Last ditch effort to get Premiere working

M

MDew

Member
I’ve been working for a project for about a year now, which I shot on a Canon XH-A1 and am editing using Premiere Pro 2.0. I can’t begin to list off all the problems I’ve had with the program not working properly, but now I’m at the point of being fed up with Adobe and ready to buy a Mac to get this project done. I’ve wasted more time trying to get this program to work than actual work editing.

I’ve upgraded my computer to what I thought would be adequate for the project but obviously something is not good enough, as the program locks up every time I open the project. I’m wondering if maybe there’s something I’m overlooking before I go and spend thousands of dollars on a new system. One thing I’ve been considering is maybe it’s the fact that the project is on my external firewire drive and maybe the computer can’t handle the transfer back-and-forth. Should I try upgrading the internal hard drive? I just hate to put any more money into this computer, as I’ve had so many problems with Premiere I’m just about fed up with it.

Here’s what I’m using:

Dell Dimension 5150
Windows XP Home 32 bit
3.0GHz Processor
3.5 GB DDR2 memory
80GB hard drive
ATI Radeon X600 XT 256MP Video Card
16X, DVD+/ -RW Drive
720GB external firewire Hard Drive
Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0
 
It is possible that the external drive is not fast enough to edit with , due to disk speed and transfer rate inadeqaucies.

What is your footage?

How long/big is the project?

It is recommended to edit with at least two HDs plus the OS drive.
 
My footage is 24f HDV from a Canon XH-A1, imported via firewire to the external HD - which is a 720GB FreeAgent Pro, 7200 RPM. I had one large project almost 30 min. in length but had to abandon it, so I broke the video into smaller projects about 1-2 min. each, which I exported as 720x480 SD mpegs and then imported those into one large project that is about 15 min. total in length.

I was hoping that my problems were maybe just due to the project trying to load all of the raw HD clips off the external drive. That did eliminate much of the glitchiness and freezing for a while, but then all of a sudden it started getting slower and slower until now it just freezes soon after opening the project.
 
Have you called Adobe? They have possibly the best tech support for their products compared to the rest (excepting Panasonic, of course). You may only need a patch.
 
Hi,

Sorry to hear about the troubles.

I think that you have a real pile of of small things that contribute to some big things to deal with.

The 24 Frame mode doesn't necessarily work perfectly with Premiere 2.0, and it can be the cause of some of your problems. There are several postings at the Adobe Forum on this, but the short of it you'd be better off removing the pull down by any of a number of techniques to an editable 24P HDV stream using something like TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0. It will work better, edit quicker and smoother.

I have a problem with the FreeAgent Pro drives, too, at least their eSATA drives. The USB drives have worked fine, so I wouldn't put too much weight on that, but do check the through put to make sure that the data is is getting enough bandwidth.

As for the rest of the computer, make sure that you run it by turning off all the terminate and stay resident (TSR) programs - virus checkers are the biggest culprits - they take up residence and keep a big piece of memory and hold it hostage until the machine chokes. Enditall is a nice XP utility to kill most of the odds and ends that run in the background programs. It was a freebie for a while, now it costs something. Pity.
 
I am concerned when you say you exported mpegs and imported them back into a new project.

MPEG is bad juju material for editing.

Note : I still maintain a CS2 NLE suite and it runs beautifully. I do not do anything HD in it. I doubt that CS2 is HDV capable at all even with the finest 'puter.
 
I know it's a bad idea but I was desperate as it was about the only thing left that worked. For some reason I can't get uncompressed AVIs or WMVs to work in that program, they just come out as black screens or pixelly-looking garbage when I export with them. I swear its about time just to switch to Windows Movie Maker! :badputer:
 
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