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T
thesteng
Participant
December 30, 2011
Question

Conforming and Indexing Errors, Media Pending, Audio won't play in timeline

  • December 30, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 34525 views

I'm working on a desktop PC which is running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and Adobe Premiere Pro (version CS5.5). It's currently utilizing a second gen. 3.4Ghz i7 2600 processor, 16GB of 1600Mhz RAM, 64GB solid-state drive and a ASUS P8Z68-V Intel Z68 Motherboard with onboard audio (Realtek ALC892 chipset) and onboard video. My problem is this:

The conforming and indexing of all of my imported media never seems to finish regardless of how many times I reopen the project file and wait for it. On the lower right-hand portion of the screen, next to the conforming/indexing progress bar, is a little red "X". When clicked, it pops up with a list of errors that read: "An unexpected error occurred while performing a conform action on the following file...". As a result, my audio channels have no waveform and during playback there are no audible tones or levels. On some video clips there's just text that reads "Media Pending". This only appears to happen with project files that I saved on external hard drives, and I suspect it has something to do with the Media Cache Files folder and how Premiere Pro locates these conform/index files. I've also encountered this problem in CS3 and CS4.

I have a few questions:

1) How do I avoid error messages in regards to indexing and conforming

2) How do you know when indexing/conforming has completed itself? (there doesn't seem to be a progress log or a list of commands/executions)

3) Indexing and conforming appears to be an automatic process, but is there a way to do it manually?

4) What's the best way to setup your media cache files when you click EDIT > PREFERENCES > MEDIA?

5) If I have approximately 1 hour of footage, what's an average wait time for conforming/indexing? What about 5 hours of footage? 10?

6) Adobe recommends not editing until the conforming and indexing has completed itself-- how important is this?

7) Sometimes it appears as though the conforming and indexing has finished, but then I still have problems with playback. Do I have to reopen the project for it to continue with the conforming/indexing progress? I've already determined that the video file I'm working with is intact and free of any corruption.

I'm fine with having to wait for a project to conform and index, but it never seems to complete itself! Any help regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated.

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1 reply

Harm_Millaard
Harm_Millaard
Inspiring
December 31, 2011

The first problem when using externals is that you have to explicitly define a fixed drive letter to that external in Disk Manager. That way projects can always find the media. Media pending is often caused by slow disks but is usually of short duration, a couple of seconds, unless you use USB externals, then the time may be much longer.

Indexing, conforming and peak file creation is an automatic process and must be finished before you start editing. You will see the progress in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

Indexing is required to speed up GOP editing, conforming is required to edit the audio and peak files are required to display waveforms. If that process is stopped before it is finished, you can run into video and audio problems. As to where to setup your media cache and media cache database, have a look at the Generic Guideline for Disk Setup in the FAQ section under the Overview tab in the Hardware forum.

To solve your problems, I suggest you completely clean your media database, change the location to a different internal disk than your C drive, load your project and let the indexing, conforming and peak file creation finish. The time required for that process depends on how fast the system is, the codec of the source material and the length of the material. Therefore it is nearly impossible to say how long it takes, but for comparison, a 6.5 hour AVCHD with 5.1 audio loads and indexes in a matter of minutes on my system.

    T
    Travis Crank
    Participant
    January 15, 2012

    Non-effective. The first thing any of these gentleman are told to do with conforming issues is to clear the Media Cache, etc.

    And that often creates more problems than it solves when you have a pending project(s) that you re-open & allow to re-conform. This whole process is so buggy & unpredictable & I'm a hair's breath from completely giving up on Premiere, the development of the conforming process is so poor it had no business even being released in this state. And now they're concentrating almost exclusively on CS6 development, using all the complaints, screen clips & feedback we the users have provided, only not to introduce a solution for CS5.5. Instead, we have to wait for the possibility it may be resolved in a subsequent version.

    And exactly what might compel a person to buying the new release when you can't solve something so problematic in the version we're already using??!

    Adobe?????

    I've written here only to assert that this man is NOT full of it, he's not doing anything wrong & the problem is entirely PREMIERE. Not his own ways & means or how he's using the program.

    Those who are not encountering these problems must be doing drudge-work with the same kinds of material & in short productions to not be running into audio conforming issues. Because I encounter them with EVERY SINGLE PROJECT.

