"Error compiling movie. Unknown Error." OR program crash when rendering

[ERP12]

When rendering in Premiere Pro CC I get the messge "Error compiling movie. Unknown Error." OR the program crashes.

-Adobe Premiere Pro CC V 7.0.0 (342)

-ASUS Z87-A, Intel Core i7 4 core, 16gb RAM

-450gb+ disc space

-Also installed: After Effects, Adobe Media Encoder

-All recent updates installed

-Windows7 64bit

-I am using all programs through Creative Cloud

-Footage is AVCHD 720p but doesn't work with .mts or .mp4 files

-I am trying to render speed and simple cross dissolves. Neither are working

-This has happened before on a friend's desktop. I was using his machine to edit on while I was in the process of building mine. He got the same error when I was trying to export. I restarted and the issue was fine. Restarting on my machine has not solved the issue. This leads me to think it is a bug in the program?

-I have been running After Effects and it has worked flawlessly.

Help!?

[stinger701]

Hi Everyone. I had this same problem and for a few days I could not figure out why I kept getting this after trying multiple things to try and remedy this. I started rendering my timeline in sections to see if it was a specific clip. As I was doing this I noticed that the rendering was working now depending on the section that was being rendered. Long-story-short I realized soon after that it was an effect that I added that was causing this error message. The specific effect was the "RGB Color Corrector". Once I disabled it everything worked great! Hope this helped!

[ronaldogom]

OK, we are in December 2015 and the things were ok, but... An upgrade at Adobe Cloud with some major interesting things and some creepy results. In Adobe Audition, the very excential function "split in separate tracks" isn't abilitated by right-clic with mouse but working at Edit Menu. In Premiere I'm able to render at MOV DV25S Wide but not in simple AVI DV Wide (same sequence), that has unknown crashes at random places at timeline: each time, a differente place. Bad news. But GREAT news: Adobe Media Encoder is WORKING WITH CUDA, mercury etc, so I finished my work after some despair. When I tried to render to another simple preset like Youtube 480p Wide, Premiere CC also crashed with the smae error. I tried to render with Vimeo 480p Wide, and the render was as usual, but I noticed that h264 is faster then before mandatory update.

[Keith Moreau]

I want to relay how I spent several hours of my day today.

Professional 4K shoot 2 UHD recordings, one from a SonyFS5 and A7s, synced first then brought into Premiere Pro CC 2015.1. 2 tracks of UHD with 1 adjustment layer over both tracks about 1 hour 30 minutes sequence  with three way and rgb curves. Very simple 'assembly edit' to show my clients they could make some 'selects'.  HD Sequence, and it was a 2-up, so the UHD tracks were scaled down to maybe 25% of their original size. Queue to media encoder: Failed a few minutes in quickly with "Unknown Error". I tried to isolate where it was failing, but never could really pin it down. Spent about 3 hours doing this. It seems if the length of the segment I wanted to encode exceeded a few minutes it would fail with "Unknown Error". Same with just exporting directly from Premiere Pro, although sometimes this is a solution. I finally realized that I probably just would not be able to get this project encoded with this version of Premiere Pro / Media encoder. It's too bad 'cause I thought I might actually be able use this version of cc2015. NOT.

Exported FCP XML of the sequence. Opened up Premiere Pro 2014. Recreated the adjustment layers because FCP XML export doesn't do well with these effects. Took about 15 minutes to do that. Queued the sequence to Media Encoded. Encoded it quite speedily in about real time successfully. No "unknown error." So my solution was to avoid cc2015 and use cc2014. Adobe, fix your buggy software please. Multiply the time I wasted today by hundreds or thousands of other editors using your buggy software and you'll get an idea of how many man-hours are wasted very day on issues like this. I don't think I'm being harsh. The subscription model was supposed to improve updates and bug fixes in their frequency and quality. I don't think that's happened at all, in fact it seems worse. Fix your bugs, then add features. There is so much information and scenarios in these forums about how to reproduce these bugs that you have enough information to reproduce fix the bugs yourselves. Have your lead engineers read these forums. It is of the utmost importance or you will begin to lose customers, if you haven't already. Please fix the bugs. Thank you.

