Media Encoder randomly exports empty video files (0 KB in size). Some of these renders take over two and a half hours and this problem is waisting a lot of my time. Any ideas?

Did you turn on 'Artificial Intelligence' in Preferences?

I can't seem to find that option. So that must not be the problem.

P.S. I'm using CS4

start adobe media encoder separate and try to export and it would work. Or just import premier sequence to media encoder.

I can't seem to find that option. So that must not be the problem.

P.S. I'm using CS4

Mitch,

I was kidding, because 'randomly exporting blank files' is so unlikely, that it defies human intelligence. Hence my remark about artificial intelligence. You must be giving some command to export through AME to a certain format to a certain file. It can't be random or of its own accord, at least not to my knowledge.

My intent was to trick you into giving more relevant details about what you did that resulted in this strange behavior. Sorry for this completely failed effort. But if you can tell us more about your workflow, maybe we can offer some suggestions.

Ha ha, now I get it. I often take people's jokes too literally :).

Approximately every one in four exports AME will create an empty video file. It is very strange. It encodes like normal but it's almost like it "forgets" to attach the video to the file afterwards. I'm encoding HDV footage from a Premiere Pro project.

Mitch,

Have you updated to 4.1? With 4.00 and 4.01 I think I have had very occasionally a similar behavior, but not with 4.1. With the previous versions I may have encountered something similar, but always attributed that to my own mistakes, never to a 'bug' in the program, for the simple reason I could not replicate it in a systematic way. Can you?

Going from HDV and exporting, what settings do you use? To BR, FLV, MPEG2-DVD, etc.? Can you post a screenshot of your export settings?

Yes, I have updated to version 4.1. I have been exporting to MPEG-2, 1440x1080, progressive, 30 Mbps, maximum render quality turned off. Which leads off to another question, what is the optimum lossless data rate for HDV footage? I think Mini DV tapes have a data rate 25 Mbps, so 30 would be more than enough right?