*Using the trial version of PD11*
I can render a 2hr MPEG standard 4:3 PAL (4Gb) without a hitch using an intel i5, Win7 16Gb (in about 18 mins).

Could you tell us your video specs and resolution you're rendering, and how long?

Yes you could chop up your video into segments and then stitch them up again (if they're MPEGs) using something like "Fast AVI MPEG Joiner". It's loss-less and just stitches MPEGS together.

If you try to stitch them back up in PD I'm assuming it would render the segments again, adding more compression.
I don't know. Haven't tried it.

How many filters/effects are you using?
That all adds up to the overhead when rendering.

I know you said Win7, is it the 64bit version or 32bit?
(With 8Gb I would think it's the 64bit version).

Quote: Once Powerdirector starts "rendering" my project is usually broken (it will crash or "render" forever). How can I fix this? I assume that my computer has maxed out its memory and Powerdirector can't properly use page files. Can I just buy an outside "cutter" and cut down my video file lengths to fix this?

It is hard when a project I have been working on for weeks starts doing this. I want to like this program but this and the endless crashes on startup plus blue screens makes it hard. My computer is a brand new intel i5 with 8 GB of ram and Windows 7.

Thanks for any help.

Installing the latest Power Director patch should correct the problem. Patch #2321 Addresses the rendering problem specifically because of a graphic card driver incompatibility issue, but there is a newer patch #2418 that if you download and install will have this fix included. This should fix the endless rendering during the editing phase that you are experiencing.

I also may be misreading your question. Is the rendering occurring during your editing phase or is it endlessly rendering when you go to produce a video file? You might want to enable "preview during rendering" when producing a video file and observe where it hangs in the preview screen. Often times there is a video clip, transition, or something else on the timeline causing the rendering to hang. When this happens to me it setimes requires removing the offending clip and then placing it again on the timeline. Or even changing the duration by a few frames can correct the problem.

Link to patches:
http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/support/powerdirector-ultra/patches_en_US.html#

Kevin
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Ok thanks. I will update and use smaller video clips to see if that helps.