If I try to render more than 700 frames the resulting file will not play on Windows media player or Quicktime. I’m running Vista 64 bit with Blender 2.56 standard build. I usually render avi raw files @ 30fps, 720p. Any help would be appreciated.
The best advice is not to render to a video format. Avi-raw is the format you should use if you are going to do any post processing so there is not need for it as a final output, especially given its large file size.
First render as a sequence of images such as .png files. If blender crashes in the middle of a render you haven’t wasted all your time and have to start the render from scratch again, just restart from the last good image. When you have you image sequence you can then convert this very quickly to a final video codec such as xvid/quicktime/mpg etc in an external program or from the blender sequencer.
…I’ll try sequencing and see what happens.