Dropping Majority of Frames Upon Import - Premiere Elements 18

Report · Oct 20, 2017

Greetings and thank you in advance to anyone who might be able to offer assistance.

I am having an issue when working with an AVI file imported in to Premiere Elements 18. The clip is a short ~1.5 min capture of my computer screen's output captured with VirtualDub. During the video, the resolution of the screen being captured changes from 1600 x 900 to 640 x 480 and then back again. The captured video plays as expected (including all the frames Premiere drops) in both Windows Media Player and VLC Media Player, but Premiere will only render the frames recorded at 1600 x 900 (the first 1.5 seconds of the clip and the last 1.5 seconds of the clip). All the frames recorded when the desktop switches to 640 x 480 are dropped by Premiere and Premiere alone, but the audio is still there during the missing visuals.

I did 2 tests with captured AVI files, one recorded at my native desktop resolution of 1600 x 900, and a second recorded at 640 x 480. Both clips report 'DROPPED FRAMES' when I click 'Show Properties' within Premiere, and both have the exact same issue of not displaying any video when the desktop switches to 640 x 480 during the capture. Again, in playback outside of Premiere, the clip recorded at 640 x 480 takes up the full screen, with all the dropped frames perfectly visible, and in the clip recorded at 1600 x 900 all the dropped frames are there in a 640 x 480 box in the upper left of the screen.

After reading up on other potential solutions to dropped frames, I have told Premiere to both use smart fix and not, no difference. I have enabled/disabled the Auto Analyzer, no difference. Enabled/disabled Maximim Bit Depth, no difference. I have tried starting with the project settings at both 1600 x 900 and 640 x 480, no difference. Perhaps there is a codec or plugin or something that might help solve this issue?

I am really not sure what else to try so I will appeal to the wisdom of the crowd. Thanks.

Report · Oct 20, 2017

What codec does this avi use?

Report · Oct 20, 2017

I'm with Ann.

Please download the free program MediaInfo and load your video into it. In MediaInfo, go to the view menu and select Text, then copy the report and paste it to this forum.

These are clearly not standard camcorder files, so they can be using any of thousands of codecs, frame rates, resolutions and variations. We'll need to know what we're dealing with in order to recommend possible solutions.

BTW, by Premiere Elements 18, I assume that you mean Premiere Elements 2018.

Report · Oct 21, 2017

Thanks for your assistance. Here is the analysis from MediaInfo:

General

Complete name : E:\Videos\Captures\Capture-1.avi

Format : AVI

Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave

Format profile : OpenDML

File size : 2.16 GiB

Duration : 1 min 3 s

Overall bit rate : 291 Mb/s

Video

ID : 0

Format : RGBA

Codec ID : 0x00000000

Codec ID/Info : Basic Windows bitmap format. 1, 4 and 8 bpp versions are palettised. 16, 24 and 32bpp contain raw RGB samples

Duration : 1 min 3 s

Bit rate : 290 Mb/s

Width : 640 pixels

Height : 480 pixels

Display aspect ratio : 4:3

Frame rate : 30.000 FPS

Bit depth : 8 bits

Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 31.415

Stream size : 2.15 GiB (100%)

Audio

ID : 1

Format : PCM

Format settings : Little / Signed

Format settings, Endianness : Little

Format settings, Sign : Signed

Codec ID : 1

Duration : 1 min 3 s

Bit rate mode : Constant

Bit rate : 1 411.2 kb/s

Channel(s) : 2 channels

Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz

Bit depth : 16 bits

Stream size : 10.6 MiB (0%)

Alignment : Aligned on interleaves

Interleave, duration : 51 ms (1.53 video frames)

Report · Oct 21, 2017

A quick update. I used Avidemux to rebuild the clip as Mpeg4 AVC (x264) and now Premiere recognizes and shows the previously dropped frames. It's not a perfect solution, but the workaround at least allows me to continue with my project.

Thank you Ann and Steve for your help and for inspiring me to continue looking for alternative solutions.

Report · Oct 21, 2017

Its uncompressed with a very high bitrate.

Elements or your machine cannot handle that.

What are your computer specs (be specific).

Report · Oct 21, 2017

OS: Windows 7 Premium 64-bit

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 965 16 GB RAM

Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 270x 2GB

Certainly not the latest and greatest, but it's not like I'm using an integrated graphics chip on a laptop. Would unchecking hardware acceleration provide some benefit, or are there other settings that might be of use? Elements doesn't seem to show whether it is using my graphics card or relying solely on the processor.

Cheers.

Report · Oct 21, 2017

Ann is right. This file will not edit well in Premiere Elements. It's overloading the program with too much unnecessary information.

Try using Handbrake (a free download) to convert the video to a 640x480 30fps MP4. I'm sure that will eliminate your problems.

Report · Oct 21, 2017

I will check out Handbrake. Thank you both for your help.

Report · Oct 22, 2017

2 gig for 1 minutes is huge.

Uncompressed files are used for storage not editing.

On a side note Elements does not use the graphics card like some other editing programs do.

If you want to do screencapture use something like Camstudio (make sure its constant framerate) not Virtual Dub.