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Premiere CS4 trouble.
Hello-
Long time visitor here to the Cow, but this is my first time posting. Like many others, I have a heap of problems with Premiere CS4 and I don’t know what else to do at this point. I have lost DAYS of work time troubleshooting my system via tips from this site and Google. Here is the issue; the playback of HD footage is choppy once I drag the the source / program windows out to a decent size. If I enable Realtime Playback (a preview monitor) on one of the 4 monitors attached, this also will cause poor performance and choppy playback of the footage- whatever the window sizes are.
This is a dedicated workstation for media production. There is no surfing, web browsing, gaming, etc. Audio and Video production only. I started with Windows 7 64bit and CS4 was so unstable it wouldn’t stay running for more than 2 or 3 min. I spent three days troubleshooting that issue and pretty much narrowed it down to a conflict with the video card driver. I installed a fresh copy of Windows XP 64 bit. The machine is as stable as can be, I’ve never had it crash, freeze, blue screen-whatever. There is barley any overhead- a total of 35 processes and about 557MB of RAM being used. I have Premiere CS3 and After Effects CS3 still installed (to actually get work done) and both run smooth as glass with HD footage, no matter how big I make the windows. I use one of the 4 monitors attached for Realtime Playback (my preview monitor) via the Playback Settings, External Device dropdown. Premiere CS3 rungs great, never an issue, never a crash- about a dozen 15 min projects completed. If I open “HD Footage A” in CS3, no issues. If I open “ HD Footage A” in CS4, I run in to the above issues.I am also having to deal with Adobe Media Encoder not processing jobs in the que from Premiere CS4- the error I get in the log is “Could not read from the source” I followed the tips on Adobe’s site and that did not help the issue.
Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated.
These are my system specs:
-Windows XP 64 bit
Service Pack 2-Motherboard: Asus M3A78-T
-CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940
(Quad Core 64bit, 3GHz)8GB of DDR 800 RAM in ganged mode and the pagefile (virtual memory) in Windows was set to 12GB
-Operating System, Programs and scratch drive: Seagate ST3500320AS (500GB, 7200 rpm SATA, 3Gb/s, 32MB cache)
Video storage / working drive: Western Digital WD7500AAKS (750GB, 7200 rpm, SATA, 3Gb/s, 16MB cache)
Display adapter: ATI Radeon 4850 X2- Quad Display (CrossFireX is disabled to enable use of all four monitor ports)
Driver: version 10.2
Direct3D version: 6.14.10.0728
OpenGL version: 6.14.10.9551Camera: Sony V1U, the footage is HD 1440×1080 – recorded to a HVR-DR60 which stores the files as .M2T
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 is version. 4.2.1 – no trial or stuff like that…a full 800 something dollar purchase.
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16 Replies
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One thing to try:
Uninstall the Radeon drivers (completely), and let Windows install its own (not sure if the XP update will do that, Win7 however will).
That solved the issue on one of our machines that has this particular card. In our case, the problem also went away if the only monitor active was the main display.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
As far as your Media Encoder problem is concerned I think that it is due to the fact that you have both CS3 and CS4 Premier installed on your computer. You can probably get out of this issue doing as follows:
Create a shortcut to the Premiere Pro executable file, rename the shortcut to Premiere, and move the shortcut to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\dynamiclink (If you installed Premiere Pro CS4 in a location other than the default of C:\Program Files\Adobe, then navigate to your custom installation location.).
1. Close all Adobe applications.
2. In Windows Explorer, navigate to X:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.
3. Right-click on Adobe Premiere Pro.exe (which might appear without the .exe extension) and choose Create Shortcut.
4. Rename the newly created shortcut to just Premiere.
Important: The name of the shortcut must be exactly Premiere with no other characters- sans extension.
5. Open a second Windows Explorer window, and navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\dynamiclink.
6. Move the Premiere shortcut that you created into the dynamiclink folder. -
Thanks- yep I did the shortcut / dynamic link folder thing a few days back following the directions from Adobe Support. It of course failed to do anything.
When is says it failed to load the file, it is referencing the file in the documents and settings/local settings/temp folder. I thought that was a strange place for a file to end up? I have media cache and scratch disk paths set to specific places. I checked the path and it is copying the project file over there.
Does yours do the same? -
Just as a follow up:
I did reinstall CS4. My problems regarding Media Encoder linger a little. It does start and encode the project now- so that was the big issue at hand. NOW the next problem is it takes 3x the amount of time to encode a 10min HDV project to h264 than Premiere CS3 with the old internal media encoder. I ran a side by side comparison.
My performance with CS4 is still way below average.
I don’t understand these CS4 issues. I spent $800 for a few extra features and my life in the editing room has gone to hell. Flawless, smooth, streamlined editing with CS3 on the same machine, same drivers and exact same HDV footage. Upgrade to CS4 as described above and its like I went back in time 3 years. -
Shane,
That is a worry , I have been reluctant to upgrade to CS4 from would you believe 1.5.1(it still works well all be it slow at times)let us know if you fix the problem. -
Hi, regarding the choppy playback in CS4. This is a bug in the catalyst drivers.
Downgrade to Catalyst 9.10 . The choppy playback is caused by a bug in the drivers later than >9.12. 9.11 is fine, but as the win7 64bit link is broken on the ATI site, (9.11 win7 64bit links to xp 64bit) try 9.10 .
You will see it will work… Many people have the same problem. ATI still has been reluctant to fix this.
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Hi, regarding the choppy playback in CS4. This is a bug in the catalyst drivers.
Downgrade to Catalyst 9.10 . The choppy playback is caused by a bug in the drivers later than >9.12. 9.11 is fine, but as the win7 64bit link is broken on the ATI site, (9.11 win7 64bit links to xp 64bit) try 9.10 .
You will see it will work… Many people have the same problem. ATI still has been reluctant to fix this.
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Check my posts…..we have simialar problems. I eliminated one of my monitors and am down to one large one now. That did not work….the next thing I plan on doing is replacing the video card. It might be coincidence, but I too have a ATI Catalyst in both computers.
If anyone can recommend a video card I will give it a shot.
Things are getting busy again and I cannot afford to fight with CS4 any longer.
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Thanks,
CS5 coming out 13 April in Australia. May fix a few problems ?
(Retired Canon CPS Member)
Freelance Imaging & Video
AUSTRALIA -
From what I understand it’s a release date announcment and not the actual day it hits stores.
– Jon Barrie
Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net
http://www.suiteskills.com
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