[Rikk Wolf]

Thanks for the speedy reply on this old thread, Ross.

Ah, I thought that’s what it was. I find it generally referred to as the “processing icon”. Thank you for clarifying.

I actually do have over 25 frames of perfect clean plate background contained within the shot. This was a very controlled piece intended for rig removal on a puppet. Camera locked down, etc.

Do you think if I were to import a .tif of the clean background and specify it as the clean plate it might help? I feel maybe I’m missing something when actually tracking the background (and I am of course making sure to layer it BELOW the foreground subject).

[Rikk Wolf]

Would like to know if you found a solution? Having the same issues.

I have meticulously followed numerous video tutorials and my foreground object REFUSES to vanish in rendering.

Obviously, I’m missing something.

Can anyone elaborate on what this “tracking icon” looks like exactly? I don’t see anything I would call a “tracking icon” under Layer Controls.

Thanks!

[Rikk Wolf]

I’m envious! I actually would prefer to use Premiere because I’m more familiar with it, although I do like how easy it is to export a lossless file from FCP. Premiere CS5 makes you work a little too hard for that, in my opinion on Mac.

Disastrous sounds about right. The first I saw of FCPX, it was the target of a Conan O’Brien sketch.

I’m not sure I’ll ever upgrade, as FCP7 runs like a champ for me and I get done what I need to get done just fine with it. What does FCPX have over FCP7?

[Rikk Wolf]

I’m not the type to demean others for using what runs properly for them and what they’re comfy with. If you like PPro and it runs just fine for you – great, use it to make pure awesomeness. I honestly like it’s interface better than I do FCP’s. I wish I could use it for more important projects.

I’m simply being factual – I’ve used every version since 2.0 on numerous brand new machines with the required system stats and every project I’ve been a part of that used Premiere as its base suffered from some inexplicable, project -threatening bug or issue that a piece of “pro” software just shouldn’t be having, and I’ve met more people than not that stay away from it for similar reasons. Every project I’ve been on that used FCP, it was mostly smooth sailing. Just my personal experience.

On my Mac, FCP7 never gives me trouble, whereas Premiere CS5 often develops dooming issues later on in projects like the inability to save, crashes while loading media, crashes for no apparent reason, won’t be able to playback a timeline, generates corrupted render files, is easily overloaded, loses track of plugins, etc. etc. etc.

If FCP7 runs poorly compared to Premiere on your system, but all means use it.

I think the lesson here is everyone’s machine is going to handle things differently.

[Rikk Wolf]

Right now, I’m on a Mac Pro with a 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor, 15 GB of memory, an ATI Radeon HD 2600 video card and I’m running on OSX 10.5.8.

I’m envious (because I do like the interface). I’ve used every version of Premiere since 2.0 over five different computers on both PC & Mac, and it’s never behaved as a finished product, more as a buggy beta test that makes you really wonder what Adobe’s thinking. I figured ditching my old, ill-equipped PC and moving to Mac with more system resources than it could ever need would be the answer, but it runs almost just as poorly on Mac.

It usually runs decently enough at first, but it takes so little to bog it down. I can have 10 times the media loaded into Final Cut Pro and it doesn’t bat an eye, running near-flawlessly on my machine. Beyond that, however, all the media cache files Premiere generates make it a system hog in my opinion, so even if it wasn’t incredibly unstable, I’d probably still pass on it (not that other editors don’t produce memory soaking files, but Premiere seems the worst about it).

Judging from the thousands of webpages you can Google about Premiere having product-breaking issues, I’m far from the only one that considers Premiere non-pro. I do like it when it functions properly, but I just can’t trust my paycheck to such flaky software.

But if you can do what you do on it and it runs fine, more power to you. 🙂

[Rikk Wolf]

I can’t speak for what other professionals do or do not use, but I will say this – I’ve used Premiere since the 90’s and I stay FAR away from it if it’s anything I really care about.

It’s a shame too, because it does honestly have a very user-friendly interface, but it’s been a buggy, unstable mess for several years now, even on a Mac with more system resources than it could ever need. It’s made me wonder if Adobe has any kind of quality control. To say it has a few, “quirks”, is just sorely understating it.

No editor’s perfect, but I think of it this way – do you want to work on your project, or work on your software? Meaning, if Premiere was a car, would you like to spend your time with it driving, or spend your time with it under hood wondering why it’s once again inexplicably not working properly?

I think that’s Adobe’s job and they repeatedly fail, in my opinion, to release something that can be honestly marketed as “pro”.

[Rikk Wolf]

I hope you decide to stick with FCP, at least for projects you care about. Premiere is, in my opinion, a project-destroyer it’s so prone to flakiness like this. I’ve never worked on a project on any platform or machine done in premiere that wasn’t nearly destroyed because some nonsense program error from Premiere.

[Rikk Wolf]

Hey Tom.

Of course, all video production software has shortcomings, and I’ve used most of them out there at one time or another. However, I got my start using Premiere 2.0 back in ’93, starting on a sorely ill-equipped PC, all the way to a brand new Mac Pro with more than enough system resources. I guess shame on me for still using for so long it if I don’t really like it, ha ha.

It’s run miserably more often than it’s functioned as it should, across all versions and platforms I’ve used it on (especially when it comes time for that dreaded final render/encode). Unexplainable crashes, encode failures, just outright wonkiness, I could write a book based on how many times it’s almost ruined a project for me, and all the media cache files it generates earns it the title of “system hog” in my opinion. Don’t get me started on how flaky Adobe Media Encoder’s made the whole process, either.

Just my opinion – Premiere’s a terrific app for people wanting to edit medium or low level stuff and I love the super-easy and user-friendly interface and I do love when it does work properly, but I would never trust something lengthy and complicated I care about to it again – but that’s just me. To each their own. If it doesn’t burn ya, more power to you. I just can’t afford to risk my paycheck on something so unreliable any longer.

That said, Final Cut’s let me down too, just nowhere near as hard, often or inexplicably as Premiere has.

[Rikk Wolf]

Hey Matthew. I found a possible workaround for you. I got around the problem this way.

Since all my other sequences in the same project were playing fine, I started to systematically delete clips in the offending sequence. Sure enough, two of them (god effing knows why) were keeping Premiere from allowing the timeline to play. Clips from the same video file are all the sequence was made up of, too.

Just deleting them, and putting them back in manually (don’t cut and paste them back in) fixed the issue.

My greatest piece of advice would be to stick with Final Cut. This kind of unexplained, random nonsense is all too commonplace in the world of Premiere. I wish Adobe would stop trying to market it as a professional editor. It’s simply not. It’s a same too, because it’s so easy to use, but it’s not worth your work being destroyed by an easily overloaded and flaky application.

[Rikk Wolf]

I am currently facing this problem and like with many Premiere issues, there definitely is “no rhyme or reason” to it, and it makes me glad I’ve moved to mostly using Final Cut (though, it too has its issues – they’re just less threatening to your work).

I honestly wonder what Adobe is smoking over there. Every release of Premiere just seems more broken to me. They should toss their quality control department, if they even have one, out on the street.

I’m currently trying Ryan’s suggestions, but no luck yet.

I tried exporting an XML file of the misbehaving sequence to see if Final Cut would let me get back to work, but Final Cut sticks its nose up at it and won’t import.

Ugh. Premiere.