[LindyHop1943]

‌Keith, in case you have AutoSave enabled, try turning it off. I had the same problems and wasted six weeks of my time. I'm still mad about Adobe and the quality of the CC software.

[Keith Moreau]

LindyHop1943‌ Thank You! Turning off Autosave allowed the sequence to encode without the dreaded "Unknown Error!" I cannot believe it was this simple and that nobody had suggested it before. (I tried ocube / theMKLife suggestion of clearing of in and out but that didn't work)

Adobe folks, this should be a very specific clue to resolve this critical bug if they want editors to continue to use CC2015. LindyHop, how did you discover this workaround??? Regards, -Keith

[LindyHop1943]

Hi Keith,

I'm glad that it helped you.

I wasted 6 weeks of my time—unpaid—to find that solution. I tried everything that was thinkable: installing various old graphics drivers and old versions of Premiere in various combinations, working with a new user account, running various stress tests on the hardware and graphics card, using various hard drives (internal, external), updating Windows from 7 to 8 to 8.1, re-installing the complete system, buying a new graphics card—nothing helped. I wasn't able to finish my simlple (just fades and cuts), but important project.

Since the crashes were randomn, it took beween 1 and 15 miniutes, before the crash occured and if I rendered the same section where it crashed again it usally worked. So it must had to do something with timing. It could be a heat issue on the hardware or a parallel thread issue. Since I had Sony FS7 material I could not use CS6, which I would have preferred. So I upgraded my notebook to CC2015 and used an external hard drive. Strangly it did not crash. When I moved  the drive back to the editing computer it did not crash either. I then found in the forum a post that stated issues that were solved when AutoSave was turned off. I had done this on the notebook and when it was turned off on the editing computer it rendered without crashing. This also explained the various time it took for a crash.

As a consequence of the instability of Adobe Premiere (since CC) we stopped doing a yearly project after 10 consecutive years. For the past few year's each year some different major bug caused a massive delay of the project. I'm angry about Adobe. As expected the constant updates of CC just made it worse and the system less stable. I'm fed up with doing beta testing and not getting paid for it. Adobe should pay customers for doing their work and for every known bug that is not fixed I want to pay less per month.

Marcus

[Keith Moreau]

Hi Marcus and all interested

Just FYI, when I tried the "uncheck autosave" on another problem sequence, I got "Unknown Error" again. I also tried with OpenCL and with CPU only MPE options. But I did try one more thing on the problem sequence, which was to quick Premiere Pro cc2015.1 and AME, run Digital Rebellion's CS Repair (which does some simple things to 'reset' Premiere Pro like quitting all the Premiere Pro and AME tasks and repairing relevant file permissions) and then I re launched 2015.1 and tried the problem sequence again using CUDA, and this time it worked! So I'm going to see if this workaround 'sticks' with this project - wish me luck. And Adobe, if you are back from holiday and reading this very important thread, perhaps this provides even one more clue to fix the "Unknown Error" problem!!! -Keith Moreau

[npfilms]

‌I have had the same issue after updating to 2015.1 -  I'm running 10.11.2 on an iMac 13,2 with 32gb ram, I finally downgraded back to 2015.02, to regain the stability I needed to maintain sanity.

I spent 60+ hours troubleshooting and rendering.  Long process because sometimes you just have to sit and wait. Sometimes the error showed up right away other times it was in the middle of the sequence (when trying to render the same sequence).  I have followled the suggestions of this thread including rendering only portions at a time, importing as xml, removing all effects and trying to render, removing one by one on failed clips...  I found no consistency to the error.

Cleaning the cache and deleting the cache folders then running first aid on the disks through disk utility brought a temporary fix that only returned if rendering multiple versions of the same sequence. Repeating this process did not guarantee it working either. Each suggested fix has sporadically brought only temporary function to rendering some sequences, whether through AME OR directly from PP.

Is this a disk permissions issue?

Have those that have disabled auto save found that the compiling error is completely gone?

Is the same true when running the suggested utility of CS Repair?

I shoot with a sony fs7 mxf format is there a consistency there with anyone?

