!)
The reason we’re muxing with Netblender is that we’re making a BDCMF master for replication. What I can see on the PC side is not just the muxed file, but I can also view the raw .264 avc transport stream and both have the identical problem. I think this brings it down to either a Win 7 (64 bit) problem under Bootcamp or the file was incorrectly encoded on the Mac. Your idea of muxing the 264 file and the ac3 file on the Mac would help isolate the issue, but I’m not sure how to go about this in Compressor. If you have a workflow I’d love to know it, but it has to allow me to make the 264 transport file first, then mux them together so I can analyze the workflow. Burning straight from our QT file to blu-ray won’t help that much, though I should probably check that as well.
Aloha,
Ken
-
Thanks Rafael,
We’ve not only closed and opened Compressor and also cleared the History window and the Batch window, we’ve also used Compressor repair, and completly unistalled and reinstalled Compressor, Qmaster, and Motion, but with identical results.
Aloha,
Ken
-
[Michael Gissing] “Is there any particular reason not to mux it in Compressor”
Compressor can mux only MPG-1.
rafael -
Thanks Rafael.
And just to add to this story, I set up a separate dedicated Windows machine and I’m seeing the same problem both in the raw 264 stream and in the muxed stream and compile BD file. So it must be happening on the Mac side, probably in compressor. Its almost like we have a setting wrong somewhere, but all we’ve specified is the codec, video size etc. We’re not transcoding or applying filters. Go figure.
Ken
-
I’ve actually figured out the problem, finally. I used Toast 10 on the Mac to take the raw 264 and ac3 files and burn a blu-ray from the Mac side (you have to set up toast so it doesn’t re encode the file, but that was simple). That played fine on our Sony player. So we figured that the error was induced during copying. When you run Windows 7 under Bootcamp you can see the Mac HFS formated drives and you can copy files from them (can’t copy to them, same thing looking at the NTFS drives from the Mac side). Evidently there is a super secret hidden 4GB copy limit under Win7 copying from HFS drives. It allows you to copy a file greater than 4 GB unlike FAT32 drives which just show a failure to copy. So it happily makes the 6 or 7 GB files we were transferring, but after it didn’t actually copy anything past the first 4 GB, it simply appended data from the first part of the file to the end of the file to make up the size difference! Nice little trick. So I installed MacDrive on the Win7 Bootcamp machine and it copies just fine now so our project is up and running. I guess most people don’t encounter this as they are working on SANs or they’re smart enough to install this software from the beginning.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up