Effect failed to render

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Level 1

69 points

Effect failed to render

I am getting a red screen that says "The effect 'Soft Focus' failed to render: Your hardware cannot render at the requested size and depth." What kind of hardware do I need? We spent a lot of money on this machine. I tried rendering manually (instead of real-time), but it didn't help.

Mac Pro 2.8ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on May 5, 2008 11:13 AM

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Answer 1

David S.

Level 7

20,630 points

May 5, 2008 11:18 AM in response to LD Bear old

What WAS your size and depth with what sequence settings and cam?

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Answer 2

hanumang

Level 6

9,250 points

May 5, 2008 11:44 AM in response to LD Bear old

LD Bear old wrote:
What kind of hardware do I need?

The message you received was FCP's (admittedly cryptic) way of saying that your graphics card isn't up to snuff for the size of your image and the filter that you're trying to slap onto it.

Tell us about your image's size. Not how large or small it's being scaled, but the raw dimensions when you, say, open it in Photoshop.

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Answer 3

LD Bear old Author

Level 1

69 points

May 5, 2008 4:00 PM in response to LD Bear old

The video is 720x486 (DV Broadcast size) which was captured from a Panasonic AG-DVC20P (regular DV-cam). The video cards are ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. It's okay if it doesn't play in real-time, but I still want to apply the effect.

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Answer 4

LD Bear old Author

Level 1

69 points

May 6, 2008 10:09 AM in response to LD Bear old

Even if my graphics card can't display the effect on screen, shouldn't FCP still be able to apply the filter to the video when it renders?

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Answer 5

hanumang

Level 6

9,250 points

May 6, 2008 10:44 AM in response to LD Bear old

No - both rendering and realtime preview are handled by the graphics card for FxPlug filters. One of those "two steps forward, one step back" things introduced in FCP 5.1.2.

But, again, what is the image size of your still?

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Answer 6

LD Bear old Author

Level 1

69 points

May 9, 2008 7:18 AM in response to LD Bear old

Hi! Not sure what you mean by the size of the "still" but the video size and the source footage is at DV resolution (720x540). I was trying to apply the effect to a video clip. I noticed on another thread that this error message can manifest itself when you have more than one video card (which I do). I turned off the Mac, moved my two editing monitors to one video card and put my projectors on another. After that, FCP applied the effect correctly without the error message. So everything works now! Just finished a video project for our banquet, and after this crash course in FCP I feel like I have a much better understanding of it. Thanks for answering all my newbie questions on the other posts too!

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Answer 7

May 9, 2008 8:00 AM in response to LD Bear old

What are the video processing settings for your timeline? If you're using the "render all in high-precision" setting, for example, you might be able to get this effect to render by forcing everything to 8-bit. There might be a quality hit, but if the choice is "render at lower quality" versus "don't render at all" …

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Answer 8

May 9, 2008 9:10 AM in response to LD Bear old

LD Bear old wrote:
I am getting a red screen that says "The effect 'Soft Focus' failed to render: Your hardware cannot render at the requested size and depth." What kind of hardware do I need? We spent a lot of money on this machine. I tried rendering manually (instead of real-time), but it didn't help.

Do you have more than one graphics card?
More than one monitor?

Search the forum for "failed to render" and you will find several threads. Not all are related so one may give you some clues.

bogiesan

Message was edited by: David Bogie Chq-1

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