FINALLY - Adobe, can you please make some type of distinction in your updates that will indicate to your customers when an update will mean a project will not be compatible with just the previous release?  If this exists already please let me know. It's expected on the yearly major release of cc to cc 2104, from 2014 to 2015, but 2015.02 to 2015.1 indicates to me an incremental update addressing bug fixes and maybe other small changes.  Because the software I use directly affects my livelyhood I've made it a habit to wait before updating to any new software until either it's proven to work or subsequent bug fix updates have been released.  In the past the functionality of premiere has only got better with the small updates until now.

I'm hopeful for a 2015.1.1 soon, where I'm sure this issue will no longer exist.

[ocube]

npfilms‌

You'v hit the nail on the head... this affects our livelyhood!!! I am tired of getting this bug and not knowing when Adobe will finally make PremPro stable. I am looking into Blackmagic's Resolve 12 which is free.

[chrisc_305]

Also having problems--- to avoid a lengthy post, I'll focus on what worked for me after wrestling with this problem.

I will keep this short. Try it out. If it works- share the news and inform the forum by reposting. Maybe, in time, we might come up with a solution(s) together...

My solution steps... so far... (I'm on a mac using Premiere Pro CC 2015 exporting 4k footage)

1. Sequence > Delete Render Files

2. Marker > Clear In & Out

3. File > Save (Short name- no spaces- try "test" or something simular)

4. Quit Premiere

5. Open Media Encoder CC

6. File > Add Premiere Pro Sequence

7. Open the saved file

8. Choose the sequence your trying to export

9. Adjust the settings you desire (H. 264, Preset Profile, etc)

10. Title output file and destination (keep filename small again- no spaces), click save

11. File > Start Queue

---

It may help to restart your computer before initiating the steps- and only running Premiere. I've tested this solution and it seems to work. Would like to see if this is working for others...

[npfilms]

Thanks for posting this.  Turns out the clear "in and out" points was not an end all.

I then turned to your mentioned process above, which didn't work until I restarted like you suggested, deleted cache files as well as scratch files, then ran project though AME.  Not sure if this is a permanent fix, but glad to have an alternative option that kept my work moving forward.

Thanks!

[ocube]

Clearing 'in and out' points stopped working for me as well. I will have to try the other solutions and update later.

[maxstudio1]

Seriously...

Got myself a six-cores, very good graphic card, lots of memory... and Premiere feels so heavy?

Sometime, i just want to expand an adjustment layer to make it larger and it takes forever?

Premiere looks very promising, but it feels like i'm testing an Alpha product....

[adamk82633966]

Hi all,

Has there been any update on this?

I used to edit on a 2014 Macbook Pro and recently purchased a new imac, only since editing on my imac have I ever encountered this problem.

I have a feeling that my Macbook Pro might have been running and older version of Premeire Pro, by saying that not the latest version out, and that is why I never had the issue.

Is there away to find out what version of Premiere Pro I am running on my Macbook? And if so could I roll back to that version on my imac?

[Ann Bens]

Under Help/about... you can read the build, it should say 2015.1 (build 9.1.0 174)

Here is how to go back a version of 2015 (read instructions carefully on how to download)

All Adobe CC 2015 Updates: The Direct Download Links for Mac OS | ProDesignTools

2014 you can download via your Cloud app.

[Keith Moreau]

To Web admin: I'm trying to add a reply but I get "An Internal Error Occurred" - LOL seems that all Adobe interfaces have this generic error. This is just a test to see if I can actually post something again. Maybe I've been blacklisted!

[Keith Moreau]

Recent Update (I wrote the above last week before trying to go back to Premiere Pro cc2015.0.2).

