Premiere Pro CS4 Hangs Frequently & Randomly!

[Vince Becquiot]

Disable uninstall antivirus, spyware removers, basically the machine should be dedicated to editing.

Yes, if you had that much stuff on the machine, start over, format the hardrive, and start clean (and try to stay clean :-).

Defragment hard drives, make sure your preview files and footage are on a separate drive, not on the OS side.

Finally, what format are your working with?

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[John Smith]

Disable uninstall antivirus, spyware removers, basically the machine should be dedicated to editing.

Yes, if you had that much stuff on the machine, start over, format the hardrive, and start clean (and try to stay clean :-).

Defragment hard drives, make sure your preview files and footage are on a separate drive, not on the OS side.

Finally, what format are your working with?

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

Here’s the thing. I can’t afford another computer which is dedicated to video encoding and editing. Same for a gaming rig. I have to infuse my gaming, editing, work computer into one.

But I’ll try disable my Avast. I have suspected a corrupted project file because yesterday after posting this, I have NO PROBLEMS creating a new project but when I try to open the existing one it hanged while loading.

I defragment my hard drives frequently, and what do you mean by preview files and footage? Do you mean the media like the raw, captured video files and the project file itself?

And I’m working with .mov (captured video format) and I render it in .mp4 (H.264)

[Mikkell Khan]

May I suggest if that is the case to create a partition on your hard drive solely dedicated to editing, perhaps just enough to house the creative suite you are using.

At least this way you can ensure nothing else is running other than your editing program.

Also, consider an external hard drive for your content, the performance will be much better than using the same drive for everything.

Furthermore, premiere takes some time to relink the files when you are opening an existing project. This has been improved on in cs4 updates but it still remains a slight wait before the project fully loads. I prefer this actually as final cut just checks to see if the drive with content is still there but not for the actual content itself which can lead to problems if you are missing files.

Finally, I’d advise you to save cash towards an editing rig. I once had only one machine for all my stuff, gaming, editing, etc. But then I bought myself a Dell Studio XPS Desktop from the earnings of the jobs. The great thing about this desktop is that it has an i7 core processor, ati graphics, completely geared towards content creation and less than $1000 for the base system. I am using the base system and it is running premiere pro like a pro. lol.

Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago)

[John Smith]

Are you saying that the partition is for:

– storing the footage only
– storing the footage AND the software
– a brand new install of an OS and I boot from that partition

[Tim Kolb]

[Fabian Terh] “Here’s the thing. I can’t afford another computer which is dedicated to video encoding and editing. Same for a gaming rig. I have to infuse my gaming, editing, work computer into one.”

Honestly, this simply isn’t workable. You have Vegas and Premiere Pro CS4, but you’re using a freeware antivirus? You need to invest in hardware to do the job. Many people don’t seem to understand that PPro (and even Vegas…) are professional video editing applications and they need system resources to do their job correctly. There might be some lower end editors that might tolerate such an environment, but their capabilities are limited so their system demands are lighter.

Nobody buys Avid and expects it to run flawlessly on such a computer. I have no idea why anyone expects Vegas or PPro to…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[John Smith]

I didn’t buy it, I got the trial 🙂 And you guys can see this thread for more information for more information on the problem…

https://forums.adobe.com/message/2199716

[Tim Kolb]

Hmmm…is this Flip footage?

I’ve found that I have to put Flip or GoPro footage into Vegas as PPro simply hates it.

Also, you’re putting 1280×720 30 fps MJPEG footage into an HDV (MPEG) 29.97 fps project setting. That certainly isn’t helping anything. You would need to setup a custom project and I’d advise to set the sequence for 1280×720, 30 fps, uncompressed to have a shot at it working…

Also…you’re system has just too much installed and running and is really light on RAM. I advise everyone running CS4 that they need Vista 64 so they can access more RAM. 8 Gigs minimum is my typical recommendation. The minimum requirements are usually what the software can be opened on…not what it will run well on.

With a light system like this, I suspect that Vegas is your best bet for doing this work…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Mike Procunier]

I’m having similar problems with CS4. I recently started at a new company and they put me on a Boxx workstation with dual Xeon 5130 2Ghz(4 cores total) system with 6G of RAM running 64bit XP. (I’m a Mac guy, so I’m not sure where this system ranks on the awesomeness scale, my guess is not nearly as awesome as my old 8core MacPro) All the content and previews reside on a 3.5TB eSATA RAID. Also using a Blackmagic HD Extreme card. My main issue is that Play/Pause randomly becomes unresponsive. Sometimes it takes a second or so to stop. Sometimes it doesn’t stop until it hits the end of the sequence. Very annoying when you just want to review an edit. Sometimes it doesn’t play. I’ve tried reinstalling the Blackmagic drivers, stopping unusual processes in Task Manager, swearing, cursing etc. I’m hoping there’s a solution other than reinstalling CS4, because the IT deparment will probably put me out of commision for a day. I’m reallllllyyyyyy busy right now.
Any ideas?

[Jon Barrie]

CS4 is not supported in WinXP 64-bit. The only 64-bit PC OS officially supported by Adobe is Vista 64. Whoever built your systems should have read the system requirements posted by Adobe.
– JB

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net

[Mike Procunier]

Aha! Thank-you!!!! I had my reservations about using an 8 year old OS. I’m hoping we switch to Windows7 soon. I hear its pretty solid.