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cliff3939
Participating Frequently
May 6, 2009
Question

PProheadless.exe

  • May 6, 2009
  • 7 replies
  • 39620 views

Hello,

first post here.  I'm running Adobe Production Suite CS4, v. 4.01.

System specs.: Asus P6t Deluxe v2, i7 processor, 12 gb ram, matrox rt.x2, 4 internal sata drives at 250 gb each, 2 tb raid 0 for video.  Window Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

I'm also encountering this same issue on a seperate computer:

specs.: Asus P5E3 Deluxe, 8 GB ram, quad core processor at 2.67 mghz, 4 internal sata drives, 1 tb raid 0 for video.  Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit.  Again, running Adobe CS4 Production Premium.

The issue: from Premiere Pro export uncompressed avi through Adobe Media Encoder, 30fps, progressive.  The timeline contains simple lower thirds and an avi.  Media Encoder will begin the coding process and about 1/4 of the way through the timeline this error will appear:  "PProheadless.exe has stopped working."  I have already searched this forum concerning this issue and did find one entry that stated a resolution ... Edit>Preferences>General, and then check "optimize the render=memory."  This did not resolve the issue.  I also have Windows Vista running fast with the bare essentials and have virtual memory set for efficient operation.  Anyway, it would seem with 12 GB of ram that Media Encoder would have enough to work with.  I have used CS4 for several months and at first the PProheadless.exe never appeared.  I'm scratching my head as to why now.

Is anyone else encountering this issue with AME?  Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

Cliff

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    7 replies

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    daplus2
    Participant
    April 26, 2011

    Sorry to hear about your problem. I have the same problem with Asus P5E Win XP-3, 32bit and CS4 premium 4GB RAM. I noticed that I always crash as RAM useage for PProheadless gets to 286MB. At that time AME is using 631MB. This happens regardless if Premiere is running or not. This is very frustrating because it makes ones computer useless for exporting any kind of AME encoded data. Perhaps tapeout will still work.

    A
    Anonymous
    February 25, 2011

    Those who are still using CS4 and having this problem here is a fix that worked for me:

    Instead of going to Export Uncompressed AVI I tried going to Export Avi and then chose V210 as the codec.  Worked like a charm!

    F
    FrankBuss
    Participant
    February 4, 2011

    I got the same problem. Looks like when PProHeadless.exe needs too much memory, then it crashs. This works for me: open the task manager, select processes tab, sort by memory. After some time the PProHeadless.exe is on top. If the memory exceeds 1 GB (on my 4 GB maschine), I click "pause" in the Adobe Media Encoder. Then I wait some seconds, and then I kill the PProHeadless.exe process in the task manager. Then I continue the encoding in the Adobe Media Encoder, which restarts the PProHeadless.exe again.

    Maybe Adobe can implement this automaticly? It is very boring to do this manually ten times or more per video encoding. Maybe a checkbox in Adobe Media Encoder titled "kill and restart buggy PProHeadless.exe automaticly, if there are too many unfixed memory holes"

    Powered_by_Design
    Powered_by_Design
    Inspiring
    July 23, 2009

    Just as a side note you say your on Version 4.01

    Version 4.1 is out.

    Have you updated ?

    A
    Anonymous
    July 23, 2009

    Just had a friend with this error. In desperation he exported his timeline in 4 chunks. 3 exported fine, one with a jumpback.mov would not. Took that out and then it exported fine..

    E
    expecial
    Participant
    May 18, 2009

    The reason for this error is having a hi-res JPEG image in the timeline set to be animated in the Motion "Position/Scale" effects panel. It seems that Premiere Pro CS4 has a bug when it comes to having a hi-res JPEG image streched along the timeline longer than 10 seconds in length.

