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Endless encoding problems…
Hi everyone. Love the site. Long-time lurker, first-time poster.
I don’t even know where to begin.
Normally I work in After Effects with short-length stuff, but I had a project that required extensive editing, so I’ve been using Premiere Pro CS3 with the latest update.
This project uses a bunch of video clips compressed with different codecs, all the same framerate and aspect ratio, and a WAV audio track.
The project previews and pre-renders fine. The issues only seem to surface once I go to export a movie.
Using any codec with lossy compression, I get tons of artifacts from color tints to blocking. Options I choose don’t seem to make a difference–a clean encode will suddenly just exhibit random artifacts, then jump back to being clean.
Also, at some random point in the rendered file, the video freezes while the audio continues fine to the end of the project. Note that it’s a random point every time, sometimes in the middle of a clip, sometimes at an in or out point. And these clips have all already been successfully pre-rendered.
Rendering as an uncompressed AVI eliminated any artifacts, but didn’t solve the random freezing problem.
I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling the few codecs/codec packs I use (Xvid, DivX, H264, the ffdshow pack, all from their respective original sources). Nothing seems to make a difference.
I’ve just about had it with Premiere. I should note that I haven’t had a SINGLE rendering issue doing the same exact thing in After Effects. Premiere even chokes on files that were created and rendered purely in After Effects, no matter what encoder I use.
What gives? Is Premiere always this flaky? What else can I do on my end (keeping in mind I already tried uninstalling/reinstalling codecs etc.)? I would really rather not reinstall Premiere or my OS (Win XP 32-bit, FYI). This is a clean machine, everything installed after a reformat less than 2 months ago.
I’m starting to think it may be less work overall to just work entirely in After Effects…it would have taken much longer to edit, but saved me the useless hours of rendering unusable video. And the frustration!
Thanks in advance for any insight or recommendations you folks can provide.
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2 Replies
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Using Xvid is probably not the best codec to be using for editing in the beginning. Which version of PPro are you using?
Make a custom project in Desktop mode and set the rendering to Umcompressed. Then import the PPro project you’ve worked on into that. All your edits will come through but you won’t be restricted by a presets rendering code (ie: DV)
– Jon -
I haven’t had encoding issues since the Adobe Premiere 5.5 days.
Media Encoder, in my opinion, is one of the best things that Adobe has done to make the CS Suite more integrated.
I still think that there’s a long way to go with it though. It would be nice to batch export from all programs in the Master Collection through the Media Encoder so that you can still work on other elements of your projects in their respective programs. Batch export photos with watermarks from Photoshop, multiple vector exports from Illustrator, rendering to DVD from Encore, etc. It would allow you to use a program, set up the export, close the program, jump into another program and work, and then start your batch export list either while you are working in another program, or when you step away from your desk.
With a recent video project of mine, my export kept freezing. I tried loading the project onto an external drive and attempted the export on 2 other PCs in the office. All PCs are running the CS4 Master Collection and all with different update versions. One is a mat leave staff member’s PC which hasn’t been used in 9 months and the other is our stand alone encoding machine which hasn’t been used in 2-3 months. Since I use my PC for editing video everyday, I figured that if it’s an update issue, then one of the other 2 machines should be able to export the video without any issues.
After trying the export on the other 2 machines with the freezing in exporting at different points in the video, I decided to assume that the project file has somehow become corrupt. It opens fine on 3 PCs, plays on the timeline fine, allows me to continue to edit fine, but freezes during the export process. There’s obviously some dead frames that are causing the encoder to give up all hope of rendering.
With the assumption of project file corruption, here’s how I solved the problem:
1. Create a new project with your desired settings
2. Import the project that you’ve spent hours on (in most cases)
3. Select the “Selected Sequences” option
4. Wait for it to open that project and you should get a list of all of the library elements from that project. Select your sequence(s) and click “ok”
5. Open the imported timeline and try to export itThis worked for me. I don’t claim to know everything but it’s definitely worth a try before you spend hours re-editing.
Damien Mustaphi
Interactive Multimedia Producer
http://www.damienmustaphi.com
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