"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!?

[LindyHop1943]

you spoke from my heart! thanks

[escaped.light]

Thanks for the Reply Kevin. I have since cooled down and my monitor is still intact.

I will make an attempt to contact support tomorrow if I can't get the problem solved by the end of tonight. I didn't have time for it today. I am a CC subscriber. My client is not.

However, to shed a bit of light on where this is being problematic, in case anyone here has dealt with this specific situation or there is a known solution I'm already missing or something:

I am rendering out PNG image sequences from Blender 3D, with the Alpha Channel included. It works wonderfully for the most part, but then for some reason when I bring a new or re-rendered image sequence in, it will kick this error during a preview render and the only thing I can do is go back to Blender and re-render the sequence into a new folder (re-importing the image sequence does not work); this worked up to a point and for certain sequences, but not for all, so when that didn't work, I changed the format to 16 bit and that worked for most of them, but on one I literally had to change my keyframing and alter the finished images in Blender to make it work (the duration and file format remained the same, only the timing of events within Blender changed). This last one is what's happening again today, but the real pain of it is, this last image sequence is an 1,100+ frame sequence and to make a series of small changes and render them out only to test whether it's going to work in Premiere is where my butt is getting a bit chapped (I've already tried the other options including just extending the duration of the clip). It's going to be even more painful when I have to re-render all of these sequences with motion blur and full anti-aliasing out of Blender and replace the lower quality working copies I'm currently got in Premiere; I'm really hoping that if they're working now, they'll work with this minor change. I have tried changing the render engine to OpenCL and Software only, but it's still erroring out at around the same spot.

Don't get me wrong. I love Adobe software and the hard work put into creating and maintaining it all, but I do feel as though this problem should be on the whiteboard in the office and given some priority, even if that priority is to just force Premiere to spit out some codes with the error and some details that we can use to troubleshoot with. Knowing exactly which frame is corrupt would help me follow the problem back to blender and even allow me to maybe fix the specific frame file in photoshop somehow. It would also make searching the internet for specific solutions much easier. I'm not a big fan of phoning support unless I absolutely have to.

I sort of just realized that I haven't looked at tackling this problem from the Blender side, and in all fairness I will take some time to see if Blender is known to cause this error specifically after I post this.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi E.L.,

Thanks a lot for the back story. It's workflows like this that I'm really interested in. Your source footage (a PNG sequence) and the application that created it (Blender) are an added workflow point that needs to be looked at. Please share this info with our agents. After all, Blender is open source and might be subject to quality issues (or it may be Premiere that is at fault!). Please let us know of your findings so I can report back to the team.

Thanks,

Kevin

[GrizzlyAK]

Escaped.light, you just aren't doing it right!

You're not standing on one foot and holding your left arm out at 47.5 degrees (from the vertical, not horizontal), sticking your tongue out 23 mm while looking to the right and slightly down, while you redo your entire timeline in mono and 640x480 to work around this particular problem.

I jest, but feel your pain. But hey, you better be careful or Kevin will ban you for criticizing Adobe's products.

[Kevin-Monahan]

I jest, but feel your pain. But hey, you better be careful or Kevin will ban you for criticizing Adobe's products.

No I won't. I've never done that. Please don't accuse me of things I do not do. PM me if you have any issues with that. That said, our moderation filter is acting aggressively on the forums as of late. If your post is sent to moderation, do not take it personally or think that we are trying to "censor" or ban you. My own posts seem to get put into the moderation queue lately, as well.

Kevin

[sathiyendran17]

Im also encountered the same error..ERROR COMPILING MOVE- UNKNOWN ERROR

im using win 8 , i7.4,8GB hyper Ram ,1 TB hard drive and Nvidia Ge force GT 740 ..

when i worked with adobe premier pro cc facing same EXPORT error .when i analyse the problem deeply its occurred at same place of the timeline, tried all the possible methods but it worked when i switched GPU to software only..the display driver also up-to-date but couldn't solve this error.

expecting a perfect solution from Adobe ...