Because of the need to open another project created in Premiere Pro cc2015.0.2, and not wanting to use cc2015.1, I decided to try to 'downgrade' to cc2015.02. It was really my only hope to save my self hours and possibly days of work to convert a cc2015 project to cc2014. The pages  Ann Bens referred to works pretty well and was surprisingly painless. It's not super clear what to do from the Adobe page or what not to do. Like - do I have to 'uninstall' 2015.1 first?... well anyway you don't. You need to first do a kludge and try to download a cc2015 trial version of another cc2015 product  to set a login cookie, then go back to the download page and download the original Premiere Pro cc2015 and the 2015.0.2 updates (separate images). The naming of these images is very generic so I'd rename them to what they actually are so you don't get confused. I'd also keep a copy on your drive if you need to downgrade again to this relatively stable version of cc2015. All you need to do is run the installer that is (in my case a Mac) inside the dmg image file. You need to indicate that you own it by doing a login to your Creative Cloud account, then it installs. After it installs run the Premiere Pro 2015.0.2 update. Do the same download/install/update for Adobe Media Encoder, the versions correspond.

A sequence that would not encode ever for cc 2015.1 in fact worked fine in 2015.0.2. I would also do the 'clear media cache' from the Premiere Pro preferences. Using the cc2015.1 cache database 'seems' to work but after I cleared it the performance in the timeline was faster.

I'm going to try to work with Premiere pro cc2015.0.2 for a while and see if I can get it to be stable. I believe I had the 'black playback monitor of death' with this version but is is possible that was cc2015.0.1. So far I haven't gotten playback issues in cc2015.0.2 other than a bit of slowness on XAVC-L 4K files.

I am really hoping that Adobe QA's their major releases better. I can't imagine the people in this thread are the only people experience loss of time and work and frustration using cc2015.1. I really just want Adobe to improve their performance, stability and add simple but useful standard features to their products rather than dramatic feature changes that look good for marketing but don't really help productivity because the foundation is unstable. Apple did that a few years ago with their OS 'Mountain Lion' and I think Adobe should do that as well, like "Adobe Creative Cloud 2016: It just works!"

I'll be discussing this, among other things, on an upcoming episode of my Cinematography and Post Production Podcast, TechMove, http://www.techmovepodcast.com, check it out!

[npfilms]

Keith Moreau wrote:

Recent Update (I wrote the above last week before trying to go back to Premiere Pro cc2015.0.2).

Because of the need to open another project created in Premiere Pro cc2015.0.2, and not wanting to use cc2015.1, I decided to try to 'downgrade' to cc2015.02. It was really my only hope to save my self hours and possibly days of work to convert a cc2015 project to cc2014. The pages  Ann Bens referred to works pretty well and was surprisingly painless. It's not super clear what to do from the Adobe page or what not to do. Like - do I have to 'uninstall' 2015.1 first?... well anyway you don't. You need to first do a kludge and try to download a cc2015 trial version of another cc2015 product  to set a login cookie, then go back to the download page and download the original Premiere Pro cc2015 and the 2015.0.2 updates (separate images). The naming of these images is very generic so I'd rename them to what they actually are so you don't get confused. I'd also keep a copy on your drive if you need to downgrade again to this relatively stable version of cc2015. All you need to do is run the installer that is (in my case a Mac) inside the dmg image file. You need to indicate that you own it by doing a login to your Creative Cloud account, then it installs. After it installs run the Premiere Pro 2015.0.2 update. Do the same download/install/update for Adobe Media Encoder, the versions correspond.

A sequence that would not encode ever for cc 2015.1 in fact worked fine in 2015.0.2. I would also do the 'clear media cache' from the Premiere Pro preferences. Using the cc2015.1 cache database 'seems' to work but after I cleared it the performance in the timeline was faster.

I'm going to try to work with Premiere pro cc2015.0.2 for a while and see if I can get it to be stable. I believe I had the 'black playback monitor of death' with this version but is is possible that was cc2015.0.1. So far I haven't gotten playback issues in cc2015.0.2 other than a bit of slowness on XAVC-L 4K files.

I am really hoping that Adobe QA's their major releases better. I can't imagine the people in this thread are the only people experience loss of time and work and frustration using cc2015.1. I really just want Adobe to improve their performance, stability and add simple but useful standard features to their products rather than dramatic feature changes that look good for marketing but don't really help productivity because the foundation is unstable. Apple did that a few years ago with their OS 'Mountain Lion' and I think Adobe should do that as well, like "Adobe Creative Cloud 2016: It just works!"

