Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Playback Problems

[Martin Fitzgerald]

Hi Guys… Just made a very interesting discovery whilst testing a trial version of prem cs4 (upgraded to 4.0.1). I have a black magic sdi card and the 10bit SD uncompressed video captures were staggering and stopping (after 5/6 sec) in both source and edit windows. I tried everything to sort out the issue when I discovered purely by accident that if you start adobe exporter (export your timeline) and then stop it the machine starts to play the files back perfectly!!! I had read a few different solutions which didn’t work like gfx drivers and processor affinity (thats setting premiere to work with just one core on an duo/quad and whilst this did help with 8bit it couldn’t handle the 10bit) and while messing with all these seemed to do things they didn’t solve the problem.

Now its working fine… bit messy, but!

Hope this helps someone!!!
Reply to this thread if it works for you.

Vista 32 (all updates to 25/3/09)
Quad Q6600 @ 2.4G
2GB Ram
Nvidia Geforce 8500 (256MB) Running 182.08 drivers
Black Magic decklink driver 7
Segate 7200.11 500GB eSATA

[Martin Fitzgerald]

Actually correct that… the Nvidia drivers had to be uninstalled
to get this to run and the base vista one left….

Also major issues to get the encoder to run!!!
You must always save the name of the ‘output file name’, you cant just
set up a file and do it quick!

What a pain!!! CS4 is really bugged… back to avid!

[Rick Connolly]

I have a simialar problem. This is a new fresh copy of Adobe CS4 installed on a dedicated dual processor HP XW6200 workstation with 4 gigs of RAM and 90gig 7500rpm SCSI and a terabyte SATA that I use for storage of data and as the disk paging file.

I had the same problem on an identical system when I first installed, then I reinstalled fresh on this system where I had the same problem. I then completely reformatted and reinstalled fresh again.

The problem happens nearly every time I use Prem Pro but I found the following patterns.

1) After importing, I found that rather than open into the source window, if I dragged from the preview directly to the timeline, and then dragged from the timeline to the source window, it would avoid the lockup.

2) Nevertheless after a while, if I were to switch between various media files enogh times when editing, the window might freeze…in fact you will see a partial piece of the video or even the menu “stuck” in the source window with no way to clear it. Once this happens the only way of fixing it is to exit Adobe and then start it again, where it will open up perfectly and you can continue.

Before this happens, often the window might go black and then you can hear audio but you get no video. Once it gets to this point, the only way is to shut down the app and reopen.

Sometimes you have to reboot the system.

Given I this seems to be a problem on this PC and the other system it leads me to believe that this might be some sort of “bug”. While both systems are HP xw6200s they have different hard drive systems, and they have different mem configurations.

I am highly technical, and I have gone over everything I can think of that might affect the system performance.

As I indicated I this is the 2nd install on BOTH systems and each time I built new partitions and reformated the drives fully.

Video on one system is NVIDEO Quadro, and on the other system is a high performance ATI board.

Given the problem is the same on both systems yet has different setups, leads me to believe again that there is some sort of bug.

Occasioanlly I get a fatal error that causes Premier Pro to close suddenly with an error that it cannot identify.

I am up to date on all Adobe updates and I run XP Service pack 3.

This is very frustrating…you feel that you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop,

Ohh by the way, I had no problems with any other software prior to the Adobe installations, and I was using autocad, and other video intensive programs.

The only other software installed is Microsoft Office on one system, and on the other is another version of MS Office. Office was installed on one system long after I was having the problem.

I hate to say this, but somedays I wish I went to the APPLE route!

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Ron Blanchard]

My problem was with CS3 not being to play back video out of the Timeline or composite window or through the firewire out to an external monitor. Video just stopped playing & locked up.

Then I remembered that I had a problem with a new hard drive crashing in the middle of something, I turned off that drive and used another drive and everything worked. Now I only use that drive for storage backup.

Process of alimanation….

[Brandon King]

I know this thread is really ancient… but…

I even formatted my computer and Premiere Pro CS4 still doesn’t work!

Then I switched to PPCS3 and… it works perfectly fine!

I’m gonna try your ideas and see if they work.

[Eric Marshall]

I have the same issue. No picture during video playback in CS4.1! I’ve called customer support and they’re no help at all! You pay hundreds of dollars on a product and it doesn’t even work! I just bought a Sony Vaio and installed it first thing, same problem. I’m by no means a tech wizard, and would love some help! I just want to be able to see the dang picture! HELP!

[Rick Connolly]

I’ve tried everything….the funny thing is I was using it the other day and worked on a large project and everything went great, except that I had to reboot from time to time when I sensed things were slowing down.

