I'm a Premiere CS4 newbie. Using it on Win7 64 bit OS. I'm just trying to learn and figure out what's going on.

I've got a short clip that I'm prepping for youtube. It needs some minor corrections, so I added a couple of effects (that is, I dragged the effects to the video in the timeline, and they immediately showed up in the effects controls tab just like they should). The shadow/highlight effect to correct contrast a bit. The fast color correction to bump up saturation a bit. Looks fine in Premiere -- a very noticeable improvement.

When I export the project (File...Export...Media) rendering time just about doubles. I expected that it would. When I bring up the resulting file in quicktime to check it before submitting it to YouTube, I find that the filters don't seem to have been applied. To verify this I brought up the "before" and "after" versions side-by-side. They are very nearly identical to my eyes.

Yet when I toggle the effect on and off in Effects Controls tab in Premiere, the effect is dramatic.

I'm bound to be making some kind of newbie mistake. I've been searching and trying things incrementally trying to trace this down all afternoon. Whatever it is, I can't see it. What the frell am I doing wrong?

Check your render settings - it is probably skipping something

I just tried it and it works fine here. I suggest you try a few other things first. If the effect on/off works on the premiere monitor then try rendering it out as something like .avi or any other format that premiere can the read back directly. Then in the project window, open this file and slap it onto the timeline and see if it looks the same as the original, next to it. This will confirm if the problem is in the rendering out process. Don't use a setting that compresses, or changes the size, render it out as a full res file. This, I suspect will show the effects are being applied properly. Then you can do the same thing using whatever 'shrink and squeeze' format you picked. Most of these will be able to be brought back into premiere, so you can see when the problem starts.

I'd perhaps suggest using just twenty seconds or so of the original clip with no effect, then 20 secs with the effect - makes it quicker to render and export.

This will take a while, but might help you track it down.

Just for a further test I took a 15 second clip, duplicated it, added the two effects you mention, then exported as an avi (and later as a quicktime .mov). The first half of the render went quickly, second half as expected was slower. Bringing the avi and mov back in looked fine. I then exported the first file again in wmv format at a small size and brought that one back in too - colours and effects were a expected.

This perhaps doesn't help - but something odd is happening. I cannot find a feature to turn off effects rendering when exporting, so am stumped - sorry?

I had something similar once - As I remember, I was importing some DV captured videofiles from another machine and tried to play them in mine. My project was matrox DV - UPPER field (as I use amatox axio)
and the imported was DV- lower field. Settings in my computer, for rendering, was DV 25 upper but when it had rendered the other files it would not play. I am not certain that this was exactly how it was but maybe you should look on the imported file and what filetype Peremiere uses for rendering...

OK. This is weird. I created a test project. Imported the exact same clip into it. Pulled the first 10 seconds of it into the time line. Rendered it without any effects (for a comparison base). Applied effects. Rendered it.

Low and behold, the effects came through this time. So... my workflow was actually correct after all. Hmmm.....

Right now I'm reconstructing the entire project to try the full thing again, from scratch. It *should* work just fine. I have no idea why the existing project doesn't render the effects like it should. But if the new project does, problem solved!

Indeed, problem solved. The entire project rendered with the effects just like it should. I have no idea what was wrong, but "rebooting" solved it.

Sorry for being such a newbie. Thanks all for your patience and your help.

Just a thought, I don't know that it would solve the problem, but you can nest your existing sequence into a new sequence (which will treat the nested sequence as a single clip) and it might get around whatever grimlin is in your original setting...worth the two minutes it would take, to try it before you start from scratch....