Can't export animation

[jbear0000]

I've been using Navisworks for a few years to create point cloud fly thru videos. I have never been able to export to an AVI file so I export to individual PNG files and put them together into a video using Windows Movie Maker. That has always worked fine, until now. It exports some of the PNG files, but often stops part way through. I've tried breaking the project up into smaller increments and it still stops part way though. It is only a minute work of frames and I've tried doing it in 2 second increments and it some times stops after just 3 frames. I searched for this issue and some people found that using the XVID codex worked for them so they could export AVI files so I tried that and it still won't export an full animation. I've tried different resolutions and it simply gets further along in the exporting process.

What I don't understand is why it worked 2 months ago when I did this and I had no issues at all, but this time it doesn't work. Nothing on my system changed. I have a very powerful system too since I work with point clouds regularly:

Windows 10 Pro

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Memory  32.0 GB

2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphic cards

Solid State hard drive

I am using Navisworks Manage 2018

[Alan.johnson1970]

I found using Microsoft Video 1  for the Video Compressor works for me everytime

[jbear0000]

That never worked for me in the past. I'd get these videos with weird colors and split screens. I tried it again after your comment and it won't export a high quality video. The best I could do was 360x140 and that is pitiful.

[dgorsman]

Check RAM use. Even with 32 GB, rendering at high resolution with large point clouds can max out your system.

Regardless of that, you won't get high resolution output direct to video. Even if you could, you'll end up with artifacts as the contents get decompressed and re-compressed during editing.

[jbear0000 · Accepted solution]

My RAM is fine, I watched my system resources several times while exporting and it never maxed it out. In fact it was very far from maxing out any of my system resources.

I normally don't export directly to a video. I always do png files and it has always worked great. I've been able to make 1980x1020 resolution videos that way and they look awesome. I've done this several times over the past two years and it always worked great until now. I only tried exporting directly to a video this time because exporting to png files wasn't working.

So after my posts here I tried all kinds of things. Exporting with different codex, exporting different resolutions, making a 1 second long project and trying to export a mere 24 frames just to see if I could get it to work. Our IT guy updated my video drivers, update Manage 2018, installed Manage 2019 and update it. Did any of that work? Of course not. I kept trying all kinds of things just to see if I could get something, anything, even lower quality. Then just for the heck of it I tried exporting to png files at 1280x720 resolution and it worked, partially. It exported just over 20% of the frames. So I then trimmed them from the project and continued. I got 34 more frames. So I trimmed a tiny bit more from the project and it exported the rest of them. I joined them all together in movie maker and it looks great.

I changed nothing about my system and nothing in the settings to make it work this time. It just simply started working for no apparent reason. So my final conclusion about this is that it is Autodesk's fault. They sold a shoddy product to us and if it works correctly we are lucky. If it doesn't work correctly, well then tough luck.

This is infuriating Autodesk. If I sold hammers that worked 50% of the time even when you used the hammer correctly no one would buy it and the few people who did would demand their money back. You expect your tool to work properly when you use it correctly. Navisworks is a tool I use to do my job, just like so many other Autodesk products and I'm getting really tired of them not working properly even when I use them correctly. It's freaking 2019 and we still get "Fatal errors"! Seriously Autodesk? You can't give us more helpful error messages? The more this type of stuff happens the worse you look in our eyes. I have to explain to my manager why a video that should have taken me 3 hours took me 10 times that because of your lazily programmed software. Do you know how that looks in the eyes of management? You know what their first thought is? "I wonder if microstation runs more smoothly." They consider your competitors products and for so many years I defended you and tell them they need to stick with Autodesk products, but you know what? Maybe they are right and it is time to start investigation alternatives.

And I'm marking this as a solution so it stands out for everyone to see who searches for this issue in the future. Good luck to the rest of you using this pitiful excuse for software.

[MartyCrosbie]

Had this happen to me on a few occasions. It would only produce one frame. Found that if I right click on the Animation in the "Saved Viewpoints" and deselected "loop Playback" or possible just changed settings in here, all worked well after that.