paunghe:
“I tried using placeholders but that errored out”
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Just noticed that, yes it would, for some reason BB really dosen’t like that setting at all, when I was testing my renders in BB they were taking 5 times as long with it ticked! :)

Placeholders don’t always work for me.  I ended up setting the memory usage near the placeholder check box to around 300 and turning placeholders off.  It does seem like it’s a memory issue.  I also upgraded a few of the computers on my network to a gigabit switch, which sped up the time it took for the computer to talk to the network by about 20%. (up from a 100 mbs connection) Not to sound like a broken record, but nothing worked for me until I used strips.  I makes sense to me because the computer isn’t able to fit the whole image process in it’s memory, so by chopping it up into pieces, it can digest it. I don’t think it takes any longer either.

Semicolon,
I don’t know what videoposting is, but you can use the older version of backburner with MAX 9.  You just have to uninstall the new one.  It usually prompts you to uninstall when you’re installing anyway, so that shouldn’t be a big problem.  I’ve never used the lens effect in MAX.  It seems like it’s easier to add it afterwards in a different program.  I think Adobe Preimere does, as well as combustion and after effects.  I haven’t used the last two though, but I think they work.

Thank you for your suggestion, paunghe.  I just remember I could use Batch Render for doing Post.

Batch Render can work with Split image function pretty well.

BTW, It seems the “Unexpected exception error” is quite subjective to each user.  Mine is about Network and OS.

But most problems I found are from Reflection/Refraction of Mental Ray Renderer.

"Nature is the Mother of Learning”

Please visit http://www.handy-arts.com

Yes.. very often the response to a memory error is “unexpected” to Backburner.. I wish it were just a bit more intelligent

Ha! 
I cant even render a box with no maps that moves 1 inch across 100 frames with the default renderer.I get the same error.
I too missed deadlines coz of this. I sure hope they fix it soon.
Andy

3ds max 2012sp2
Windows 7 sp11
HP z210 workstation
Intel Core i7 2600 cpu @ 3.4GHz 3.4GHz
16.00 GB of ram
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 x2
DirextX 9.0