Thanks John, it will take me a bit to get use to how this forum is setup.

I have a "stock" iMac about 2 or 3 years old. It has a basic ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphics card. No recent changes, so should not be a driver update issue.  Since everything else has been working great in Pr, I suspect there's something I don't know about using Basic 3D effects.

Jim, thanks for catching that error. I meant to say Basic 3D Swivel (the video effect).

Craig

I haven't gotten as far as trying the Distance parameter, but it sounds like a similar problem. I noticed that someone had mentioned a max pixel limit with the effect. I tried making a small Title (480x480) and dropping it on a blank track. It didn't really work any better. I'm confused though, if this effect sends out one frame at a time to be processed, why would it be affected by parameter settings or number of frames?

Basic 3D video effect problem solved!

It turns out it is a memory problem. The weird thing is that Premiere doesn't give me a low memory error -- it just stops rendering frames and leaves them blank.

Previously I had been doing my Basic 3D tests at DSLR 1080p30 and was getting the problems described above. Just on a hunch, I created a new project at HDV720p30, added a Title, and applied the Basic3D swivel. Surprise, it worked. So I also added Basic3D tilt and (just for fun) added a Motion scale and position. That worked too.

My slightly old iMac is limited to 4GM of RAM. I checked in Pr Preferences under Memory and found that other programs were taking up 1.5GB, so Pr only has 2.5GB.  Maybe it's time to look at a new iMac.

You can see Basic3D test here:  http://youtu.be/XJpt3toK9FQ