I made sure that when I finished my "wedding video" project in late June, I left the files in a perfectly archived state so that I could come back to it at anytime. Unfortunately, Adobe Premiere had yet another unfortunate surprise in mind for me.
I loaded the .prproj file tonight to give my friend Scott a short tutorial on Adobe Premiere. I was showing him the ins and outs of cross fades and video transitions when I noticed that one of the primary video source files was missing! Ack, what happened? I had not changed this project (or any of its dependencies) since archiving it months ago. What's the problem?
Ironically (long story) I received the lovely "red screen of death" faced me which said "media missing!." I double checked to make sure the video file was in the same place in my file system. I then tried linking, then unlinking the media through Premiere's pop-up menu. Nothing worked. Finally, I found a link on Adobe Premiere's "Support Knowledge" base which said to,
Rename the .AVI file to use the .MPG extension (for example, rename movie.avi to movie.mpg), and then import it into Adobe Premiere or Adobe Premiere Pro.
I did this and sure enough, the problem was resolved. Now what I don't understand is what caused this error? Why now? I hadn't done a thing between the last time I had used this .prprof file. Ah, yet another sad revelation of how bad Adobe Premiere really is.
Showing posts with label Adobe Premiere. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adobe Premiere. Show all posts
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Adobe Premiere Success
After weeks (perhaps months?) of using different encoders in Adobe Premiere, I finally found the most optimal way of producing a fluid, high quality video. As soon as I have a chance, I will post some screens of how to go about doing this. The key is to forgo using the "Export" file menu in favor of the "Adobe Encoder" file menu.
I will say that despite the obvious advantages of using a professional-level movie editing program like Adobe Premiere over, say, freeware like Microsoft Movie Maker, the latter still has its place (at least on Windows boxes). Microsoft Movie Maker, for whatever reason, seems like it supports more formats than Adobe Premiere. I saw this when I was working off of DVD .VOB files converted into AVIs, I saw this when working with Canon S200 .avi movies, etc. All seemed to work flawlessly in Microsoft Movie Maker, but in Adobe Premiere, it took some tinkering.
I will say that despite the obvious advantages of using a professional-level movie editing program like Adobe Premiere over, say, freeware like Microsoft Movie Maker, the latter still has its place (at least on Windows boxes). Microsoft Movie Maker, for whatever reason, seems like it supports more formats than Adobe Premiere. I saw this when I was working off of DVD .VOB files converted into AVIs, I saw this when working with Canon S200 .avi movies, etc. All seemed to work flawlessly in Microsoft Movie Maker, but in Adobe Premiere, it took some tinkering.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Movie Editing Frustrations
I have never been so frustrated with my computer. The past two or three weeks has been a constant battle to try and edit a video for a friend. I've used Adobe Premiere 6.0, Premiere Pro 1.0, and Pinnacle Studio Pro all in vain. It's one of those things where you think you'll fix the issue in another 20 minutes, then another hour, then by the end of the day, then by the end of the week, then you want to kill your computer. I'm sure you all empathize greatly.
Background: friend sends me a DVD formatted for DVD players (e.g. .VOB files) rather than a data DVD (this would be analagous to the difference between a music CD-R that plays in any cd player and a data CD-r that only plays on a computer, he sent me the former). So, this means that I need to rip the DVD just to get at the data I want (the video). Of course, this video was originally in VHS format so when my friend digitized it he had the option of making a data DVD (he just chose not to, so he chose wrong). I used dvddecrypt to rip the DVD (it sounds all very illegal, but remember these are fricking home videos). DVDDecrypter ripped it to MPEG-2 and seemed to do a fine job, e.g. the MPEG-2 videos look comparable to the original DVD video (of course, since the original was VHS, that's not saying much) and the video plays back fine in Windows Media Player and Winamp.