Today I opened the same project and now I have the freezing of the monitor again when I drag the video from the time line. Can hear it but cannot see it. After “playing” around with the OUTPUT option on the playback monitor….suddently the video pop’d up and then I could see it. But then the menu that was on the screen didnt entirely go away and I was left with a partial menu on the screen. I then tried to drag the timeline video to the SOURCE monitor and the whole thing crashed.

I dont know what the hell Adobe is doing, but there is no way you can have these many problems without them knowing. As I indicated I had reinstalled twice on two different systems with different hardware setups and same problems. This is not some Dell clone, these are HP x6200 workstations with 4 gig RAM and a terabyte disk space in one and hundreds of gigs in the other.

Bottom line….a software package especially this expensive should not be having these issues.

I’ve sent the crash reports and contacted Adobe and nothing back from them at all.

Any advice I would appreciate it.

[Andrew Garley]

Its a real problem with these issues, I started off Haha trying to work with HD.
My machine AMD x2 3g with 4g ram, Asus Crosshair.
OS win7 64bit. I am running the OS from a Solid State Drive.
4T of Drives and Video on a Raid 0 drive.
I recently got a Black Magic Intensity Pro, thinking some how this would fix the problems. nope.

I have a project i have to finish within a few weeks,
At the moment All I have is Footage and some Titles and some music, It will not play for more than a few seconds. Naturally I need to watch and listen to get it right. I have to keep exporting the file to view progress.
What I did find helped was upped the page file size as the HD is SSD it acts much like ram anyway, as far as I understand.

Another issue i have found is when i have been working and close a project, opening up Priemier Pro CS4 Kills the Machine, SO frequent restarts needed. I have tried ram refreshers, helps a little, but not sure I understand why the machine seems to fill up, if that makes sence.
I dont have any Games or Apps, Just Adobe and Office. on a clean Install, generally it seems to work ok, apart from Playback, the one thing you need.
I am Assuming its PC power issues, as my Dual Core Max’s out everytime i hit play.
But reading the above posts some have Quad core and the same issues?

Today I am going to try hooking up my Intensity Pro, via HDMI to an LCD TV monitor that supports 1080. and see if I can just get it to play back Via the IP card. Naturally If the CPU max’s out it will do the same.
Man its been a learning curve for sure.
Will let you know how I get on.
I would rather the system slow down that Max out the Dual core, and stop playback, I cant help wondering if I am expecting too much from my PC. Its not bang uptodate, But should do the job? maybe.
All the best
Andrew

[Martin Fitzgerald]

Hi Guys,

Wow still posting here!
Well after my last post in March I gave up the Vista route and
went back to XP and an old set of drivers for the Black Magic sdi card.
I had an edit I had to get done asap, so the frills were not
necessary when I just wanted to cut!!!

To say I still had problems is an understatement!!! But I got through the edit in the end. There were a lot of Sound issues, but this time (XP) it was that it would drop the audio during playback. It seems to be a memory problem, but since I have given up on BM and Adobe for any kind of serious work its not worth me investigating any further… After my performance -‘Its a software driver issue’ every few hours to my client, I doubt that I will be doing any more work for them.

In the end this little experiment cost me money and work.

Anybody want to buy the SDI card?

[Rick Connolly]

Frustrated…I tried calling Adobe again for support. I was onhold for over an hour before I gave up.

Obviously they have their hands full with problems.

I’m working in DV 720×480….given the extra probs that are occuring in full HD. A shame since we shoot with a Sony HRV-Z&U in full HD onto a digital flash card. The resulting video file is an .avi which is transfered to the PC.

Yesterday I struggled all day to get video to work in the source monitor after suddenly the source stopped working for no apparent reason.

Everytime I tried to drag a clip from the timeline to the source so that I could drag back video only, the moment I dropped it on the source monitor, or tried to open in source, the program either hung for a minute then crashed, or just crashed right before my eyes.

Eventually…I was able to get the source monitor working again, by opening an audio file and editing it in the source. After that, I tried dragging video and like majic it began to work again.

One thing for sure using Adobe….you learn to save every time you do more than 1 minute of work!

I tell you if they dont do something about this soon, my next mini doc is going to be on “using Adobe CS4 and the Perils of doing so”.

That will make a great Youtube video for Apple marketing of Final Cut Pro!!!!

Again…..bottom line…for anyone who might say…you need to tweak this or that, or feed the mice a diffent grain…..this is an expensive package, I’m using it on top notch industry standard equipment….and therefore, one should expect it to reasonably operate.

As a technical person who has developed software, there is no excuse for an application to act in this manner, except to say it is full of programming holes where the app does not intercept errors.

Obviously Adobe has done a very poor job in stabilizing their product.