I'll be discussing this, among other things, on an upcoming episode of my Cinematography and Post Production Podcast, TechMove, http://www.techmovepodcast.com, check it out!

This is the rallying cry that desperately needs to be heard by Adobe!  Thank you!  Very well put!

‌

[adamk82633966]

Thankyou Ann,

Do you know if this is a known issue as well in Premiere Pro 2014?

I find this strangely odd that for the 2 years I had my Macbook Pro I never once encountered this issue.

Only when I bought my iMac which is only 1 month old and I downloaded the latest version that was out of Premiere I started getting this issue.

[Ann Bens]

Error compiling movie has been around as long as I can remember (Premiere Pro 1)

I once in a while I get the error: first thing I do is make new project and drop the old into it. Usually takes care of the problem. Other times I have to dive into the timeline and find the culprit.

[adamk82633966]

Hi Ann,

Thanks for the fast reply, hmm.

Maybe I am getting the issue a lot because I am opening old files which were edited on my Macbook Pro and it is ask me if it can modify the file for the latest version on my iMac.

But in saying that what do mean by you make a new project and you drop the old into it, are you saying you create a new sequence?? If not how do you open 2 projects I thought that could only be done in FCP.

[Ann Bens]

When you have made a brand new project go to the the Project window, double click and import the old prproj you were working on. Or import via the Media browser.

[BArticol]

I agree with you, Ann.  The old 32 bit versions were especially troublesome. Although less frequent with the advent of the 64 bit version of PPro, I have put up with this error on and off for years, trying the same things enumerated above. It's like whack-a-mole: try deleting the preview files and re-render ... if the problem recurs, try deleting the cache manually (not using cache cleanup) ... try nesting or pre-composing layer-heavy portions of the sequence ... worst case, stop using graphics card hardware acceleration and take the multi-hour hit on productivity. I guess we must really love video editing to put up with this, although to be fair old FCP7 had its unfixed crash issues too. I don't miss it.

What has worked for me was to make a significant computer upgrade investment. After the recent AMD processor debacle with the November 2015 Creative Cloud upgrade, which caused PPro, AME and Ae to crash on startup (talk about a productivity stopper), I went from an AMD processor-equipped machine with 16GB DDR3 to one with an 8 core Intel 5960, overclocked, and with 32GB DDR4, plus an NVidia gtx970 running on Windows 10. Since then, I've had no rendering or media export problems even with videos stacked 5 video tracks deep, with nested sequences and lots of keyframed stills, and with the video durations of up to 30 minutes. About the only remaining problem is that in spots, dragging the keyframe icons can be painfully slow, requiring use of the numeric settings. But at least it works, and with this rig I get much faster rendering times. But that's kind of drastic and won't be everyone's cup of tea. Besides, PPro's minimum hardware requirements don't call for that kind of configuration.

I agree that "unknown error" message are wrong ... there should be an error log that we have an option to send to Adobe so they can mull it over and figure out if it's caused by their software or an add-in/plug-in.

[KWUEST Pictures]

I had this error on a particular project... never happened before.

not good.

For me switching from 2 pass rendering to 1 pass fixed it. Or allowed it to complete the render.

[Keith Moreau]

After further research, I found that more recent versions of Adobe Media Encoder cc2015 exacerbate this problem. I would often get "Unknown Error" from versions more recent than Adobe Media Encoder CC 2015 9.0.0.222 (what was part of the original cc2015 release, I believe). I was able to use any version of Premiere Pro cc2015 with this old version of Media Encoder, which kind of surprised me. I even updated to the very latest set of Premiere Pro / Encoder that came out a few days ago, cc2105.2. However hopeful I was that they addressed my issues, using the newest set of Premiere / Encoder still resulted in 'unknown error' most of the time.

This is another clue for the Adobe developers about how to fix this problem. One thing that would really, really be helpful is if there was some type of error code associated with 'unknown error'. Is there some type of developer debugging log we can access? Or put Premiere / Media encoder into debugging mode? I really, really want to continue using Premiere Pro but I have seriously started to think about alternatives, such as Final Cut 10, because I need to be able to output video!