[ondrej zeman]

I had the same error when using the Warp Stabilizer effect in Premiere CC 2015. I had only one clip imported into my timeline/sequence and once I applied the Warp Stabilizer on it, it began analysing - after analysis the clip just turned black. Turning off the effect made the clip visible again but it was impossible to export the media with the effect turned on. What finally helped me was going to Project Settings and selecting only software rendering.

[aureliae59599960]

I had some 4k video in with some irregular stills in  a 1080 project. Switching to software only Mercury Playback fixed the export error for me.

[LindyHop1943]

I just had the same error on a 90 sec clip that I had rendered a day before. I only changed the audio level with key frames and received the unknwon error. I finally adjusted the audio a bit, just moved the key frame a bit down and now it renders fine. What crap is Premiere CC?

CC=Crash Constantly

[steckelfx]

Wanted to add my experience input with this bug.  I tried to render a sequence (<10 minutes) and nothing seemed to fix it.  I made sure all of the framerates were the same, I tried different rendering engines, re-generated cache files, different sequence settings, everything.

Turns out it was the fact that I was trying to render a nested sequence.  I copied all of my assets INTO the nested sequence (my original edit), put a couple cross-dissolves back in, and it currently seems to be rendering ok now (didn't even have to use the software renderer!)  So yeah, not sure if this is a universal case, but for this project Adobe Rendering appears to be allergic to nested sequences.

[onthepath@mac.com]

For what it's worth...

I tried everything mentioned on all these boards.

I had successfully rendered and outputted several version of the previous cuts mere hours before this issue came up.  I could playback and cut, just could not render or output.

I tried using backups.  I spent hours following the adobe recommended guides and message boards.  Nothing.

This is horseshit Adobe.  You are a better program and company than this...2 years this issue has plagued the people who have rallied behind this product.  I have turned a couple of people towards you product to edit their features and I'm cringing with the expectation of a call from them telling me they have a compiling unknown error issue and the only solution I can offer is the same solution I had for Microsoft 2000 on the mac.

WHAT WORKED: I copied the entire sequence in the project, then opened an entirely new project and pasted it into a new sequence.  Bam!  I'm rendering out now...

[BArticol]

This problem goes back to CS5.5 for me.  Generally image sequences (automate to sequence, etc.) and highly layered sequences or nests (5+, with clip transitions) cause the Unknown Error/Can't Compile Movie problem.  I'm using a Windows 10 PC with 16GB RAM, a 6 core AMD processor and an NVidia GTX580.  Not the newest and baddest rig but plenty good. What works: 1)  manually erasing the media cache and media cache files plus the preview files, then waiting a few minutes for PPro to reconform the raw clips and rebuild the previews and 2) if that doesn't work, do what others on this board have suggested and switch from CUDA to software only rendering.  Yes, that's painfully slow (Mercury/CUDA is an order of magnitude faster but that doesn't help when the rendering phase destroys your workflow and delivery time by constantly crashing) so try to isolate the bad nests to as skinny as group as possible and just render then without Mercury, export them, then turn Mercury/Hardware Acceleration back on and import them as mp4's or whichever into the sequence, replacing the bad nest. It's a workaround but at least you can deliver product.

[Lorin Lochridge]

How to fix the “Error compiling movie” Unknown error

1. 1. go to file>project settings>general
2. 2. look for renderer
3. 3. is it on GPU acceleration or software only mode
4. 4. change it to software only mode
5. when promoted click on delete previews

[hdaistudentpdx]

this error is not specific to one thing. There are dozens of fixes which only apply to the specific instance. I spent hours and hours trying to fix mine what the problem finally was.  I had too many audio tracks. I took them into audio and then brought them back into premiere pro as one master track, after that it rendered out perfectly.

