Larry S. evans ii
Forum Replies Created
-
Okay, you need to clarify what you mean by “lost”.
If you are getting a “Cannot find file” type of message when opening the project, then most likely the location of the audio files has been changed. If you moved the folder that contained the sound files, Premiere will tell you it can’t find them. You have to open a dialog and link those missing files to wherever you moved them.
This presumes that you have chosen to “offline” the missing files during start up, and not tried to do something else which may result in the files being moved or deleted from the timeline.
If the sound files were on an external drive, CD, or USB drive, then you need to simply re-insert that and open the project again. It will find them (usually) without any problem. Sometimes a USB drive (or other external) can be given a different drive letter on a Windows computer. In this case, you may have to manually relink the files, since Premiere is looking for them at “E:My Soundfiles” and they are now actually at “F:My Soundfiles”. I believe Macs handle file paths to externals a little less haphazardly, so if you are on a Mac this is not the cause of the problem.
If, by some mistake, you deleted the sound files and/or their folder, your only chance is a backup or restore disk that contains them as they were after you made the last edits. There are emergency “undelete” software packages, but they are not 100% and with media files like sound or video they are very unlikely to work.
No, if you simply don’t see the audio track in your timeline it may be possible that you have minimized them or moved them off the screen. If you do a preview of your video and hear the sounds, then they are still there, you may just have hit an odd button or keyboard combination that closed the audio tracks. I’m not aware of this ever happening, but there are some many features in Premiere that I never use in my workflow that it’s possible.
Now, if you have the tracks visible in the timeline, and you have the files in your input bin, but there is no sound, and there are not cuts in the timeline, then the most likely cause is that you failed to save the project after you made the changes, or for some reason Premiere reverted to an earlier saved copy. This is highly unlikely, because obviously if the video cuts you made are still there then the application should have saved everything. Still, if that is the case, there may not be anyway of fixing it, because it’s the result of a freak error that no one ever expects.
I am hoping that this is the first case, and that you simply moved the sound file folder or removed the external drive it was on, and you simply need to relink the files. I have had this sort of thing happen and your first reaction is “What the heck is wrong with this?”
I have two very large external hard drives that I store my working media on. One day, purely by chance, they started up in the opposite order that they usually do, resulting in Windows assigning their drive letters in reverse. EVERY Premiere project I had came up with missing files.Once I realized what happened, I turned off the computer, restarted the drives in the correct order (waiting for the first to completely boot up before starting the second), and everything returned to normal.
Take a breath, look around, see if you moved something and forgot. Sometimes it’s that simple.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Just a wild guess but I think perhaps the AVI file is recorded with a compression that, when viewed frame by frame in Premiere Pro, results in only parts of the image being displayed.
AVI is a file format, but it can come compressed using many different codecs. Some of these reduce the size of the file by storing only the information that changes from frame to frame. In your case, only the parts of the letter that are being “written” change, while the background and previously written parts are the same. So the codec records a full frame and plays that back, and then plays back the pixels that change over it. This allows for an illusion of faster/smoother playback on the computer or over the internet, but it doesn’t preserve a full frame of the image for editing.
I have seen this kind of artifacting produced when something like a DVD Ripping software is used to construct and AVI, because on the DVD the images are stored as described above, with full frames at routine intervals and partial frames used between. If the RIP software is used incorrectly, or simply doesn’t get the frame sequences right, then the completed AVI comes in with visual “gaps” like you are describing.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Jim:
I couldn’t find a way to do this with Soundbooth. I know with Audition you can mark one or more tracks to record as others playback, but Soundbooth seems to have separated the recording function from the multi-track system.
You might want to look at a demo of Audition 3. I have the Master suite and still bought Audition separately to handle my sound work, because I just don’t feel Soundbooth (at least in CS3 and CS4) is up to doing much more than your basic wedding video type of work.
You might also consider that a fairly good multitrack mixer board can be had for around $100 (less depending on the number of inputs) and these give the option of doing what you are talking about -playing a track out plus recording in to a final mix.
Of course, if you are looking to keep the tracks separate for later editing mixing and you just need to hear the audio track for a baseline then Audition is going to be the only solution that I know will keep it separate.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
If you mean the sort of synthetic voice underneath the musical notes then it’s produced using chorus and echo effects. The presets vary between the two applications but something with a title like “sci-fi” or “alien” might be a good place to start. You can then tweak the settings to suit your interests.
If you are looking for the synthesizer twang in the music, processing won’t be quite as “bright” as the actual keyboard notes. Audition supports MIDI plug-ins, and the ability to playback MIDI tracks.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
The basic technique is to use the Normalize function to get the levels consistent. After that you’d do the noise reduction processing, and then you’d do any sweetening or tonal adjustments.
Uusally I’ll do my rough cut with the raw sound, then export each clip as a single “movie” and open the sound from the video for processing. Then I use that track to replace the original audio back in Premiere and render out the final.
Others may have a more streamlined workflow, but that’s allowed me to keep track of what I’m doing better. Once it’s back in Premiere- with length of the audio identical to the length of the cut-it’s a simple matter to keep them synced if I later to decide to shorten or move the cut.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
In fairness, I was able to connect to my second machine and pull the HDV video off with no issues using Premiere Pro CS4.
Since I have verified the drivers, the problem in my case is related to one of three possible differences between the two machines:
I have the flipShare software installed on the problem machine. I tend to dismiss this in and of itself since removing the software didn’t resolve the problem.
I have Quicktime Pro on the problem machine. I really can’t see how this would interfere with Premiere’s capacity to create an HDV capture session – I would think if anything it would enhance it.
