System crash using Premiere
 

Hi all, have a huge problem. I capture footage from mini dv using Premiere both 6 and 6.5, once its all in my bin I double click or drag into my source window my system reboots. It used to freeze and I would have to do a hard reboot, but now it does it it self. I am using a Athlon XP 2000+, 512 DDR 2100, two seperate drives, one that has my OS and one that I am captuering to. Any suggestions on what might be wrong and what I can do to fix it? I have read that alot of people have three drives, the two that I have listed and one for paging? Let me know what is the ideal setup. I have a 15 gig and a 120 gig. I am getting ready to reformat my pc. I have reinstalled Premiere as well so I am assuming its hardware. Help me O' DV masters...

Now this is strange a hard restart from dragging footage into a timeline, go ADOBE! heh heh

what is sounds like to me, is that premiere is trying to address memory in your system that dosn't exist, cause it to very quickly go into a loop looking for it, windows cracking it and doing a restart hoping that it will find the memory.

What OS are you actually running?
What motherboard?
Have you checked the motherboard rails with a power meter to find out if it is under powering your harddrive, this would be of course extremely unlikely but i have seen it happen in other situations.

If you are running windows ME or 98 you shouldn't be even asking questions because basically it is your own fault if you got problems, should be running XP pro.

I would suggest 2 things.
1. Download a trial of vegas video, try that, 99% sure it will work and you will never want to use premiere again.
2. Total system re-install and partitioning of that 120 gig drive.
Make sure you format the drives as NTFS as well to get over any size barriers of files on your drive.


In relation to the 3 drive thing, well i only run 2 drives and havn't had a problem at all, i did with premiere it liked to crash at the worst of times, but with vegas i have had a flawless run.

Anyways
Zac

Actually, it would be his powersupply rails that he would want to check -- to see if they are underpowering his harddrive, or anything else.

Also, yeah, I bet if you try Vegas 4, you'll never want to use Premiere again. :D

I have two harddrives in my system. A 40GB and a 13.6GB one, both Western Digital, and both only 5400rpm (yes I know I need to upgrade my computer), and I only use my 13.6GB one for music, and my 40GB HDD for video and OS and programs, and i've never had any problem. It runs quite well too actually, so I don't see any need at all for 3 drives.

Try doing a format, and like already mentioned, hopefully your running atleast Windows 2000 or XP, and a NTFS filesystem. If I were you, i'd just use the 120GB HDD for everything, and just use the other one for other purposes...

its not when I drag in the timeline it's when I double click the file or drag it into my source window for setting the ins and outs of a clip before I drag it into the timeline. I am running XP Pro with the Soyo Dragon KT333 Ultra Platnium MoBo. I will try Vegas but for the time being I love Premiere and would love to figure this out.

Try resetting the premiere database and preferences. All you need to do is exit premiere, press shift and ctrl on the keyboard while opening up premiere. This will reset everything in premiere to how it was when it was first installed.

Otherwise are your paging files set to double the amount of RAM?

What about defragging the hard drives?

And what’s it with everyone slagging of Premiere!!!!

Hope these help,

Ed Smith

first thing I would do is download Sandra:

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.html?dir=&location=update&langx=en&a=

This does a burn in test on your machine. Select 'burn in wizard', select all tests and put priority up full. Leave it running on a loop for two or three hours and see if your machine keels over. This will tell you if it is hardware or not (probably !).

Beware, I think there was a small issue running sandra with AMD processors. Don't know if it affects Athlon XPs. Here is section of FAQ from Sisoft website.

Q: Crash exception 0Dh in System Summary/CPU/Mainboard/Benchmarks on Athlon Model 1, 2!
Q: BSOD exception in Sandra.sys in System Summary/CPU/Mainboard/Benchmarks on Athlon Model 1, 2!
A: Upgrade to Sandra 2003 SP1 (9.32) or later. Alternatively, right-click the problem moudle, select Options and uncheck Include MSR Info.

(just in case this happens to you)

In a broader sense, I really can't see this being related to paging size files and certainly not related to how many drives you have in your system or how fast they are. In these circumstances I would be very suspicous of either hardware or a driver of some kind.

Other things to try if Sandra falls over too (in order of ease)

1. update graphics card driver
2. reseat memory
3. reseat all PCI/AGP cards
4. reseat CPU
5. check that system is not running too hot (athlons kick out loads of heat)
6. update motherboard firmware
7. the list goes on..............

Anyway, run Sandra and see what gives and report back.

simon

I'm thinking it is probably your power that is leaving you out. XP
should NOT hang like that or reboot. This usually happens when:

1. power is too low

2. some hardware is failing, most possible causes are memory chips, cpu and harddisk

3. one or more FANS are NOT working anymore. I've had this myself (my video card fan had died and my CPU fan was dying. Quickly replaced both)

Is this ONLY happening with Premiere or also when you are doing
other things (or perhaps nothing)?

If it only happens with Premiere than you probably have a faulty
driver (graphics card is first suspect here) or some hardware thing
that doesn't works well in combination with XP/Premiere.

how do I check the paging files?

