Odd, Green video in Adobe Premiere CS4?

[Brittanyls]

Hi! This has been happening to me a lot lately, and I really need a fix!

When editing my projects, I will have imported a lot of video files.

Before dragging those files into my timeline, I like to preview them.

However, sometimes, the video does not play.  The sound does, but all I see in the preview are random frames from other video files that I have imported. (Ex. Say I preview a video of a dog barking, which works.  Then, I try to watch a video of a cat meowing.  I hear the cat perfectly, but random frames from the dog video are all I see in the preview area.)

Random videos also turn green when previewd.  I will not be able to hear them, like last time, but the whole frame is green and I will not be able to see them. On the timeline they are black.

I usually solve this problem by restarting, but I have to get this project done!

I recently imported a WAV file and an mp3 file into my project. ***The video files are in MP4 video format.

OS: Windows 7 64-Bit Home Premium

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q8400  @ 2.66GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7Ghz

Memory: 6142MB RAM

Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4650

Everything is on my C:/ Drive.

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Hi , did you get an answer to your problem? I do not see a straight answer even though the thread says it was answered. I am having the same problem. My system  worked fine for a couple years, til this week when the same problem you experienced appeared. A difference is the  mp4 files  turning green are ones  rendered  by  premier itself using the  H.264 format, and is sporadic. I uninstalled  and reinstalled the  whole Adobe  suit, then  reinstalled the operating system and reinstalled the suit, and it is still doing the same. What concrete answers were offered?

[Brittanyls]

Yes, I got an answer to my problem! It was posted further up, so you may not have seen it.  Here's what I wrote:

Hey everyone,

I found a solution to this problem, but I never posted it on this forum post!

I don't remember where I read it,  but somewhere on these forums I read that Premiere Pro CS4 considers  MP3's to be "demon spawn."  So, I removed all of my MP3's, converted them  all to WAV format, and then re-imported them.  I haven't had a problem  since!

I then had the problem when trying to use MTS files, but I simply converted them to another format and I was fine.

-Brittany

My main issue was with the format of the files.  My camera shoots video in .MTS format, but Premiere doesn't seem to want to accept that, so I convert them using Adobe Media Encoder.

tpatterson319, was also having problems with .mp4 files, and Ann Bens suggested this similar solution:

I think Premiere does not like these particular mp4's (due to the capture card) might want to convert them first into something Premiere likes.

Hope this helps!

-Brittany

[tpatterson319]

Hello,

Yes, my problem was eventually solved, but I'm not sure if the solution will help everyone.  I simply uninstalled Premiere Pro CS4, and upgraded to CS 5.5.  That solved the problem.  I asked my IT guy about why this happened, and he said that CS 5.5 was just a better configured program, so this is why.

Hope this helps!

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HI , thanks Brittany and tpatterson319. I did not reply straight away as I did some more digging.

   Upgrading to CS5 would be nice, but not everyone can, so I stuck with CS4 to try and solve this one, and rendering into another format does not actually fix the problem because the MTS files are not the problem (although there is a long list of complaints about the format all over the internet which I am also working on understanding and that is for another thread) The problem is with the H.264 files rendered by the same CS4, getting green icons etc. Three weeks working on this one, following a few small clues, and lots of trial renders and mucking around, I think I have a consistant fix. 

    What was the problem? When you want to export to full high definition, the high quality preset gives you a default of min 32mb and max 40mb bitrate (if I rember rightly). I usually do not use these bitrates. I export at  6-8mb for youtube to keep file sizes down, and I started exporting this project at 10-15mb, reasoning that the files come out to about the same size at that rate, as those of the camera, so no point going any higher. I did notice that the file properties in premier reported only around 3mb bitrate on the camera files though.. interesting. Somewhere along the way I upped the export  bitrate from 10-15,  to 15-20mb to guarantee quality without using a lossless codec, and it seems that these are the ones, the most recent renders which are greening out, as not all of them are greening out. Premier can render them out of the program, but the import handler has a hernia, and can't import them. Considering the reported 3mb range of the camera files and some icons not greening out... I identified offending greenies, closed premier down, used encoder to re-encode to  10-15mb max, dump the old file into a folder, rename the new one with the old name, open Premier .. and  VOILA. they are not  green. I THINK I  have the solution! It worked consistantly with various files this evening. It seems the export bitrate was too high.  Maybe CS5 can handle higher bitrates. But recommendation fix.. reduce the export bitrate.

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Although I have upgraded and  no longer have this problem, I travelled and had to use a laptop that was only 32 bit windows system, windows XPpro, and  adobe CS4 and  had  the  same old green preview problems, and so I thought I would  add further  info gleaned as a result, and for some sort of personal satisfaction and closure.

  It seems that the 32 bit system has its limits( and CS4 also). CS5 won't go on a 32 bit system, thus the CS4 install, and XP. The limit is that memory has a max of 4Gb usage and cannot use more than 4Gb even if you install it, and that also includes ram on your video card... max 4Gb TOTAL, and so when the premier video importer caches your files, large high bitrate HD footage  uses up the alotment really rapidly and cannot handle what it needs to, and corrupts the cached files, and gives the green preview as a result. I see that someone  has the same problem with CS4 on a windows 7 system, so it  may be  associated with the coding of CS4 and  not necessarily just with the 32 bit system, ( can't remember if they had a 64 or 32 bit system).   

   Whatever the case, the  work around for me has been to do your project in smaller bites. Use proxy files to edit with, and render the full HD in 2 min segments.The lower number of HD clips in the project open at a time, the better. If you work 2 mins of project, render it into one file, then reimport that, getting rid of the  list of  files used to render the  2 min vid from your project, even from the  project window , as even having them there sitting doing nothing causes the importer to cache them, then the importer does not get a chance to max out (at about 3.7gb, considering the other 0.3 is sytem and other Ram usage. ) I have  managed to manage the problem this way. Success to you all!

[Brittanyls]

Hey everyone,

I found a solution to this problem, but I never posted it on this forum post!

I don't remember where I read it,  but somewhere on these forums I read that Premiere Pro CS4 considers  MP3's to be "demon spawn."  So, I removed all of my MP3's, converted them  all to WAV format, and then re-imported them.  I haven't had a problem  since!

I then had the problem when trying to use MTS files, but I simply converted them to another format and I was fine.

-Brittany

[Brittanyls]

P.S. Thanks for everyone's help...a year ago!

[rochmansp]

I'm recently have the same problem with my Premiere Pro CS6, it happen in one of my rendered video from After Effect in .mp4 format. What I do next is try to render it in .avi format, and somehow its works for me. Other than huge rendered .avi file, nothing seems to be a problem for me.

[jaik42698499]

Problem fixed!

You have to change the renderer to software only mode. This can be changed under File>Project Settings>General. More specifically, I changed it from Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (Open CL) to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only. I deleted the old render files and reexported without any further issues.

Success!