There is something corrupted in my install of Premiere Pro on the problem machine. Logic tends to favor this one, even though I have seen a significant number of posts regarding this exact “symptom” with the HV30 and Vista. I reasoned that if it were happening with Vista then perhaps it was due to some kind of system driver upgrade that had been bundled with a “non-Vista” download like IE8 or Windows Media. Since both my machines are at the same rev on this, that would tend to indicate that Premiere has bee screwed up.
I have to say that hardware wise I love the Canon equipment, and I’ve shot consumer, prosumer, and SLR from them for years. Sony cameras seem to be the ones with the greatest compatibility issues in my experience – which is to say with my Adobe workflow on a Wintel box. I wouldn’t however say that means Sony makes a bad camera, I’d personally have them in a tie for first with Canon.
I had JVC and the old SD I have is a workhorse- never had a capture issue and never had a camera issue, save that it’s just consumer grade SD. So when I was looking for the HD, I looked at JVC first, and also Panasonic, but having invested heavily in Adobe neither one of the one’s I could afford were fully and directly compatible.
I wish you luck finding an FCP compatible camera, but I think the Canon equipment is fairly solid in general terms, and that there are all sorts of things that can cause problems besides the cameras. Others will doubtless differ, but outside of this issue (which I hope to resolve by re-installing Premiere Pro on the problem machine) I’ve been extremely pleased with the quality and functionality of my HV30s (we shoot with 4 of them). -R
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
I think it’s more accurate to say that Encore and Premiere are “sharing” the timeline component library (as well as others possibly).
From a programing standpoint this actually makes good sense in that you only have to write the code once, and presumably any fixes just apply to the one module. Unfortunately, that means any “breaks” break both systems, as well as any others that are dependent.
I’ve frequently run across the “headless” app in 3D operations, where one application is “embedded” in another (Poser to Vue, Vue to Lightwave, PoserPro to Lightwave). I have frequent memory errors from these arrangements, largely due to memory management issues rather than the amount of available memory.
That is, it’s not how much memory that is being used, but how the system is calling and releasing it. X amount of memory may be allocated to a given application, but if that memory doesn’t have a contiguous chunk the proper size to hold the data being written to it, then the chunk heads out into virtual RAM (i.e. it gets written out to the drive). Since Premiere and Encore also appear to be using the GPU and video memory for some of their processing of the timeline (based on some of the crashes I’ve had) you’ve got even more fractured memory to keep track of.
It’s a nice idea to have an application suite where you can run “hot” all your files back to their genesis in vector and paint apps as well as the video source, without having to take the time to create those pesky intermediate files (that later you can’t remember if you need to archive or not). I’d love to have that workflow. But it needs to be reliable and not require a HAL9000 to run it.
Hope your memory problems go away with the BIOS fix. Judging from a number of the BBS out there. CS4 apparently has some demons yet to exorcise.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
As I said, upgrading the video drivers on the one machine with the NVidia card did completely resolve the problem (at least as far as my present uses go) so it would appear to be some combination of video driver and the 4.0.1 patch and some other X-factor that is affecting a number of different configurations.
At any rate, I am functional on one unit, and am fully willing to admit that the other one may just need a card upgrade. Fortunately I have one I can test in a day or so, but if that doesn’t do it, then I have to go chasing ghosts. Luckily I try to keep both machines fairly parallel in terms of fonts, log-ins, and service patches because I move a lot of work between them. That pretty much leaves hardware specific drivers (which would be what most people are thinking anyway).
Will post here if I find any solution. Thanks for replying.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Well, I had not suspected the anti-virus app to be part of the problem, but I will look into that. I’m about to the point of deciding that perchance I have pushed this older machine as far as possible without upgrading some features-most likely the video card.
In fairness, I spent the better part of the morning pouring through the Premiere CS4 user forums at Adobe and I do not appear to be alone in this, nor does it seem that my somewhat antiquated video card would be the sole culprit. There are folks who are having the same problem whose cards will run rings around mine. Further, it seems the suggested “fixes” don’t have any logical connection to a solution or to each other. These included:
Font compatibility issues -remove fonts and replace until you find the “bad” one. . . This was suggested (repeatedly and adamantly) by someone who was lucky enough to have it work on his/her system (which may have undergone some other change unbeknownst to them). They couldm’t identitfy a specific font, but they were sure that everyone else who was complaining about it had the same problem. I tend to discount this as highly unlikely, and I have hundreds of fonts installed, as I’m sure do most designers.
Log in under a new User Account -I suspect this may be a blanket “you’re running Vista aren’t you?” response, because if one account has user privileges adequate to run Premiere then a new one would likely have no more permissions for that user. However, if this were simply cleaning up a bad configuration stored in the user profile (my suspicion) would it not be better to destroy the bad config?
The common thread I saw in 99% of the posts was that the 4.0.1 upgrade patch was the cause of the problem regardless of system, and many systems ran CS3 without error (as did both of mine) and CS4 unpatched (ditto, at least as far as Premiere and media encoder, didn’t try Encore until it was too late).
Unfortunately it appears the only way to get back to the pre-4.0.1 patch is to do an un-install/re-install which with Master Collection takes about a day.
If anyone knows of a better way to backgrade from an Adobe update I’d love to hear about it.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Well, the shortest answer is that upgrading the NVidia drivers on the one machine appears to have resolved the issue. However, on the other machine I cannot now even start Encore without it crashing, and Premiere seems also to collapse when trying to load objects into the timeline.
This behavior follows the installation of the first set of updates from Adobe, and I have noted some other people in the Adobe forums reporting a similar issue. This appears to be a bug of a collosal nature with some machines. I’m happy i have one I can use, but this is clearly not an “improvement”.
Any idea on rolling back an Adobe update? Never had to do it before so I’m not sure if it’s even possible.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions