Mismanagement by yours truly

[Bob Hart]

After procrastinating, I finally had to bit the bullet and do a clean re-install.

Kieve.exe had its way with my computer, actually improved IE8, but sent everything else except Cool Edit Pro 1.5 and Moviemaster V5 to perdition on a skate. After the virus program went in for a look, if there was any doubt Windows XP was not working beforehand, there was absolutely none afterwards.

So - new hard drive, new install of XP Pro, Adobe CS3 trial, Prospect 4K trial, new and older versions, I have encountered a problem, probably some small thing I missed. Playback just does not happen on 2048 x 1152 files at all. They will scrub just fine, - slow, realtime and fast but the play button does absolutely nothing. No small stumble or stutter, just nothing at all.

Also exports to Windows Media files play back with false colours in media player but fine on VLC player after I downloaded that.

If I could stick with my Premiere Pro 2 which worked fine even on 2K footage, I would, but bit rot on the install disk and Adobe's refusal to do re-issue and telling me to update to CS4 leaves me in a bit of a bind. I am not moneyed enough to go through another new computer, new OS, new software cycle.


If anyone has any hints, they would be appreciated.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Hi Bob,

As for the wrong colors, that sounds like a video driver problem. Try updating the drivers for your video card. Or, find the "Overlay" settings, which should be somewhere in your Display Control Panel (changes depending on your video card). Try changing the overlay settings. Could also adjust the "hardware acceleration" settings in the troubleshooting tab of the advanced display settings.

You can download the Premiere Pro 2 tryout here. I seem to remember that you have the option to use it as a trial, or enter your serial number to activate it. Don't shoot me if I'm wrong, but it's worth a shot. You should still have your serial even if your disc is shot? You could at least see if Premiere Pro 2 fixes your video playback problem.

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/...2_0_Tryout.zip

Good luck.

[Bob Hart]

Vito.


Thanks very much for that. I will follow it up.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Compared to what you give to this forum, it's nothing. But I'm happy to at least try!

[Allan Black]

Bad scene Bob .. how did you get that virus and what anti-virus program did you have running at the time?

[Bob Hart]

As I mentioned, mismanagement has a lot to do with it. I had quarantined this computer from the web - until a power surge took out an older one I used for emails and writing.

So I have really harvested my own carelessness in that I wanted to continue to use the computer for editing without the crippling slowdown of a virus checker on board.

It needed a scrub out twice and that went fine. The method was to put the drive in as a data drive with another OS doing the scrub. I did not go the clean install route because of the forementioned bad PP2 disk.

This time round I did the same trick which found several including kieve.exe. I knew that had got in there because Windows reported that the virus had failed to load and a spoof anti-virus checker had mysteriously installed itself. Unfortunately, after the viruses and worms etc., were rooted out, there was a bit too much damage left behind this time.

I salvaged PP2 out of the disk but it seems something is munted because Adobe Media Encoder does not work either.

Where I am at now is that I have clean installed the XP Pro operating system, all my system drivers as before but it seems another issue is at play because the system is running really slow.

I might have been just plain lucky previously but I was getting real time playback of SI2K files under PP2 and Prospect 4K V3. It would databog once I started grading or adding clips and I had then to revert to counting frames.

Nowadays, playback and Adobe Media Encoder can't get out of bed.

I shall have another crack at a clean install. I might have got something wrong.

Why not upgrade? Money has a bit to do with it as it would require new computer, new CS5, ( I won't touch CS4 and my adventures with a trial of CS3 were rather sad. ). With CS5 there would come the expensive of Cineform's offering for CS5. I may not be able to get an upgrade price as the computer lost the activation codes. I did not keep a paper record.

Finally, PP2 did 3D quite nicely. Adobe took away this functionality it seems in PP3 and PP4 as I can't find it in either on other installations other people have. So to get back the 3D editing, I enjoyed in PP2, even more spend needed to buy in some other plug-in.

I have a vague recollection that the older Prospect required something else to be downloaded and installed, ActiveX or DirectX or Direct Show or something, which might be the slow running mystery but I have not teased out the puzzle yet. If anyone has a better recollection than I, any advice will be appreciated.

I might also see if I can get a download from the Adobe site mentioned. It is a bit of a hard do here because of dropouts which break the files on long downloads.

[Don Blish]

For what it is worth, I have not noted Adobe or Cineform being unwilling to activate an "update" version for a previously registered user who has had a meltdown!

[Bob Hart]

Don.


I must be the first in several million customers then. Activation is not an issue is it turns out. Getting hold of a duplicate of PP2 is. The link given to me on this website is a great help for accessing a legit Adobe PP2 download. The Adobe call centre person must have been having a bad day because that option was not offered to me.