Adobe Media Encoder CS4 slow?

[Yosep Sugiarto]

Hi Bram,

I am using CS4 too, and it works fast on my coputer, did you upgrade your software from CS3 to CS4 while the CS3 still on your computer or did you uninstall the CS3 first and then install the CS4? i am affraid if you install the CS4 while CS3 still on it and then later u uninstall the CS3, some systems are missing, May be you can re-install the software.

I used Intel Quadcore 3,2GHZ
8 GB RAM
3 TB HDD
VGA 512MB
Vista Business 64bit
It works pretty fast…

or may be your AJA 2k Xena I/O doen’t really compatible with the software… I am not sure about AJA stuff…

Joe

[Bram Tulloch]

When I installed CS4, I reinstalled the whole OS.

I had CS3 running on XP 64-bit and then Server 2008.

Unfortunately I had to give up Server 2008 (politics) and went with Vista 64 business.
So there was no sign of CS3 on the computer before CS4 was installed.

[Brecht Wouters]

I have a whole different problem with the Media Encoder: it doesn’t work at all. I installed CS4 directly on a new system and now Media Encoder won’t even find the media, although directly put through by Premiere, which does locate the media, as it plays 🙂

I really dislike this option, I would like the option of rendering an avi through premiere (as it was in previous versions) instead of being forced to use media encoder. It just gives more trouble. I have now installed CS3 again just to be able to export movies.

[John Doba]

I too am having problems with Media Encoder, and other problems. CS3 worked better overall. Page Up/Down to Next Edit point doesn’t work on this Mac.

It seems idiotic for Adobe to change a good thing and make it worse. Export Movie from CS3 worked fine; now, my decked out Macbook Pro CS4 has stopped encoding totally; it just hangs up, never loads nor encodes. I’ve tried numerous times, waited all night—never encodes, just hangs up… Guess I’ll reload the stupid thing…

[Bram Tulloch]

Well it seems that this is now a thread about how CS4 Media Encoder doesn’t work for some people.
I feel for you guys and I’m sorry to hear it.

It certainly works for me but it works very slowly (compared with CS3 export > movie). I agree the Export > Movie function in CS3 was great and simple.

Aside from all this, does anyone have any ideas regarding the original post?

Is it a CPU assignment issue or memory related? Perhaps it is an AJA codec thing? Although it’s just as slow when using “none” or “animation” codec.

Yosep, you say Media Encoder CS4 works fast on your computer. What is your set up?

Thanks for the help.

Bram

[Dennis Heijnemans]

Hi Bram,

You are definitely not alone in your findings.

On my system (XP64, dual Xeon 5345, 8GB Kingston DDR2 and an 8-disk raid5 set) the Media Encoder is running extremely slow. Virtualdub in full processing mode converts HD1080 uncompressed to PAL-DV avi in realtime. A simple 3-layer 5-minute edit in Pr. CS4, using only DV-PAL avi files, a render to Quicktime H264 half-PAL takes over an hour.

I’m glad I don’t have to babysit this, just let my 26 episodes run throughout the weekend.

I’m not using any specialized hardware, just desktop mode editing.
Have you found any useful information?
Has anyone found a way to speed things up?

Cheers!

Dennis