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

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
December 30, 2011
1 reply
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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.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Harm_Millaard

Inspiring

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

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.

Wil Renczes

Adobe Employee

Indeed I have tried using different source files, I've tried everything imagineable before uttering a single complaint or seeking advice. I use subclips a great deal because I do not think I should have to render-out individual subclips to be used in a sequence when subclips are intended for this express purpose. An example of things that I've tried is reprocessing the problematic clip through AVC Video Converter, inputting & outputting the same frame size, etc. To get through any potential blips in the originals, even when I'm certain they're fine.

I also am not using 'Write XMP ID to files on import' because that has screwed up a number of long-running source files unto itself.

IMO now, after using Premiere/After Effects extensively for several months, that Premiere (in CS5.5) in particular was broken from inception, insofar as management of clips & conforming audio is concerned. These problems may have been made more severe with the introduction of the 5.5.2 update.

Such a pity that such a great conceptual program can be a total P.O.S. in this one critical areas.

A greater pity is how much time I've wasted with it thinking I could somehow work around these problems.

Forget CS6, Adobe!!! We need CS5.5 FIXED FIRST!! This is non-sense. I'm certainly looking into the BIG jump to Avid but I did not think a package of Adobe's caliber in this price range would be so mucked up. Why am I spending so much more time persuading Premiere into behaving that I am tweaking my projects & rendering? So fed up. No words...

Harm filled in pretty much all the salient details, but I'll do another pass here.

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

Two parts here. One, conforming only happens for certain media files, ie the ones where performance is critical and we can't depend on extracting the audio fast enough for realtime playback. That's basically anything in an .mpeg wrapper, or AVCHD material. So if you edit XDCAM HD/EX or P2, or RED, or even AVIs or QT, those formats don't require audio conforming.

If you're stuck editing AVCHD or MPEG2, then it needs to conform. But, that being said, you shouldn't be getting errors in the first place. I think it's related to your external drives. More below...

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)

Nope, you have a progress status bar indicating which file it's working on. If there's an error, it shows up in the events panel.

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

No.

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

While some people like having the check box for having the conform files beside the media, I hate it. Yes, it means that if you move the project to a different system & reopen, it means that you potentially can avoid recreating CFA files, but I find the drive littering not worth it. I much prefer having setting the Media prefs to point to a specific media drive. Usually a raid, if available. Definitely not an external drive that you disconnect & walk away with. If you don't have a permanent raid on your system, then preferably a dedicated internal drive for media (think along the lines as your Photoshop 'scratch disk'). Failing that, leave it on your C: drive, although with a 64 Gig SSD, you probably don't have much room for transient temporaries.

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?

Like Harm said. Totally dependant on the media container & the speed of your drive i/o. The conforming is iterating through the entire file & pulling audio data, so it's not CPU intensive, it's all i/o.

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

If you're trying to play/scrub while conforming, it's going to be pokey. Esp. if you're trying to access the file that's actively being conformd. As I just said, we're hitting the files for all the audio. The i/o is being saturated already, so unless you have a stellar raid, you don't have much headroom.

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.

You should be good to go. Sounds like there's something else at play here.

Okay, back to what I think is wrong: you don't mention what kind of external drives you're using. You're making a bad assumption that blowing away conformed files & doing a reconform is buggy - I doubt it, as that's the same process that happened when you initially brought in the files. I've blown away my media cache folder multiple times and have never seen failures on reconform. So it's got to be one of two things: either a read error from the source when attempting to pull the audio, or a write error to the destination. Now I don't know where you currently are pointing the media cache directory, or what your source drive is, so I can only speculate.

My suggestion is to do some elimination. Copy one of the files that failed on you to your C drive, & target your media cache directory also to C:. Pick a new project, import your copied file, confirm that it conforms correctly & behaves. Then, try to use the same clip from your external drive, keeping the media cache to C:. If that's still good, then try targeting another (local/internal) drive as your media cache target; close/restart, then import the clip from C:, and then import the clip from your external drive. This troubleshooting should give us something.

PS, if you're trying to edit from external USB drives, good luck. I find it a major PITA that I avoid as much as possible. Firewire isn't much better. I know some people do it successfully, but I think it's a road fraught with peril. These devices are generally not designed for heavy duty I/O and a flaky connection or drive is nothing but pain.

Cheers

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