    C
    cliff3939Author
    Participating Frequently
    May 18, 2009

    Sorry, that may be case in some issues concerning PProheadless, but in the occasions that I have this ugly message appear there were no high resolution jpegs invovled.  When I do use still photos or jpegs in Premeire, I always reduce the stills/jpegs in Photoshop to video resolutions before importing into Premiere.  But again there were no stills involved in the timeline when PProheadless.exe appeared.

    Regards.

    E
    ericdugard
    Participating Frequently
    July 23, 2009

    Dear all,



    I have read very carefully this thread (and a few others), I have tried the solution described ... but nothing seems to work and EMA still crash, won't encode and I get the "PProHeadless.exe has caused an error ..." message.

    I use Premiere Pro CS4 on a Windows Vista 64bits (Home Premium), i7 Core. I have installed the latest updates for both Premiere and AME.

    For weeks, it worked perfectly, then something odd haapened: for some sequences, Premiere would encode perfectly for some, AME would stall very fast. No erroe message, just that after few second (between 2 and 4), it just stopped, as if the encoding was finished although it never stopped. Puzzled, I re-installed Premiere (and AME) .. and now I m getting the "PProHeadless.exe has caused an error ..." crash everytime I m encoding. Extremely frustrating...

    I have tried few solutions described in this thread, notably

    - Open Task Manager , go to Affinity and reduce the number of CPU PProHeadless.exe can work on - it was adviced to reduce it to just 2, did not work. Also reduce it to just one, did not work either. By looking carefully at the task manager, I saw taht also I ve set PProHeadless.exe to work only on CPU 0, the number of CPU Task manager said it was working was moving from 0 top 2. Strange..yet it was still a small number, and, yes the crash happened again.

    - Dear all,



    I have read very carefully this thread (and a few others), I have tried the solution described ... but nothing seems to work and EMA still crash, won't encode and I get the "PProHeadless.exe has caused an error ..." message.

    I use Premiere Pro CS4 on a Windows Vista 64bits (Home Premium), i7 Core. I have installed the latest updates for both Premiere and AME.

    For weeks, it worked perfectly, then something odd haapened: for some sequences, Premiere would encode perfectly for some, AME would stall very fast. No erroe message, just that after few second (between 2 and 4), it just stopped, as if the encoding was finished although it never stopped. Puzzled, I re-installed Premiere (and AME) .. and now I m getting the "PProHeadless.exe has caused an error ..." crash everytime I m encoding. Extremely frustrating...

    I have tried few solutions described in this thread, notably

    - Open Task Manager , go to Affinity and reduce the number of CPU PProHeadless.exe can work on - it was adviced to reduce it to just 2, did not work. Also reduce it to just one, did not work either. By looking carefully at the task manager, I saw taht also I ve set PProHeadless.exe to work only on CPU 0, the number of CPU Task manager said it was working was moving from 0 top 2. Strange..yet it was still a small number, and, yes the crash happened again.

    - I have also used another solution found somewhere else, iei Select in PPro: edition >preference > general> , optimize the render = MEMORY  and I also inscrease the asio memory buffer to 4096 and selected "32 bit" to avoid the "jkl" bug

    Nothing works...

    I have noticed that one participant, Ciro, solved the issue by "In the Windows' Error report I clicked the 'details' button and found that it pointed to - nvoglnt.dll, which, after some 'googling' pointed to Nvidia graphics drivers. I downloaded a nvoglnt.dll file, and replaced the one I had in Windows\system32."  

    I tried the same, my error message pointed to ImageRenderer.dll which seems to be a file used by Photoshop.. Dont know why Photoshop is linked to this (maybe because the still pictures I have were trimmed down and turned into japegs in Photoshop??). Anyway I m a bit weary of replacing a Photoshop file by something of the same name found on Internet...

    Would you recommend to do that?

    I m a bit desesparate, any help is more than welcomed!

    - I have noticed that one participan of a similar forum solved the issue by "In the Windows' Error report I clicked the 'details' button and found that it pointed to - nvoglnt.dll, which, after some 'googling' pointed to Nvidia graphics drivers. I downloaded a nvoglnt.dll file, and replaced the one I had in Windows\system32."   

