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Premiere Pro CS3: Audio Appearing in Elemental MPEG2 Video
We’re having a problem with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 creating invalid .M2V elemental MPEG2 DVD video output.
We’re tried both our trusty CinemaCraft encoder and then the Adobe Media Encoder (MainConcept) to create m2v output.
We made sure to un-check the Export Audio checkbox, and there is nothing in the audio tab, so it appears that CS3 is set up to export purely video.
However, every clip we’ve exported from CS3 is invalid in Scenarist, because it contains invalid audio streams in the video stream. Playing the stream in Media Player, it DOES have audio! This should be impossible, but there it is, and this is why our authoring system fails to MUX and write DVD files and the process terminates with an error.
We’ve tried nine ways to Sunday to get Premiere to export a valid elemental m2v file, but it ALWAYS embeds audio into these files, which not only wastes bandwidth that could otherwise be used to improve the video quality, but it creates problems with non-language streams in Scenarist, where there is already an English Dolby AC3 audio track explicitly present in the project.
So far, we have tried MPEG2 DVD and MPEG2 presets, with Export Audio un-checked and Miltiplexer settings set to NONE. We still get audio on the m2v. How it is multiplexing when the multiplexer is disabled?
Has anyone figured out how to get valid m2v streams out of Premiere Pro CS3? I know there must be some trick besides simply doing what the instructions direct us to do (mainly to uncheck ‘export audio’). What’s the secret workaround?
Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
https://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig’s Lair – 15,000 Watts of Driving Stereo!
https://www.mwcomms.com
https://www.adventuresinanimemusic.com -
7 Replies
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I and thousands of others have exported elementary streams for use in Encore without issue. I just exported a short .m2v file with Export Audio unchecked, imported it back into Premiere and the properties reveal just a video file at the bitrate selected. Could this be just a Scenarist issue?
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I know this is NOT a Scenarist issue, because the the stream has audio in it and it hasn’t even been touched by Scenarist yet. I can verify the problem by opening the m2v file in Media player. It has audio in it when it should not. Scenarist doesn’t expect audio on an elemental video file, so it rejects the files made by Premiere Pro CS3.
Even weirder is the fact that when I use the export video from timeline function and use CinemaCraft to encode m2v, I also am getting audio in the m2v files IT creates. So Media Encoder and CinemaCraft both are getting audio streams sent in the package when audio is explicitly NOT wanted.
Encore may not have a problem with audio in the m2v, but Scenarist makes output that is 100% compliant with the DVD spec and will reject any MPEG2 files that don’t fit within narrow tolerances.
We’ve been accustomed to Premiere Pro 1.5 for a few years and never had this issue in 1.5. It seems to be a bug in CS3.
Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
https://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig’s Lair – 15,000 Watts of Driving Stereo!
https://www.mwcomms.com
https://www.adventuresinanimemusic.com -
Encore has issue with Program stream Mpeg 2…it wants to transcode the video again. I am using CS3.
I cant hear audio when my Elementary clips are played in Media Player. I wonder if Cinema Craft has screwed with something or is not fully compatible with CS3.
Also are you using a 3rd party editing card? -
I doubt CCE has anything to do with it. It seems to be a new problem related to CS3. The old 1.5 version always exported only what I explicitly instructed it to export.
CS3 exports an m2v that is really a program stream, not an elemental video file. And when, for kicks, I told it to export audio as well as video, it exported two files–a m2v (with sound) and a WAV file (sound only).
Out of a dozen trials exporting m2v, only ONE produced an m2v that had no audio. It seems to be a random seed that is causing CS3 to export sound most of the time. Multiple renders, with the SAME settings, result in varying results (11/12 files rendered had audio, one did not).
Still scratching my head over this one…
Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
https://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig’s Lair – 15,000 Watts of Driving Stereo!
https://www.mwcomms.com
https://www.adventuresinanimemusic.com -
I made a very significant discovery this evening:
Not ALL clips are rejected by Scenarist. Some of them are “ok” on import. That was the first clue.
What nailed it for me was the fact that I worked on a menu in AfterEffects and used the MC encoder to export it for the DVD. I previously had exported an audio track of the same ROOT filename. The AE project has no audio in it, so I know there will be silence.. or will there?
Lo and behold, when I played the resulting m2v file in Media Player, I heard MUSIC! Now I was REALLY about ready to hang up my stylus and go check into the loony bin. I knew there was no audio in the particular m2v file, so I looked around and found the audio wav file of the music I had exported earlier. It has the same ROOT name as the m2v. So it dawned on me what was happening: Media Player is a slick little number–it can play TWO media files AT THE SAME TIME! It was playing the m2v file, but it was being “smart” and it also looked for an audio file with the same name and played that file SIMULTANEOUSLY with the m2v file, causing me to assume that the m2v somehow contained audio! It did not, in fact.
This whole mystery seems to be solved! I found some export settings that work, and Scenarist seems to be happy with the files now. Plus, Premiere can export both m2v and wav at the same time, in one export operation, so I have files ready to import into Scenarist in one easy step. Productivity is now forging ahead at full steam.
Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
https://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig’s Lair – 15,000 Watts of Driving Stereo!
https://www.mwcomms.com
https://www.adventuresinanimemusic.com -
Mark Is it possible that you are using long filenames? My last experiences with scenartist a few years ago, it was an issue that would screw things up.
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Neraly every asset brought into Scenarist has a long filename. Naturally, Scenarist adds a “_1” or whatever, making them even longer. But for years we’ve used long filenames, though I try to keep mine shorter to aid in identifying files of similar beginning name, without problems.
The error at the end of MUXing only happens when we recycle a scenario and use it as a template for another project. I think there is some vestige of old data that is no longer valid for the new scenario that may be to blame here, but I can’t so far pinpoint what exactly that may be or how to fix it. The scenarios make a working image, and the audio problem I discovered in one of the multiplexed images was due to the fact that the audio track was somehow set for a shorter end time than the video. I could have sworn I fixed that, but when I explicitly fixed it, that solved the audio silencing after 5 minutes.
Other than the “cannot create DVD files” error at the end of MUXing, the image burns and plays fine.
If we make a new project from scratch, this error does not appear. Would sure like to figure out why templates have this issue. Having to build every scenario from scratch is time-consuming and seems wasteful, when we’re dealing with many titles that use the same layout.
Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
https://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig’s Lair – 15,000 Watts of Driving Stereo!
https://www.mwcomms.com
https://www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
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