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_Pijus_Chanda_
Participant
October 18, 2008
Question

Premiere Elements 7 crashes and freezes ->unusable

  • October 18, 2008
  • 92 replies
  • 34401 views
Hello all

For a long time, I was looking for a programm to cut my AVCHD clips taken with a Canon HF100 camera. In the past I used for DV videos Adobe Production Studio (Premiere CS2, Encore CS2). I have tried AVCHD with AVCHDUpshift to convert the AVCHD clips to MPEG clips and cut it with Premiere CS2. The final video I have tried to burn with NERO 8. But this is very cumbersome.
I recently saw, that Adobe has released the Premiere Elements 7 with AVCHD support. Because of the many negative posts of Pinnacle Studio 12, I expected better stability and performance from Adobe Premiere Elements 7. I gave it a try.

Installation was OK.

I tried to add about 50 clips to the AVCHD project -> takes a long time but OK.

Playback quality of the clips is very bad. Video quality is bad (blurry), audio quality even worse (2 seconds you can hear sound, 2 seconds no sound, 2 seconds sound, 2 seconds no sound ....). With PowerDVD playback of the clips is fine (video and audio).

I have put 6 clips on the time line (total of 1 minute with dissolve transitions). After pressing the Enter key, it takes a long time to render. Why? No smartrendering seems possible.

I tried to add a disc menu -> crash. Tried again OK, tried to remove disc menu -> not possible, tried to drag another template to the disc menu-> crash..

Tried two times to select the blu-ray output medium -> crash. Tried it again -> OK.
Tried to export this one minute to blu-ray -> freeze after some minutes saying, not enough memory (in the taskmanager about 2.2GB of the 4 GB are used, premiere.exe used about 1GB)
Tried with different export option MPEG-2, H.264 ->freeze after some minutes, always saying to low in memory.

Tried to export H.264 to file -> OK. But then I have only the movie, and no disc menu. I don't want another program to create the menu and another program to burn it...
Export to Blu-Ray seems impossible.

I have tried to work for 4 hours. I had at least 10 crashes and freezes, then I gave up and deinstalled it.

The support recommends for example to disable Anti-Virus, running Vista in very basic mode (no glass etc.). This is not what I want and this is not the way users have to do with their computer. Not a single bad program has to define the functionality of a good running PC to the minimum.

The bottom line:
This is the worst program I have ever got from Adobe. I would like to know, if somebody had success to burn a blu-Ray disc.

My HW: New HP DC7800 Quad 2.5GHz, 4G Ram, 1x250G Raid1 C:, 1x750G Drive 😧 Data, OS Vista Business all latest Driver, Blu-Ray Recorder LG GGW-H20L
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    92 replies

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    S
    Steve Grisetti
    Legend
    February 17, 2009
    Good points all around, Paul.

    Meantime, for those who just want to vent, we've created the Top Issues forum at the top of this forum. Vent away! I'll only censor the most offensive language.

    But just a reminder that this forum isn't staffed by Adobe. It's run by volunteers, like me, who spend upwards of 20-30 hours a week here, doing the best we can to help people get up and running with this Premiere Elements, a program we believe in and want to share that experience with others.

    Posting messages that just call the software a piece of crap doesn't benefit anyone -- and Adobe rarely checks into the forum, so your message doesn't get to them. It's just a slap in the face of the people who just want to help you.

    So, please, aim your venting Adobe-ward by clicking the Contact button at the top of this page.

    On this forum, ask and we'll do what we can to help. Deal?
    A
    Anonymous
    February 17, 2009
    I'd like to ask that the moderators and regulars here please be a bit more tolerant of frustrated users (like I have been) coming here and venting. Because (in my opinion) it is not fully documented how much resources are required to edit more demanding formats like AVCHD, PE can be a highly frustrating program. Many users (like me) do not realize right away that the "answer people" are just regular users like us. Adobe does not participate here. Unfortunately. I can only hope they read the forum.

    Back to the subject at hand....

    In a 32 bit OS, all PE can get from the OS is 2GB of virtual memory.... regardless of how much RAM you have. This increases to 3GB with the /3GB switch discussed above. In my experience, 2GB is nowhere near enough for AVCHD or h.264 editing if your project has many clips or is longer than maybe 20 minutes. And while the /3GB switch improves the situation (quite a bit), it can also introduce stability issues because it reduces the amount of addressable memory for the system side of things.

    I have found that things get a LOT better on a 64 bit OS, although I think PE (as a 32 bit app) still can only address 4GB. While experimenting with Windows 7, I found that PE ran just fine until my total memory usage (as reported by task manager) approached 4GB. PE got flakey at about the same time as the memory in use reached 4GB. And 4GB is plenty for most usage...... although a couple hours of h.264 clips can still make it run out of memory.

    So until Adobe either releases a 64 bit version or improves the way PE uses resources...... or publishes more detailed information re: editing AVCHD, there will probably be a steady stream of frustrated users finding their way here.

    Paul
    D
    Delane_Wycoff
    Participating Frequently
    February 17, 2009
    Jim,

    You are not the only person to be frustrated with PE7 on a Vista system with 4.0 GB memory and respectable processing power. In my opinion Adobe rushed this one out the door without cleaning up how PE7 manages itself when needing large amounts of memory. There are potential ways for you to address this. Please be sure to click "Show All Messages" (or click on "previous" and study the other posts in this forum thread. I found post #30 very helpful. (See #30-#43 for other comments on this "tweak" which increases the amount of memory that a Vista process is allowed to use from the default of 2 GB to a specified larger value.)

