Add Media photo orientation

[wyzboing]

I'm just getting to grips with my PRE11 upgrade. I followed my usual workflow as per earlier versions and resized all my photos, made sure they were all rotated to correct orientation and all carefully organised into folders with vid clips before bringing them into project. When added all the photos appeared in landscape format so that any which should be portrait have to be manually rotated. How annoying is that? I have not done anything different from my usual workflow however I am working on a new pc with Windows 8. If I open the photos in Photoshop or in any viewer on my pc direct from the folder where PRE is accessing them they appear the right way up. Has any one else come across the same problem?

Thanks

[Steve Grisetti]

How and where did you change the orientation of the photos before you imported them into your project?

Changing the orientation in the Organizer only changes your view of the file. It does not change the orientation of the actual photo or video file.

[Barb O]

I have heard about people having problems with portrait mode photos (when the photo file contains a Portrait Mode indicator) in recent versions of Premiere Elements. I don't know if these problems exist in version 11 : however your experience tends to suggest that they do.

In order to troubleshoot and try to determine an alternative workflow for you, please post
1 - Which version of Premiere Elements did you previously use ?
2 - do you use Photoshop Elements 11 or are you using a version of Photoshop CS ?
3- what software did you use for the "made sure they were all rotated to correct orientation" ? Also, describe which commands of that software you used for any photo rotation that you performed manually (if PSE 11, include whether the Editor or Organizer workspace)
4 - use Windows Explorer to look at 2 of the photo files (which are problematic in PRE 11). Post what are the Dimensions of these 2 photos as shown by Windows Explorer. In addition, if you have any portrait photos which display correctly in Premiere Elements, examine some of those photo files with Windows Explorer and post the dimensions shown.

FYI
I was interrupted while typing my response and I see that Steve has responded in the meantime. I still suggest that you post answers to my questions to verify our conclusions.

[Chris B]

I long ago got bored with windows inability to read the values in the files ~(despite other programs working just fine) and I found this little utility

http://www.pilpi.net/software/JPEG-EXIF_autorotate.php

Which reads the data and losslessly rotates all jpegs in a folder - or all subfolders - just on the explorer right click. Now every program gets it "right".

[wyzboing]

Thank you all for looking at this.

Firstly, you will slap my wrists because I do cheat when resizing my photos and rotate the portrait ones back to landscape before batch processing. That means when rotated back to the correct orientation they are 1000 high by 750 w (heaven forbid!!!) rather than the recommended 1000 w x 750 high (the latter making any portrait ones very, very small) There are far fewer portrait than landscape and I have plenty of processing power and needing to zoom in lots on some of these so feel I can get away with this.

Now you may just lose the will to live…

To complicate things, the photos were originally copied from my camera in 2010 to the pc using Vista and would probably have been rotated using either a right click, rotate in Windows Explorer OR possibly opened in M/S Office Picture Manager where you can niftily open a whole folder and quickly sort your photos by deleting, cropping, auto correct, resize or whatever, before sorting into folders for storage. (I do not have M/S Office on my Win8 pc - bear this in mind when I get to codecs...). the sorted folders were then transferred to my external hard drive where they have been for the last couple of years before being copied to my new Win 8 pc with PSE/PRE11 where I encountered the problem.

I have never had any problems with this in PRE8 – in fact despite what everyone says about PRE8 I mostly got on with it just fine.

So to see what's going on I recreated the workflow for a folder of 2 landscape and 2 portrait pics in both PSE/PRE8 with Windows Vista AND the problematic PSE/PRE11 with Windows 8. (I threw in the landscape pics to make sure the folder behaved the same as the ones in my original problem).

I copied a folder containing the same 4 photos from the HDD to each computer.

On the pc with Vista I opened the folder using Windows Explorer and the pics were showing in the correct orientation. I right clicked to rotate the portrait mode to landscape and then closed the folder. In PSE8 I selected process multiple files, selected the folder and resized to 1000 w. There were no errors in processing and these photos showed the right way up in Windows Explorer also when opened in PSE8 and when added to a project in PRE8.
Further, I transferred these processed pics to the pc with Win8/PSE11/PRE11 and they transferred perfectly in correct orientation including when viewed in Windows Explorer, opened in PSE11 and when added to a PRE11 project.

On the pc with Win8 I opened the folder using Windows Explorer and the pics were showing the correct way up. I right clicked to rotate and closed the folder. In PSE11 I selected process multiple files, selected the folder and resized to 1000 w. At this point I fleetingly got an error message about a codec which was on and off my screen before I could digest. Although the pictures were correctly resized the process log says: error- does not recognise file extension -25600. I continued to open the folder in Explorer and rotate the pics back to their correct orientation.

I then opened PRE11 and added the processed folder. I got an error message: Add Media Failure, Process Multiple files txt., Error Message: This type of file is not supported or the required codec is not installed. However the pics did all come into the project but the portrait ones were the wrong way up. When on the time line I can right click and open in PSE11 where they open the right way up. I can also rotate them directly on the time line.

