Moho 13.5 Debut crashing when exporting movie

[Mattyj]

Hey there,

So I have Debut 13.5 and I haven’t been able to export a single movie as the program crashes every time I attempt to export. I have had some engagement with the help team online and they say they are able to export movies fine with the settings i have been using. I wonder if it is the PC on this end? Ive supplied my specs to the team and they have yet to respond. I am running:

OS - up to date Windows 10

32gb RAM
GTX 1080
CPU - Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.00 Ghz 3.00 Ghz

[Greenlaw]

You should be able to export a movie file without crashing, and your system should be fully capable so I wonder if this is a content-related problem. Have you tried sending LM the files and having them render it?

FWIW, normally, I never export a movie file from Moho. Instead, I prefer to export PNG image sequences. This mainly because I composite my footage elsewhere but also because it's easier and more reliable to render this way. For example, if a render crashes or if I need to edit a small range of frames, I don't have to re-render the entire project this way. When It's ready, I prefer to render my movie file from the compositing program.

If you don't want to bother with compositing or using another program to create the movie file, try this:

1. Render an PNG image sequence from your Moho project.

2. Create a new Moho project and import the image sequence.

3. Render the movie file from this image sequence-only project.

If the project is crashing when you render the image sequence, then we know the problem doesn't specifically have to do with rendering a movie file. in this case, we need to look elsewhere in Moho for the problem.

Hope this helps.

[synthsin75]

Have you updated to 13.5.1? If not, this update fixed several bugs that could be related to exporting.

[Mattyj]

Thank you both for your replies. The tech team has contacted me and advised me about the recent patch so I will update and give things another go. Also thanks for the tip on PNG sequences. I may also give this a try as I think I will need to composite and edit my movies in another program anyway.

cheers.

[Greenlaw]

Cool! Yeah, I hope the suggestions work for you. My guess is that updating to 13.5.1 as Wes and LM suggested will solve the crashing, but the other info should help too.

FWIW, it's common in studio production to render frames from any animation program first, and then compile the frames to a movie file for the video editing.

[Mattyj]

Hey,

So I updated and still had the same issue. Also for some reason, while the program does not crash when I export as a PNG sequence, the exported PNG sequence is nowhere to be found in the export destination or anywhere on my PC that I can see.

Ugh will keep persisting, but cheers for the advice anyway, was really appreciated.

[Greenlaw]

Hm. That's very strange. By default, Moho will try to save the images to the project's folder. (Which I personally find very annoying because nobody in the industry actually wants that. Sorry, this post is going to contain a few tiny rants. ) Anyway, I would check the folder where you saved the project file first.

If you're using the Export Animation command, at the bottom is an Export to: list. If you don't wish to have the files saved as loose images in the project folder, you need to this set a specific directory here by selecting Choose Folder. In the future, the chosen directory will appear here but only temporarily (it eventually scrolls off the list,) and you will need to choose it again every time you wish to render the project. At the bottom, you can set the current settings as the Defaults or add them to the Configurations list, which sets all the format settings and options, but it doesn't mean it will remember the output directory for this particular project. (This is another big annoyance for me. I've always felt we should be able to set the preferred output directory from inside the Project Settings window...just set it and forget it. At work, we have a custom program to make this process easier and more reliable, but of course that doesn't help most Moho users.)

If you're not still not seeing the frames appear in the chosen destination, maybe the problem is in the render settings? Make sure you've actually set a range of frames to render.

Another way to render is to use Moho Exporter, which is my preferred method. it's not perfect either but it has a lot more useful options. When you choose Moho Exporter, a batch queue opens with your currently open projects in the list. (Remove any projects you don't want to render, and add any that you do wish to render.) To set the render settings, click the project and then the wrench icon. The same Export window opens, and you will need to set the destination from here. Now close the window. The difference here is that you can save a Profile from under the File menu, and then next time you load this profile, the output directory you set previously comes along with the profile. Still a bit convoluted but once this is set up, you're less likely to accidentally send files to the wrong directory.

When you click the Start button, Moho will render files to the chosen directory, and instead of saving a mess of loose files there (like Export Animation does,) it will put them inside a folder.

Moho Exporter has other cool options related to breaking out layers for compositing, but let's leave this for now and get you going with basic rendering first.

[ExplodeCreative]

For anyone experiencing this, I fixed it by disabling my antivirus. This started when I switched to Avast Free.