Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

I've been running Premiere Pro since January. Moved from FCP 6. It's been a little learning curve, but not bad.

PP crashes a lot. At least once or twice a day. I remember occasional crashing when I first moved to FCP 6, but obviously it stabilized over time (and I learned what not to do) and FCP crashing was a once or twice a year occurrence in the last few years.

My camera is a Sony FS-100 and I'm using un-transcoded mts files (as I thought I was supposed to).

Generally, it's unclear what's crashing PP. We have found a few sure things.

Anything downloaded from the internet (YouTube, vimeo, etc) makes PP crash immediately upon playback in the source or program monitors. I can transcode it in MPEG streamclip (to ProRes, or anything, really) and still, immediate (immediate!) crashing. The only thing I can figure out (my ass't figured this out) is we can open photoshop and transcode video there, and it works fine in PP.

Can anyone give me some insight here?

Re: Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

Unscientific "findings" here but I find ALL Adobe products are VERY memory intensive and don't necessarily "return" unused memory properly. PP CS5.5.3 here and I need to make sure that if I open any other applications that I save and shut down the system to "refresh" memory on a fairly regular basis, all of which is unnecessary with FCP7.0.3 UNLESS I open up PS CS5.x at the same time, in which case I get playback stuttering and all sorts of other issues.

Can you throw more RAM at your system?

Re: Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

You need to make sure you have an adequate system, including *GHZ* speed.

1. Before you start on a project, do a disk clean;
2. Clear out the bookmarks cache;
3. You could be hitting copyright meta tags on downloaded items from youtube. If your conversion software allows you to save without the tags you may be able to solve the problem. Remember, though, unless the item is listed at community commons video you are violating copyright law.
4. Be sure you have rebooted your computer before you start.
5. Add a video card, and be sure it is one Premiere supports.

Just some ideas.


Thanks

Re: Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

Tim's suggestions go a long way to providing a better editing experience overall but 3 & 4 are the only ones that will likely possibly address your underlying issue around crashing. And I assume Tim means GRAPHICS card (not memory card) in 5, which will speed up all sorts of things but won't fix crashing.

Regarding the following statement:

This isn't ENTIRELY accurate. Creative Common isn't the only way that online material can be used without IP infringement - some people frankly don't care if you re-edit their cat videos. Plus there is (in some circumstances) allowance made for legitimate academic review so it is more complicated than "if you found it on YouTube, you can't use it for anything". And it isn't so much about "violating copyright law" as it is infringing Intellectual Property Rights of the IP holder - the police aren't going to show up at your door and arrest you but you MAY get a cease-and-desist order or a lawyer's letter trying to ascribe financial damages.

Re: Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

Good point, Shaun, on the copyright issue. I have at least 8 copyright complaints from Youtube against me. I get permission from every source I use (written permission) and they still violate me. After sending in the written permission, sometimes I can resolve the complaint and sometimes they just don't care I have written permission. Most alleged violations involve music.

There are some videos you can re-edit, as Shaun points out.

One thing to take into account, depending upon your market, if you want to publish on TV, public television, for example, you will have difficulty claiming you have adequate rights. If your platform is youtube, it is nice to know some re-editing is a risk and can be challenged.

Re: Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

You have computer issues not pp issues. Putting pp on a computer that has lots of video codecs already installed is never easy. Pp installs lots of it's own codecs which sound like potential conflicts. A computer optimised for doing one job is going to be tricky. In my experience pp can edit practically everything and meta data in the source video isn't the snag. After all you can test this with bridge which will let you inspect add and modify the data anyway.

Much downloaded stuff has bizarre combinations of frame rates, screen sizes and odd audio types. I'd bet your video card simply doesn't like some of the combinations.

As for copyright. You tube is so big the number of uploads exceeds their ability to watch and manage, so auto systems are the only way. Re-edits and other problem stuff are easy hits. Territory also makes it such a hard thing to manage and check. If it costs them money to verify copyright, I can't blame them for not wanting to do it, because it wouldn't be fair to use a quality rule to justify spending an hour of their time, would it?

Re: Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

On an only marginally related topic, thank you for considered and polite discourse - when I responded I didn't know if this was going to turn into a "fur-flying" hissyfit between two adults.

One of the many reasons I love DVInfo.

Re: Premiere Pro crashing all the time
 

Should have clarified in the beginning, because I should have known people would have keyed into it (I sure would have), but the stuff I'm ripping from YouTube is not random stuff from strangers - I am working on a series of honoree videos, and I'm pulling people's own home videos down to re-edit and use in their lifetime achievement featurette. I realize that this material came from somewhere originally and it'd be better to have the source files, but the reality is that whoever had it doesn't know where it is, etc, etc... you've heard it all before. ;-)

Thank you for your suggestions.