    Sick, sick SICK of it.

      P
      Peter J Burn
      Participating Frequently
      January 22, 2012

      Okay, so the plugin itself is working, good.  Now the question is which importer is trying to handle your media.  Here's a surefire way to know:

      1) right-click on one of your files in the project panel & select 'Properties'.

      2) hit Ctrl-F12, this will bring up the debug console window.  If you go to the top right corner & click on the wing menu, pick the option for 'Debug Database view'.  This will bring up a list of various debug flags - look for the one called 'BE.Media.GetProperties.GetImporterTestingInfo' (should be 8 down from the top of the list), and set it to 'true'.  Now close the properties panels & bring it back up, there should be additional information now, and you should have an entry called "ImporterModule path = ..."

      If that ImporterModule path is referencing ImporterMpeg.prm & your footage is 420, then we know for sure that the wrong importer is trying to handle your media.

      Now, how to fix it:  I don't know what made that importer fail in the first place, but what's probably preventing the correct plugin from reloading the files is a accelerator file in the media cache folder, which is why I was suggesting wiping it.  The softer thing you could do is delete *.ims files within your media cache folder (those are the accelerator files that say whether a certain importer will pass or fail on a given file type, so this is less destructive than blasting the world in here).

      Your default location btw for the media cache is here (unless you changed it to point to somewhere else in your prefs):

      C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common\Media Cache Files\

      If you wipe the .ims files (btw please have PPro closed, then relaunch... I'd like to think that's obvious, but it never hurts to be specific...) and the properties window still insists that ImporterMPEG is handling your XDCAM files, then either a) the file isn't somehow a standard 420 XDCAM file, or b) the file is damaged in some way, or c) ... I don't know, there's something else in play here & my crystal ball is too cloudy to make out what. 


      The machine with the problem is working in Mercury acceleration instead of going through the AJA Kona LHe.

      I think I have figured out what lead s to the indexing renders by going back in time to a version of the Project I was personally working on last year.  Indexing problem not there.  Managed to replicate it by "rendering entire work area" then away it went with the damn indexing rendered process.

      In this mode tested on this PC ONLY "render effects in work area" does just that but "render entire work area" initializes the indexing rendered anomoly that makes editing impossible.

      I deleted every preview and Media Cache and database folder, and did everything else suggested.  It is okay now so thanks for the suggestions about purging everything.

      Regarding the benchmark speeds vis-a-vis performance and such, in my roles of Project Manager and Producer I oversee work done at three locations with AVID Media Composer Adrenaline, Adobe CS5.5/5.0/CS4,  Boris Red 5/4 and Sony Vegas/Sound Forge  9/10/11 64 & 32 on the Quad XEON with the 3800 card, 3 HP xw 8400/8600s c/w nVidia 4800s, a P6NT c/w I7 9?0/GTX 580 and a couple of machines with I5s 32 bit and GTX 4?? or maybe 2?? video cards.  The only performance difference I see is some of the machines render to Windows Media 9 or FLV faster.  When rearranging and trimming clips on the timeline processor speed is not really relevant.

      File Path: H:\ASE environmental\disc 5\Clip\C5069.MXF

      Type: XDCAM-HD Movie

      File Size: 41.7 MB

      Image Size: 1440 x 1080

      Frame Rate: 29.97

      Total Duration: 00;00;09;00

      Average Data Rate: 4.6 MB / second

      Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.3333

      Compression Type: MPEG

      XDCAM HD non-temporal metadata:

      Title:

          MAR201002134

      *********** Begin Importer Testing Info ***********

      ImporterModule path = C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5\Plug-ins\Common\ImporterXDCAMHD.prm

      DisplayName = ImporterXDCAMHD

      Module Priority = 10

      FileType =  1297630752 ['MXF ']

      Total Stream Groups = 5

      StreamGroup Indecies: [A=-1 | V=0] [A=0 | V=-1] [A=1 | V=-1] [A=2 | V=-1] [A=3 | V=-1]

      Video Stream Group Iteration :

                Reported codec = 1297106247 ['MPEG'] - Description =

      Additional Media Files Reported :

      \\?\H:\ASE environmental\disc 5\Clip\C5069.MXF

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