    You may also want to disable any anti-virus software that automatically scans newly created files; disable/stop PowerDVD or similar software that may conflict with your access to your DVD or Blu-Ray burner; and eliminate background jobs and/or services that may be competing for available memory.

    I assume you are running 32-bit Vista Ultimate. You find it helpful to shut off some of the more demanding features (like aero interface and auto indexing.) I agree that it shouldn't be this difficult to make PE7 run on Vista, but it can be done (and it PE7 can do some amazing things when you get it working well). Good luck! (A previously frustrated / now happy user of PE7.)
    S
    Steve Grisetti
    Legend
    February 17, 2009
    Both of your posts are there, Jim. You just need to click Show All Messages to see them.

    Meantime, I wish you the best finding solutions. Your warm, positive attitude certainly inspires people to run to your aid.
    J
    jeemster
    Participating Frequently
    February 17, 2009
    Well, that was fun.
    So I posted a reply to the message and then got prompted to login.
    Which I did; and got a notice to migrate my account as the forums were changing; which I did; successfully I was told.

    But my message never got posted. Seems like the web site runs like the software.

    Any how, I have also contacted Adobe Support and exchanged many emails in which I was directed to existing documents and performed several "special" un-installs and re-installs all to no avail.

    Any suggestions for making the software I paid money for work would be appreciated.

    Thanks
    -jim
    the_wine_snob
    the_wine_snob
    Inspiring
    August 10, 2009

    Jim,

    The logged-out aspect was just so you'd feel like one of the "regulars." It happens to me, most often at Noon AZT and about 6:30PM, but can be random as heck. It has not been fun, but we all feel your pain. It has been a fact of life, since the forum changeover.

    Now, for your problem. Please look down to post #24 in this THREAD. Read through the links that I furnished, as the answers to the questions posed will help us to help you.

    With the necessary info, someone will be able to get your system and PrE running smoothly.

    Good luck,

    Hunt

    S
    Steve Grisetti
    Legend
    February 17, 2009
    Hmm. They must have sent you the buggy one, Jim. It works bug-free on my computers!
    J
    jeemster
    Participating Frequently
    February 17, 2009
    Adobe Premier Elements 7 regularly crashes or hangs indefinitely and needs to be killed.

    No one place and not repeatable. Occasionally I get warned it was low on resources and I should save my work.

    Running Vista Ultimate on a RAID1 250GB Array with 4GB RAM and a vista performance of 4.8.

    I can use Nero, Sony, Creator and use MANY other programs; none of them crash or hang so don't tell me it is the drivers.
    It is the program.

    -jim
    the_wine_snob
    the_wine_snob
    Inspiring
    February 9, 2009
    Mark,

    Glad that you were able to get your setup working on the Mac.

    Still, with over a hundred commercial DVD productions on my PC with Premiere, I find your solution to be specific to your particular situation.

    When one experiences problems with most Adobe programs, it is centric to their system, and then OE as the next most often experienced situation.

    This is not meant as an indictment of Mac. I've had clients who have only had them for the last 20 years. In that time, I've never been faced with a problem, that my PC's could not handle - video, or still.

    Do not know what problems you were faced with, as I have not seen any, that I recall.

    Still, whatever works for you, is good.

    Hunt
    _
    _mark_town_
    Participant
    February 8, 2009
    I downloaded Premiere 7.0 in hopes that I could end my long search for a video capture (from Sony dv camcorder)and editing software and hardware. 7 proved to be like the other Windows based programs. I have the required hardware using Windows XP. The capture would start and then stop and I would get the driver error I see sprinkled throughout these forums. I tried the winDV add on I saw mentioned.

    SOLUTION: I walked the old Sony camcorder upstairs, plugged it into my son's single core processor Mac mini and it imports video fine and waits for me to edit it.

    If you really want to work with video, give up on all these Windows based machines and software. The software is on every Mac and is ready to function perfectly. Bye.
    K
    kentRda
    Participating Frequently
    April 10, 2009

    Going out and buying a new Mac is neither an easy or cheap fix.  Bye.

    A
    Anonymous
    February 8, 2009
    Update....

    I just found a reference to an additional switch to be used with the /3GB switch:

    /3GB /Userva=2900

    Using this addition to the "/3GB" entry in boot.ini, I have been successful in getting Windows XP Pro SP3 to boot. And I can report that PE immediately uses more memory just opening a project than it did before the switch was added. However, it also seems to be more stable and responsive. Opening and working with a 20 minute AVCHD project consisting of about 8 clips plus DVD menus brought the memory in use as reported by task manager to about 1.8GB. Previously (before the /3GB switch was added) it would have crashed long before it got to 1.8GB.

    So I guess there are two things to be learned here.... PE really REALLY wants to be a 64 bit application running on a 64 bit OS because it is such a resource hog. I strongly suspect that it was a BIG mistake to market it as AVCHD capable until there is a 64 bit version. But until there is, the /3BG switch helps.

    Paul
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