I would like to create MP3s in Premiere 6.5. Is this possible? In the compressor menu, I found a compressor called MPEG Layer-3. Is that the MP3 compressor?

Yes, I believe it is. You could download and install the Lame mp3 codec and try it out.

Every time I try to use that MP3 (MPEG Layer-3) compressor, it crashes the encoder.

You could export a .wav file, and then encode it to with a stand alone MP3 encoder. Check out the following two Web page for some options that can be used with the Lame MP3 encoding engine:

http://lame.sourceforge.net/links.html
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Lame_Encoder.htm

i think you are not supposed to edit with .mp3 either in premiere.

i think you are not supposed to edit with .mp3 either in premiere.
Ideally, probably not. But I've done it, both with Premiere Pro and I believe in Premiere 6 as well.

Premiere crashes for me when I try to use mp3 files. and I just found out that's what was causing it. mp3s + Premiere = trouble.

I am able to load and use MP3 files in Premiere's timeline but it will crash if I try to create and export an MP3 file using the MPEG Layer 3 compressor.

Echoing Christopher's post - exporting WAVs then encoding with a third party encoder is pretty painless. Plus you can keep the full-quality WAVs for future use, to burn an audio CD or to convert to other formats if needed (Windows Media, RealAudio, etc). CDEx is the free app I use to convert from WAV to MP3.

maybe it's the transcode settings, because it's always worked for me. I'm using PPro 1.5.1, and I can throw tons of MP3 on the timeline, with no beef.

I do not have any problem in transferring MP3 files to time line...PPro did not crash for me...I have inserted several MP3 files in different places ..no problem...did u render before u export to DVD..

pushpa
e-mail: pushpas@hotmail.com

Carlos and Pushpa, the issue is not importing existing mp3 files into the timeline, it's creating them by exporting. Try that and see what happens.