    I tried the same, my error message pointed to ImageRenderer.dll which seems to be a file used by Photoshop.. Dont know why Photoshop is linked to this (maybe because the still pictures I have were trimmed down and turned into japegs in Photoshop??). Anyway I m a bit weary of replacing a Photoshop file by something of the same name found on Internet...

    Would you recommend to do that?

    I m a bit desesparate, any help is more than welcomed!

    Thanks to all

    Eric- -

    C
    cliff3939Author
    Participating Frequently
    May 6, 2009

    As I checked another post concerning this same problem I too have noticed that AME is running up the ram.  Naturally when the ram runs out the PProheadless.exe appears and coding stops.  Why is AME running up the ram?  Adobe, can you address this please.  This is occuring on two machines running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

    C
    cliff3939Author
    Participating Frequently
    May 6, 2009

    OK folks, I was able to contact Adobe technical support on this issue and they have at least for now have solved my problem.  I also need to say that I'm not a computer engineer so any explanation as to why this works is beyond me.  Technical support suggested that PProheadless is working with too many core processors.  Since the i7 as has 4 physical cores and designed to multi-thread to 8 cores technical support suggested reducing the number of cores that PProheadless is working with.  In this case the magic number is 2 cores.  Hopefully adobe tech support will appear to clarify and perhaps verify this.  Below is the process by which to accomplish this:

    Set-up AME to encode as you normally do.  When parameters are set and AME has loaded the file, before starting the queue bring up Task Manager in Windows Vista.  Under the tab Processes find the PProheadless process, right click and find the setting "set affinity."  Once you click "set affinity" another box will pop up with all processors clicked, i.e., CPU 0 through CPU 7 (8 cores).  Uncheck CPU 2 through 8.  Then start the queue.  AME is a bit slower but it does make it through the code without the PProheadless appears.

    Thanks to adobe tech support and to forum members who looked at  this issue last night.

    regards,

    Cliff Williams

    the_wine_snob
    the_wine_snob
    Inspiring
    May 6, 2009

    Cliff,

    Thanks for reporting the workaround.

    Unfortunately, the Adobe presence in this forum is only at the upper right of the page - they provide the server and the forum software. We're just users, like you.

    Glad that you got a fix and trust me, it will help someone else in the future.

    Hunt

    A
    Anonymous
    May 6, 2009

    Are you outputting uncompressed as UYVY? not 210

    Can you get the timeline into After Effects and use Composition\Export\Make Movie?

    AME has many problems with anything that is not DV. You don't state what your sequence settings are? Have you recently changed something?

    Good start, but a little more info would be useful.

    C
    cliff3939Author
    Participating Frequently
    May 6, 2009

    Thank you for your reply.  Concerning media encoder it doesn't matter what format I attempt to use.  I'm still getting the PProheadless error.

    The original footage was shot as P2 media, though in standard definition.  The paremeters in the Panasonic AG-HPX170P was 16:9 (or squeeze mode), standard definition, as DV.

    I attempted to bring the timeline into After Effects yet AE is not reading the lower thirds in the file.  Scrolling through the timeline in AE the screen will simply turn black everywhere a lower third is present.

    I even attempted to bring the timeline into Encore, via dynamic link,  which was successful, yet the encoding through Encore (mpeg2 for DVD) will freeze Encore and Premiere halfway through the timeline.  Encoding merely stops as well.

    Perhaps the P2 files are a problem, yet they shouldn't be per Adobe's advertisement.   I can export to tape with no problems.  Very strange and very frustrating.

    Your response is appreciated.  What else am I missing?

    Cliff

    C
    cliff3939Author
    Participating Frequently
    May 6, 2009

    I stand corrected.  The original footage in the p2 format was shot as DVCPRO.

    thanks again,

    Cliff

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