Problem: I load these converted MPEG-2 videos into my video editing program. I notice immediately that the monitor window in Premiere plays the video fine but as soon as I add the video to the timeline view, the sequence window playback is horrible -- choppy, audio is not aligned to video, etc. I check on google about this and it seems that this is at least halfway normal. The sequence window shows a rendering of the video while the monitor window shows the original. OK, so I try a simple splice and edit on like a 30 second clip. I export it first into the default AVI format in Premiere. I load the AVI up into Windows Media Player and there are three problems: (1) video and audio are not synced -- the lag is inconsistent so it is not just a matter of moving the audio timeline to sync with the video; (2) video skips and replays portions over again (e.g. think cat sequence in original Matrix; (3) video is choppy.
At this point I think, OK, weird -- perhaps an issue with the export encoder. I setup like over 50 experiments this weekend to get to the bottom of this but to no avail. I try things like converting the MPEG-2 files into a different format before loading them into premiere (no dice), I try using 11 different encoders to export short 30 second edited sequence (no dice), I try using Adobe Media Encoders (separate file menu from normal export menu) (no dice), I try an old version of Adobe Premiere (6.0) (no dice), I try Pinnacle Studio Pro (no dice), I try Windows Movie Maker -- Aha! This seems to work. The Microsoft Paint of movie editing programs seems to work. Why is this? Argh. Frustration. However, Windows Movie Maker isn't much help because (1) it forces you to render things in .wmv format (i wonder why?) and (2) it is the Microsoft Paint of movie editing programs (e.g. no functionality!).
And only 2 weeks until deadline. Why me?
Background: friend sends me a DVD formatted for DVD players (e.g. .VOB files) rather than a data DVD (this would be analagous to the difference between a music CD-R that plays in any cd player and a data CD-r that only plays on a computer, he sent me the former). So, this means that I need to rip the DVD just to get at the data I want (the video). Of course, this video was originally in VHS format so when my friend digitized it he had the option of making a data DVD (he just chose not to, so he chose wrong). I used dvddecrypt to rip the DVD (it sounds all very illegal, but remember these are fricking home videos). DVDDecrypter ripped it to MPEG-2 and seemed to do a fine job, e.g. the MPEG-2 videos look comparable to the original DVD video (of course, since the original was VHS, that's not saying much) and the video plays back fine in Windows Media Player and Winamp.
Problem: I load these converted MPEG-2 videos into my video editing program. I notice immediately that the monitor window in Premiere plays the video fine but as soon as I add the video to the timeline view, the sequence window playback is horrible -- choppy, audio is not aligned to video, etc. I check on google about this and it seems that this is at least halfway normal. The sequence window shows a rendering of the video while the monitor window shows the original. OK, so I try a simple splice and edit on like a 30 second clip. I export it first into the default AVI format in Premiere. I load the AVI up into Windows Media Player and there are three problems: (1) video and audio are not synced -- the lag is inconsistent so it is not just a matter of moving the audio timeline to sync with the video; (2) video skips and replays portions over again (e.g. think cat sequence in original Matrix; (3) video is choppy.
At this point I think, OK, weird -- perhaps an issue with the export encoder. I setup like over 50 experiments this weekend to get to the bottom of this but to no avail. I try things like converting the MPEG-2 files into a different format before loading them into premiere (no dice), I try using 11 different encoders to export short 30 second edited sequence (no dice), I try using Adobe Media Encoders (separate file menu from normal export menu) (no dice), I try an old version of Adobe Premiere (6.0) (no dice), I try Pinnacle Studio Pro (no dice), I try Windows Movie Maker -- Aha! This seems to work. The Microsoft Paint of movie editing programs seems to work. Why is this? Argh. Frustration. However, Windows Movie Maker isn't much help because (1) it forces you to render things in .wmv format (i wonder why?) and (2) it is the Microsoft Paint of movie editing programs (e.g. no functionality!).
And only 2 weeks until deadline. Why me?
Sunday, May 08, 2005
It's 7:37PM and...
I am still in my pajamas and I have only Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0 to blame. I could not get that POS software to render my movie clips correctly. I am now downloading Pinnacle Studio Plus v9 in hopes that it will save me further misery.
signed,
extremely frustrated
signed,
extremely frustrated
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