RAM is a good place to look as well, depending on your mobo. I use the ASUS A7N8X= deluxe and this puppy is ultra-sensitive to the sticks you put in it. I had a wedding I was editing and I felt I need more RAM before I rendered it in Vegas and so I bought a stick of Kingston 512MB. Each time I ran vegas it would crash. Get Memtest 86 it is a through memory tester and run it for awhile to insure you don't have a memory problem. You may wnat to check you codecs under Device Manager, Hardware and Sounds, Gamecontroller check out Video Codecs and make sure that there are no problems there.

From what you've indicated, I don't know what else you have in the box, but if you have at least a 350Watt PS, this will not be a power problem, unless you have like water cooling, 4 HDD's, DVD Writer, CD Burner and >5 fans and neon lights then you may wan tot look into getting a larger powersupply.

I had similar funky problems, every time I was in Premiere or Infini-D. Of course, it wasn't the program, it turned out to be my Mobo. I have a Abit KG7 Raid, and it seems to have some peculiarities, none of which are mentioned by Abit. After changing some settings in my soft menu, these problems went away. Premiere is rock solid now.

And I didn't have to settle for Vegas :)~

"3. one or more FANS are NOT working anymore. I've had this myself (my video card fan had died and my CPU fan was dying. Quickly replaced both)"


Nah. It wouldn't be that if his computer restarts everytime, when he performs a particular action. If his CPU fan died, then he would know it because his CPU would be toast. :D

Well guys nothing seems to be working. It only does it with certain raw video files. And I can't find a patern with them. It just basiclly likes some and dislikes others.

I GOT IT!!!!!
Problem solved. It was in the playback settings. By default is set to dv playback. When I switch it to video for windows it will take what ever I throw at it. Not sure why it does this but hey, it works. Thanks for all the feedback and I will definetly try Vegas due to the popularity of it.

This place rocks!!

Glad to hear it Clint! Just out of curiosity, what card are you using for video editing/capture? I've been having some problems with Premiere and my storm card working with non DV files.

I just use a western digital firewire card. It has 3 ports. I use one for the cam and one for my external hard drive. Never have any problems with it either.

One other thing that others reading this post might consider who've had mysterious crash problems.

I have for over a year gotten mysterious dumps of the whole system (blue-screen) or just the program disappearing, and after trying everything but coping with it somehow, I finally noticed one day that the two video drives in my Athlon Win2K system were both set to MASTER! What happened was that the manufacturer's slip that came with the Maxtor drives had a different setting for the jumpers than those printed on the drive itself! I set it by the drives' label and not one single crash since, rock-stable video editing for over a month now, from two or three crashes a day before that.

Lesson Learned: Always double check all your hardware!

Premiere Timeline Problem
 

I am having a problem in Premiere and I can't find an answer in any of my books. At the very top of the timeline, in the area where the Work Area is designated, there is a red line if no preview exists and a blue/green line if a preview exists, right? Now below that in some areas, beneath the red or blue line, is a lighter green line that doesn't seem to necessarily correspond to anything. I am using a Canopus DV Storm 2 card setup. The reason this is important is that in some instances I am getting an AUDIO GLITCH where that lighter green line begins on the timeline. If I move clips around in the area, the light green line eventually relocates itself and the glitch goes away. I have tried eliminating the preview files, but Premiere just puts the light green line back again. Only moving the clips seems to make it go away. Can somebody give me the story on this? It's driving me crazy. Thanks.

Check your settings. You've probably got Premiere set to render audio if there are multiple audio tracks. From what I understand, the line below the normal red=render/green=rendered lines correspond to the audio tracks. I've changed the render audio settings so that Premiere won't render audio unless there are 5 or more tracks (which I never do). On my machine, Premiere has never had trouble keeping up with multiple audio tracks, so it hasn't seemed to hurt anything, and I don't get the light green lines anymore.

Paul, you were absolutely right. I had applied audio filters to two of the clips and had Premiere set-up to render audio if one or more audio filters were applied. I changed it to 5 and no more light green line appeared.

Thanks for the help.

Jim

VCD of still images; Premiere 6.5 mpeg codec
 

Has anyone used the Premiere 6.5 mpeg codec to create VCD output? Specifically, has anyone done this with still images imported into Premiere?

I tried this the other night and fully expected the resultant mpg file to display with zero flicker. Instead, one sees significant patches of white pixels popping into and out of the frame at areas of sharp contrast - truly ugly.

Is there a better way to manipulate stills to eliminate the flicker? Also, is there a way to apply the same edit to several stills (arranged serially on the timeline) at one time? For example, say I wanted the stills to all display for 10 seconds instead of the default 5?

Thank you,

Ron J.

Ron,
I haven't found a way to correct the still durations en-masse once they are on the timeline. I did pick up what I thought was a nice technique from one of the third party books on Premier.

