A Series of unfortunate events.

[Baz Leffler]

Peter – the only unfortunate thing here is the way Adobe handles memory management exacerbated by Micro$ofts flawed operating system.

Adobe has this incessant need to cache anything and everything when loading and during use; this in the name of ‘fast performance’ during normal editing operations. But this comes to a head when you want to load large projects, something I think Premiere beta testers must not do very often, or, should I be more precise, do open large projects, report the problems, and are never addressed by Adobe. Why never addressed? Well this stems way back to the initial design of the app, and to fix it would require a total rethink which, to Adobe, is not worth tieing up their resources on, due to the small user base; and I am sure their market researchers have confirmed this noting that it would be unlikely they will ever build on that in the near future.

I was totally gobsmacked when I found out that the CS4 version of Adobe Premiere would no longer let you export without going via Media encoder; this confirmed to me that Adobe indeed DO NOT test their software on large projects, period.

So that is why there is a migration of high end users to Final Cut Pro. That app is Mac only but once you have been ‘majorily bitten’ by the inabilities of Premiere it really is worth the investment. As an example, look at my picture, that hair wasn’t grey until I started using Premiere to meet heavy deadlines and finding it couldn’t be achieved using the tools I had. And furthermore, all those FCP users are about to get a major reward which will then finally bring to an end to the FCP vs CS4 debate. Can’t say too much about that at the moment but in essence, buy a Mac, FCP and for Adobe’s benefit, After Effects and Photoshop; that way you will avoid the ‘Bollywood’ editing app AND Bill Gates pretend operating system.

Baz

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Steve Isaacs]

I wouldn’t blame the OS too much although Baz you’re right. In another life I’m a BIOS and embedded systems development engineer and I agree with you that Windows is fundamentally flawed. I’m also frustrated when I see very robust alternatives not being taken advantage of.

It is sad that many software developers fail to see the flaws of the Windows architecture and therefore are unable to devise schemes to work around them. I believe Adobe falls into this group. I get the feel they applied overly complicated computer science to a rich set of features but didn’t compensate for the real world of Windows and the need to focus on efficiency and reliability.

I also suspect that Adobe began to believe that a rich feature set is the way to capture a user base and they were mostly correct. What Adobe failed to completely understand is the user base Adobe is trying to attract would be those whose livelyhood depends upon the tools they use. As a result, when those cool features are found to be unreliable they do not serve to maintain that user base and instead drive it away.

I also get the feel that the architecture was mostly assembled on Windows and then “ported” to the Mac — Windows based flaws along with it. As an unfortunate result the overly complicated computer science found its way to the Mac environment so simply using Adobe tools on a Mac does not fix the problem.

In fairness I have to say though After Effects is flawed as well but is working pretty well for me and I’ve never had a problem with Photoshop. I think it would be a shame if the user base for these tools shrinks because of the unreliability of other tools such as Premier Pro and Encore.

I have to get some work done so I’m bit by bit returning to the rock solid toolset of Sony Vegas Pro and DVD Architect Pro. I’d like to move to a Mac and FCP or even Avid but my money sponge is currently dry and I’m out of time. I need to produce something so I can soak my sponge again.

Steve

Assembly Instruction Videos
And
R/C Racing Event Coverage
https://www.pineforestmedia.com/info

[James Mayo]

this issue is still unsolved…

I’ve tried it.

i think the best way is to use a final cut instead?

Good luck to all of us. =)

It’s Time for the 2nd Coming

[Aristides Tiropolis]

Some comments,

While Mac OSX is a much more superior operating system, there is a way to properly code stuff on Windows and respectively screw stuff up on Mac OSX. A good example of that is a better coded Maya 2008 on windows compared to the Mac OSX variant which crashes constantly…and there are other similar examples.

To the original poster: You should check the event viewer. You don’t specify what is the exact nature of the crash and what exactly happens…Do you get a blue screen? AME crash? Windows error report window? What kind of RAID controller are you using? Maybe there is a driver problem.
That said Adobe Premiere CS4 has been very badly coded…and the simple export feature omission from the latest version has been a major mistake, good job Adobe…

[Peter Berthet]

it was a bluescreen error, it directed me to 3 files which were according to windows better able to “describe the problem”

one file didnt exist,
one file was full of ascii
the third was empty

good job microsoft !

~Peter Berthet
Sydney, Australia

[Vince Becquiot]

Ever since the first post I could see this turning into OS bashing. And heck, I’m the first one laughing when I compare my iPhone to my old ipaq or the zune, MS clearly
needs a lot of help in the mobile domain. But most of the complaints I hear and see in the PC arena are either from people blindly building custom machines or expect things to run smoothly on a cheap pos. I think MS is doing pretty good given the thousands of possible configurations in the wild. Is Vista perfect ? Probably not, but if I see a Mac crashing twice a week next to a pc that I use everyday and froze on me once in the last 6 months. I say thumbs up.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Aristides Tiropolis]

Peter,

Blue screen errors are usually attributed to driver and memory issues mostly, but there are specific error numbers and descriptions. It would certainly help if you could provide it. We could maybe steer you to some direction i.e irq_driver_less_not_equal is a driver issue.

Blue screens occur mostly when the computer is stressed, especially when memory is at fault.

[Peter Berthet]

the crashing really isnt the source of my problems, its more the time consumption were getting on loading and exporting projects, the machine right now is exporting a fairly large file for a client, so if it bombs again ill be able to provide the error message

and vince, this isnt OS bashing,
theres no excuse for crap software being sold as ‘professional’

you dont buy tools that are broken, and youd certainly be upset if you bought tools that you were told were new and higher quality, only to find out theyre rusty and generally useless

~Peter Berthet
Sydney, Australia

[Vince Becquiot]

Peter,

Just because something doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it’s “crappy”. As the previous poster mentioned, the issues you are experiencing are most likely due to faulty or incompatible hardware /driver.

All I’m saying is that it works great for the majority of us or believe me, I’d be the first one to complain, and I do have a running copy of FCP if I wanted to jump ship, it would take much.

A I said earlier, I push the limits on Premiere with a ton of 1080P uncompressed footage and it rarely, if ever crashes or freezes, but I should add that I also never render.

All my projects are sent out SDI through an AJA card, and all is smooth.

I do remember cutting rendered projects back in CS2 and I did see some noticeable slowdowns or very large projects, so that may be what you are seeing.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Andy Urtusuastegui]

Crappy may be a bit strong, but I have to say CS4 is VERY frustrating, to the point where I am back using CS3 until they issue some LONG OVERDUE patches for CS4.

I am not a pro, but I do a lot of DVD’s, Ipod videos, for our church, school, YMCA etc and I am spending way too much time trouble shooting and not editing.

I really like all of the new features of CS4 and I like the new workflow, but this “tool” needs somoe repairs before I can trust it.