TO SUMMARISE:

The pics batch processed in PSE8 and then rotated in Vista Win Explorer opened perfectly in every case: Windows Explorer Vista and Win8, PSE8/PRE8 and PSE11/PRE11

The pics batch processed in PSE11 and then rotated in Win 8 Explorer only showed the right way round in Win 8 Explorer and PSE11 but NOT PRE11. They do NOT show the right way up in Vista Explorer when transferred back via memory stick (they also look the wrong way round on the memory stick) but they DO open up the right way round in PSE8 but not in PRE8.

So I am thinking this has something to do with either the batch processing in PSE11 or (more likely) the way Windows 8 Explorer turns the pictures round and passes this info to versions of Premiere Elements.

Now I think about it I have had several messages about codecs when adding media to this first PRE11 project. There are a lot of image, video and sound files in this project. I think I may set up the project again and pay closer attention to the messages and which files they relate to.

How and where do I get these missing codecs?

Are there specific problems with using PSE/PRE with Windows 8 as I have another problem which I previously posted regarding saving jpegs in PSE11 uaing Win8 which I never previously encountered with Vista and PSE8?

Regards

[Steve Grisetti]

"How and where do I get these missing codecs?"

I wouldn't mess with adding codecs. With few exceptions, you can get yourself into trouble with them.

Better to start a new thread discussing this issue. List the camcorders your video is coming from and we'll help you figure out the best workflow.

[Bob]

... the process log says: error- does not recognise file extension -25600. I continued to open the folder in Explorer and rotate the pics back to their correct orientation.

I then opened PRE11 and added the processed folder. I got an error message: Add Media Failure, Process Multiple files txt., Error Message: This type of file is not supported or the required codec is not installed.

Is your computer set to display the file name extensions? At the very least, you have some bad file names. The message in the process log says you have an extension of "25600" instead of "jpg" or some other photo related extension. The second error message also relates to an unknown file extension. The first thing you need to do is find out why those names are incorrect.

[wyzboing]

Thanks to everyone for your input. As I mentioned towards the end of my last post I have a problem with saving jpegs in PSE11 which I never had with PSE 8 or Vista. In PSE11 Provided I type in .jpg when saving as, the file saves ok. If I don't type in the file extension then presumably the program just tries to read whatever comes after one of the full stops which is not a recognisable extension and does not save a viable file. I previously posted this as a separate post I think on the PSE11 forum. From another post I found elsewhere on the web I think it is to do with my practice of using full stops (periods) in my file names. If this is the case I am going to be in loads of trouble because just about every file I own has full stops in to describe times and dates. Eg: Paris Montage on 9.4.13 at 2.15 pm.jpg - I have done this all my digital life (without ever having to type in the file ext manually) and it has never been a problem until now and I feel that the rotation problem is possibly not related to the file ext. problem but I may be wrong. The file ext error message may just be coincidental and a separate issue. If this were connected to the rotation issue surely none of the files would be saved or recognised as virtually all have full stops in their names?

I think my next move will be to install PSE/PRE 8 on my Win8 pc. If the problems replicate I can blame Windows 8. If not I will try installing PSE/PRE11 on my vista pc. Hopefully this will narrow down the source of the problems. If this is not a known problem and there is no obvious solution I think I need to pin point the problem soonest and devise a work-around or alternative workflow as I now feel bogged down in technicalities.

Many thanks again.

[wyzboing]

Chris B - does the pilpi utility rotate all the jpgs in a folder? What if some of them are the right way round anyway?

Regards

[wyzboing]

No it's not just me! I found someone else with the same problem:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-customize/picture-manager-not-recognizing-jpg-rotations-in/fa9bc0ed-7443-42b6-bf6d-c00ff98a6c8f

They were using Picture Manager, which I don't have on my Windows 8 pc which suggests to me that it is a Windows 8 Explorer problem and hopefully at some point this will be fixed.

On reflection I saw no point in trying PRE/PSE 8 on my Win 8 pc as this was even less likely to be compatible than 11. I had to bite the bullet and go back to my original images on my Vista pc, picked out all the portrait ones and as they were already the right way up I just put them all in one folder and batch processed them in PSE8 to the right size before transferring them to the Win 8 pc where I am making my project in PRE11- which can now see them the right way up. I guess I could also have transferred them and then batch processed them in PSE11 successfully as it is the rotation in Windows Explorer 8 that seems to be the problem.

I have also unravelled my file extension problem which I will post here:
http://muvipix.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=11782

Many thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.

[Chris B]

Chris B - does the pilpi utility rotate all the jpgs in a folder? What if some of them are the right way round anyway?

No - it checks the orientation information and only rotates the ones that need it. It then unsets the info so nothing else rotates them afterwards. It's a great little tool - will do you entire collection in one go if you let it.