You can set the default still duration under Edit-Prefs->General and Still Image. Set this to how long you want, Open the storyboard and right-click and import file adding all of your still shots to the storyboard. Arrange as necessary, then click Automate-to-Timeline button on the bottom of the Storyboard window. It opens a dialog allowing you to spec the position on the timeline and to turn on or off the use of the default transition.
Setting the default transition can be found quickly under the help file.

I found it to be a quick shortcut for setting up still slideshows.

I've not used the MPEG-1 output from Premier so I can't comment there. I typically Export to MPEG-2 with the DVD NTSC profile and then let the authoring/burning program re-encode to VCD MPEG-1.

Perhaps someone else can answer that question for you.

Hey buddy I had the same problem. Go to your playback settings and uncheck the box that says playback in camera. That's what solved it for me.

You should always turn the camera on before loading up premiere. This way premiere and windows knows that there is a new device. Have you selected your camera from the device control list in premiere (Or nearest one)?

Cheers,

Ed Smith

Any chance Premiere is de-interlacing your picture? In what format
and resolution is Premiere loading the image?

Premiere Capture Problem
 

There's nothing wrong with upgrading but before you do, if you haven't installed the free upgrade to 6.02 it's worth a try:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...atform=Windows

David Hurdon

Thank you for the suggestions.

The stills are from a digital camera and there are more pixels in the stills than in mini DV. I am using Premiere to import the files with defaut settings except for the odd shot that was framed vertically and then I use "Maintain Aspect Ratio" to keep the right perspective.

How would I know whether Premiere were de-interlacing the images?


RJ

Premiere not recognizing 1394 card
 

A few days ago I took out my firewire card and put it in my new computer. It turns out the IDE controller on my new computer was faulty (due to bad shipping) so I'm waiting on the insurance claim for it. In the meantime, I needed to put my firewire card back in my old computer. I put it back in and booted it up, and Windows XP detected it just like it should.

I plugged in my camera and turned it on, and loaded Premiere. Premiere would not recognize that I had a 1394 card or a camera hooked up to it.

I thought it might be because XP was using the Texas Instruments drivers for the card, so I ran UnTI and now it's listed in the Device Manager as OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller. I thought that would do the trick so I loaded Premiere again. Still the same thing; I go into Device Control and it just says that the device is offline, when it's really plugged in, turned on and ready to go.

What would this posisbly be? My card worked fine before I took it out, no problems. It's a Pyro BasicDV.

Windows XP Home
Pyro BasicDV firewire card
Adobe Premiere 6.5
Canon ZR20 camcorder

The card is sharing IRQ 5 with the USB controller and my sound card. Both my network cards are on IRQ 11.

Alex did you try re-installing Premiere *after* re-installing the drivers. I have found that Premiere is VERY picky about this. Just a shot in the dark.

Premiere only de-interlaces it when you tell it to. When you are
exporting you can also select de-interlacing (this might be on
by default perhaps?)

I thought about that, so first I tried going into Windows Movie Maker and seeing if it worked there. It didn't. But do you think re-installing Premiere would help regardless?

If you're out of choices it's worth a shot. After trying all obvious permutations I usually uninstall everything, restart the PC, and then reinstall.

Also, Premiere used to randomly unrecognize my DV500 card. I would restart the PC and voila. [Vegas works everytime in comparison]

Sorry you're having the problem.

I guess I'll give that a shot then, thanks for your help! :)

All these firewire incompatibilities seem like the thing we'll look back on in 5 years and say, "Wow, I can't believe had to do that!"

Sound tweaking in Premiere 6.0
 

I've found that in the final stages of sound editing when I want to do really small changes in volume or other things, that using the rubber bands on the timeline are very cumbersome and really unusable for small tweaks.

I've attempted using the sound editing window, but for some reason I can't get the audio sliders to write properly to the timeline. (i.e. set the audio slider to a dB that I want that audio track set at, click the write button, and it simply follows the rubber band settings)

Anything stupid I'm doing here?
Shane

Try right clicking on the clip you want to adjust, then select "adjust audio properties", and "adjust gain". It works better than the rubber bands for adjusting the volume. The rubber bands are for fades, and dropping the volume for a voice over to be inserted.

That's a good trick, any others up anyones sleeve?

Try holding shift when you drag a handle on the audio rubberbands. It allows you to move the point up in a percentage basis and is alot less touchy.

You are a god! heheh

say what?! Who?! lol

In Premiere What's the Best Way To....
 

In Premiere what's the best way to do a frame hold. In other words I want the footage to run and freez at one point. I know there are a # of ways to accomplish this- the one way is by actually using the frame hold command. However it hold that frame for the entire duration of the clip. Usually I copy and paste the clip and trip it to the length I want the frame to be held and make sure that frame is either first or last and choose Frame Hold> Hold on Inpoint/outpoint. Is this how everyone else does it.

Also when I do a framehold there is a noticable difference in color. Once the footage is frozen the colors shift slightly. Anyone know why it does this and how to fix it?

I would probably just save the desired frame to a tga file (Ctl-Shift-M), place the still on the timeline and stretch to desired length. Be sure and deinterlace the still and if color correction is necessary, it could be fixed in PhotoShop.