Okay, this tells me you are running your video transfer to the same drive your program is operating from... C drive, I assume. I would consider an additional on board drive.... you can get a 300 gig for around $100.00, and use that separate drive, for capture and export

I have two 500GB drives I use for capturing, so space isn't an issue- it's that I can't export my timeline to a DVD!

An update- I downloaded (after purchasing) the Cinemacraft Encoder Basic and let it try to encode the timeline- the result? It crapped out after 15 seconds. Even the Adobe Media Encoder put up a better fight than that!

To export part of your time line set your Work Area Bar to the area of the project you wish to export. After you select Export from the menu click on Settings change the Range to Work Area Bar ((Work Area) in some dialog windows.) Now only the part of the timeline you have designated will export.


Bill

Well, time to stick a fork in this one, folks. The project has become so corrupted that it might as well get a job at City Hall. No exporting of any type of file works, and the program gets a serious error and crashes after any attempt anyway. I've tried saving the project under different names, imported it into new projects, examined the project for corruption, you name it.

I've tried every workaround and every bit of advice everyone's given me (except reloading Windows) so my thanks for the helping hands. The two things that really irk me is that one; this was the last step before handing off a finished product. The second is that I never found out what caused this, so there's no guarantee that after starting all over from scratch (I wince at this prospect) that it won't happen again...

A year of postproduction and about $10K down the drain. I hope the info in this thread helps someone else avoid this situation. Well, I'm off to find the nearest sharp object or maybe a cup of hemlock.

I too have had that happen to me with P'Pro 1.5. The stuff about dropping a frame on export was generally resolved with a patch I downloaded from Adobe.
DON'T GIVE UP!
1. Can you export to tape, and then capture onto another computer?
I have done that before with good success. Once exported a "problem" file to tape, and dumped it into Premiere Elements 3 and finished it there. I know, it's a lowly consumer-ish prpgram, but guess what--it works great in cases like this. It also seems to be a lot less picky than 1.5.

2. If you cannot export to tape, can yoy go straight to Export To DVD from the P'Pro 1.5 Media Encoder menu? DVD's burned on that will not always play on earlier versions of Windows Media Player, but hey, this too saved me once on perhaps the hottest most significant project I was involved in this year.

If export to tape fails, and you can play the timeline (is it possible to WATCH it start to finish?) You can just play back the timeline and have a deck or camera record the DV in (hit record on the camera and jsut play the file back using the camera as a monitor)... then just capture the big file...


The other thing that works miracles is Debugmode Frameserver and Canopus ProCoder

Can be tricky to use but basically you go Export>Movie>Frameserver>select YUV> and then hit ok. The program starts "serving" your timeline. I'll explain in a moment. Procoder should start a render window in premiere, and then pop up a new screen that says "Serving" or something similar.

Now, open up Procoder 2.0 (it's a pay-program but you seem resourceful or it's not that expensive). You Import your source as the Debugmode AVI. There should be an AVI file which is actually a "server" link to your timline... neat huh?

Then you select your compression settings (HDV 720p, or whatever... even straight DVD Mpeg2 which procoder does well) and then click "Convert" in procoder (if only it had been that easy for Torquemada :P )

Anyway, Procoder then converts YOUR TIMELINE in premiere into the destination FILE. This is great because premiere doesn't have to encode anything! YAY!

Saved me a few times.

BTW. Frameserver is free. Do a search and it should pop right up.

At an earlier stage, transferring the project to tape might have worked, but the timeline really didn't play too smoothly once all the effects and filters were put in. Also, the run time is almost a full two hours, so I would have had to split it onto two tapes- which wouldn't have been too big a deal, except that the audio is in 5.1 surround, so that would have been an issue.

Does the timeline need to play smothly for Procoder to work? Or can it just encode like Premiere used to? It doesn't matter if the project has corruption? Procoder almost sounds like a miracle. It's a little pricey, but I think I'd pay twice that much if it meant getting this project completed! (It's going to hurt the wallet a bit, but this whole thing has been an investment anyway.)

Mr. Wolla and Mr. Nayman, I appreciate the further input! Thank you very much! :)

Procoder only encodes your timeline with the use of Frameserver... and no, your timeline doesn't need to play smoothly. Frameserver uses premiere to render files WHILE prodcoder is encoding. For some reason, it always glosses over errors and bad frames and such. I dunno how, but it has saved me many times.

Also, procoder is a great stand-alone product. Awesome for making Mpeg 2 files for DVD and for encoding into various HD formats.

It's a pro-level tool, but very very easy to use.

I've had good results with Procoder as well, but it can take some tweaking to get it to look just right.

Another workaround suggestion. Break your timeline into smaller pieces - maybe 3 or 4 - with each piece in a separate sequence. Just copy/paste. Then try exporting each one of those sequences individually.

If that works, you may then be able to create another sequence, and reassemble those subclips on it and export the whole thing. Or you may want to try this first.

I did try that at first, and was able to export the first two-thirds of it. Then all of a sudden the the exports began to fail, and no matter what settings I chose, everything always failed instantly. Rather frustrating, actually- the closer I got to finishing, the more corrupted the project got.

In any case, I'm waiting by the mailbox for my copy of Procoder to arrive, so let's see what happens. I'm not relishing the idea of starting all over again...

Damn. And you've tried reimporting those sequences into a clean project?

Have I posted this link for you? http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc3c0d8

I apologize for the repost if I have, but it's a worthwhile app to try.

Sometimes I think Premiere just enjoys not letting me finish my work. I think it gets a kick out of it to be honest.

That was one of the first things I tried- no luck (but thanks anyway!) :)

Here's my general response to Adobe regarding this matter:
Click Here

(I'm still waiting by the mailbox, by the way.)

Since I'm still waiting by the mailbox for a copy of Procoder 2.0 (and having gone through two vendors already) it appears that the 2.0 version (now discontinued) is incredibly difficult to obtain.

So I guess the logical question is: Will version 3.0 still do the same thing? I know that it probably should, but I'd hate to buy it and find that it doesn't work with Frameserver (or some other unforseeable element)

Ain't it amazing how hard this is turning out to be? LOL!

Well, Procoder finally arrived... but it's 3.0. not the 2.0 I ordered...


(sigh) I have a compatibility question I'll post in another table here...

FINALLY got a copy of Procoder 2.0, and it works just the way it's supposed to... except that every file I export turns out just a 2-hour green screen. To be strictly accurate, I've exported three different files (AVI, HDV and MPEG2) and each one starts out fine, and within 30 seconds to 4:30 minutes the frame turns green and stays that way for the remainder of the clip.

Has this happened to anyone else? Is it just the corrupted files are too far gone to save this project? I'm going to try to export a few other file types for now (It's quite fast; too bad it's kinda for nothing.) and see if anything different happens.

have you tried to sort out the media in the project?

This continues to sound like there's one bad media clip (or more) in the project.

If you simply go to the folder where all your media is, can you play each file back without a problem in media player?

There have been a few points where failures seem consistent- I went and checked the original media in the folder- everything seems to play fine without any errors. Occasionally a clip might "stutter", but I played a few clips not located near any problem areas and they acted in a similar fashion.

I did try to redigitize a few clips way back, but replacing them seemed to have no positive effect.