Program Sequence is Blank

[wilcz1ar]

Hello my name is Peaches, I'm trying to edit together some clips but the program section of my workspace is blank no matter what I do. I've tried starting a whole new project and using different sequence settings but its still blank as if it can't load. My footage is of mp4s on my computer so it shouldn't be having this much trouble. I've used premeire hundreds of time before elsewhere and never had this problem before but this is the first time using it on this particular computer which I downloaded premier on as part of a school at home license so I'm wondering if its the computer? It loads toon boom harmony just fine so I don't understand why premiere's giving me so much trouble.

[Michael Grenadier]

Peaches, I don't understand exactly what's going on.  Are you saying when you edit clips in to the timeline, there's no visual in the program monitor?  Let's start with the basic stuff

Please tell us your system specs: OS version, Premiere version, amount of RAM, Hardware specs including graphics card

and what are your source properties and sequence settings?  

By any chance are your sources from an iphone or a screen capture utility?  In that case, it's cause your sources have a variable frame rate

use mediainfo to determine whether your source is variable or constant frame rate

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

if it's variable use handbrake to convert to constant frame rate

https://handbrake.fr
and here's a tutorial on how to use handbrake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=xlvxgVREX-Y

[wilcz1ar]

Hiya, I've gathered the information you asked for.

Yes my problem is that there is no visual in the program monitor when there should be. I have a 64 bit operating system and a x64 processer. I have version 14.3.1 of premeire pro. 8.00 GB of RAM, 7.75 GB of which is usable. I have an AMD Radeon HD 6570 and an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card.

The footage is from a screen recording on my Ipad but the format was mp4 so I thought it would be ok. When I checked the properties for all of the videos I found the frame rates varry for each of them; being 51.98, 43.47, 45.24, 45.79, 46.9, and 44.100 frames per second. Do they all need to be the same frame rate?

My Sequence Settings are below:

[Michael Grenadier]

sometimes it's difficult to figure out what's wrong.  In this case, it's difficult to figure out what's not wrong.  don't mean to be snarky, just there's a whole lot of stuff that could be causing the problem.  May be a combination of things causing the problem.   Never seen the problem you're seeing, but let's start and see what I see as possible sources of the problem.  Doesn't mean they are the sources of the problem, I can be wrong as hard as that is to imagine...    8 gig of ram is really not enough although it does meet the minimum specs..  ram is cheap and hopefully your system allows you to add some more ram.  16 gigs is the minimum but I'd suggest... upping it to 32 gigs if possible.    Check to see if you have the latest driver for your graphics card.  Many people report problems because of this.   

Do the clips display properly in the source monitor?  Why are your sequence settings standard def with non square pixels?  Not appropriate for screen recordings.    Generally audio for video should be 48k 16 bit... 

What's your end use for this program?  That should probably drive how you set up your sequence settings.

Looks like at least some of your sources are vertical rather than horizontal.  Again, this has an impact on your

sequence settings?   

it's pretty amazing that premiere can take almost anything you throw at it, but sometimes it allows you to throw something at it that it really can't deal with.   Go thru this post and try and answer my questions in a systematic fashion and we'll try and help.  

And read my previous post and the links I included regarding variable frame rate sources...

Don't be discouraged (well maybe a little bit).  Who ever said life or video was simple...

[wilcz1ar]

The footage doesn't display in the source monitor either, but the icons for each video are fully loaded in the project monitor. I honestly didn't really think about sequence settings? I don't know alot about the sequence set up so I always just pick the recomended one. I'm trying to compile screen recordings of me drawing on my Ipad because I wanted to start doing speed paints. The sources are vertical but I was going to add a backround so that the sides weren't blank.

Thanks for your help though, I know this is a weird problem, and if it comes down to needing to increase my RAM I guess I will. But until then I'd like to exaust other  options.

[Michael Grenadier]

Well your sources may be the problem. I'm not at my computer but if you
do some searching on variable frame rates and screen recordings.you'll get
the idea. If no one pipes up I'll go into detail when I get back home

[wilcz1ar]

thank you so much, I'l look into frame rates maybe try to convert them somehow into the correct one

[Michael Grenadier]

Here ya go

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/faq-issues-with-screen-recorded-footage-in-premiere-pro/...

use mediainfo to determine whether your source is variable or constant frame rate

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

if it's variable use handbrake to convert to constant frame rate

https://handbrake.fr
and here's a tutorial on how to use handbrake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=xlvxgVREX-Y

Post back with any questions...  

[Michael Grenadier]

and what are the pixel dimensions of your sources?  weird that they're not displaying in the source monitor.  that can happen with very large pixel dimensions on an underpowered system...  

[wilcz1ar]

I'm not sure, I think it might be big since it was an ipad screen recording.

I've downloaded Mediainfo and Handbreak, but I'm unsure how to use Mediainfo to check the pixel dimensions and frame rate, how do you do that?

[Michael Grenadier]

open media info and drop your file into the window and change the view to tree view or text view and at some point in all the info you'll see pixel dimension, frame rate and whether its constant frame rate or variable frame rate...

[wilcz1ar]

Thank you so much for all your help! Sorry for the late reply I had some busy days at work, but I think you were right earlier when you said that the problem might be my computer; I had been using an old desktop my dad gave me cause I thought it would handle big programs better but I experimented more with media info before downloading premeire to my laptop instead and it immidiately solved the problem. Thanks again for all your help!