[wjarmando1972]

I followed Lorin Lochridge suggestion and it did work, so now the question is if we should keep working with the GPU acceleration or not?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Wjarmando,

I followed Lorin Lochridge suggestion and it did work, so now the question is if we should keep working with the GPU acceleration or not?

You can work with support to determine that. Please contact them.

Thanks,

Kevin

[leifn57768593]

Tried the GPU stuff already, wont do any difference, but slow the project down terribly much,

[Nateido1]

I've encountered this problem myself over the last few days, trying to figure out the problem. I fixed it. For me, it was a PNG image sequence that I had rendered-out of After Effects that Premiere didn't like. Probably a messed-up frame or something. I re-rendered it in PSD, and it worked.

I didn't have to change to "Software Only" or do anything else. It was just that problem. So to summarize what I've gained from this thread so far, there are lots and lots of different reasons this generic error can occur. Moving forward, I'm going to be very diligent with every asset included into Premiere, and realize there might be a generic "can't compile movie" error right around the corner for no obvious reason. Having a specific message explaining the problem would do wonders with this error. It seems to be a pretty big issue and perhaps at least an extensive and EXHAUSTIVE list of Premiere Pro "bugs" that include this error can be included, or "issues" Premiere might have. Like what is this resolution thing greater than 1920x1080?  If there's a bug associated with this, I want to see a big old list so it can help me figure it out if I encounter this issue.. I'd encourage Adobe to expand significantly on this page here: "Error compiling movie" message when rendering or exporting in Adobe Premiere Pro.

[leifn57768593]

Thats not my problem. Premier pro seems to be a mess, since it semems to be a lot of different issues causeing the problem. The buttom line, premier pretty much sucks, since it cant do the job.  Its insane that u cant use media as u wish without crashing.

[marimama]

‌I had this problem today. Here's how I fixed it:

After deleting all the media cache files and not seeing a result, I cleared all the effects of the project which again, didn't work. So I retraced me steps! The project was working perfectly fine until I added a few photos sent to my email. When I dragged those files in, I guess Premiere wasn't too happy about it so it refused to render it. I saved the project with "save as," renamed it, and when I opened it back up, I deleted those files I had brought in and rendered it. And tada! It freakin worked!

So I opened those same files with Photoshop and saved it again just so Photoshop can clear whatever problem it was that those files were causing. I dragged those files in with no problem at all.

It's its most likely some sort of corrupt file. Just retrace your steps. What was the last thing you did before you got that problem and try to work around it. And don't bother asking Adobe troubleshooting team because they have absolutely no idea -_-

[leifn57768593]

Works some times, some times not, its not corrupt files. I get this issues in every project, my files are not corrupt. Some times it fails in a transition, some times on a photo or video, some times it fails if I choose to high render settings. So it cant be due to corrupt files, its a premiere pro issue. I agree about the adobe support, doesnt work, they just ran the whole standards things over and over again.

[Premiere_Pro_CC2014]

Have the same problem. Only thing that worked for me was turning off GPU Mercury playback Acceleration and rendering software only.

[rogerzhang92]

I am experiencing similar errors when exporting and when trying to render previews in PP 2015. In my case I am working with high resolution panoramas (21668 x 3561) and applying panning and zooming effects. The preview window plays fine; however, PP errors out when trying to render previews and exporting. Disabling GPU acceleration seems to fix the issue, but the export time is unbearable with just software only! I have 4GB of VRAM with a Nvidia GTX970, I can't believe this hasn't been fixed yet.     

[leifn57768593]

Tried it, didnt work. And Adobe should fix their software, instead of trying to find work arounds each time.

[davidVMB]

I also encounter this error from time to time. It annoys me that it is an unknown error, because you don't know where to look. There are indeed workarounds, but it's a waste of time and a shot in the dark. One time I had to create a Project Folder with consolidated and transcoded files, it took me a day to export everything. Every CC update I keep my fingers crossed, but still no solution from Adobe.