Project rendering problem

[russhart]

I am working on one project where manual or backgrond rendering no longer works. I am left with a timeline with some clips showing red, and some with nothing at all. (I note that his issue was raised in another post but unfortunately it wasn't answered as the topic was different??)

When I manually render I get the render window where only the time elapsed and file name shows activity but no mention of frames completed and total frames, and no blue bar and % completed. After between 6 and 20 mins this window disappears and nothing has changed to green. With background rendering I see flashes of the words "background rendering" but no blue bar or % completed.

Thinking that I might have some corrupted render files I tried to delete them but the menu selection was greyed out. There are no rendered files in my preview folder. I have reviewed other projects and rendering works correctly for these, so there is something peculiar about this one. All clips are DV avi's in PAL 720x576. Photo images have been imported in their native resolution and while I know they should be reduced to around the same as the project I have other successful projects where this wasn't a problem.

I need to render so that I can preview the project before burning to a DVD as at present I am getting jerky playback (with the CTI also jerking at the same time). I was hoping that rendering may stop this from occurring.

Before I redo this whole 65 min project all over again is there anything that I can check that might cause this problem? If I do start all over again, might the same problem still occur?

[Steve Grisetti]

Hi, Russ. Welcome to Muvipix!

I definitely recommend you resize those photos to 1000x750 pixels. Bringing them in at native resolution can certainly choke the life out of a render. Photos taken directly from digital cameras can be 20-25 times the size of a video frame!

Also, check your Work Area Bar and ensure it covers your whole project! The program will only render what's under the Work Area Bar.

[russhart]

Hi Steve,

Tks for your quick response. I have started resizing my photos but as the native size in other projects didn't cause any problems I didn't want to waste more time.

Yes the work area bar was across the whole timeline of the project.

[Steve Grisetti]

Unfortunately, it's most likely your photo size is your problem. (It's typical that sometimes it works and sometimes it chokes on larger photos.)

You can try setting your Work Area Bar over short segments and see if you can render your timeline just a little at a time. (Try it with the non-large photos first.) Most likely, at the native resolution photos, you'll see the slowest rendering -- or none at all.

[Chuck Engels]

1. You can also try doing a "Save As" and see if the saved project with a new name gives better results.

2. Clearing the cache, Edit/Preferences/Media and press the 'Clean' button.

3. Try starting Premiere Elements while holding down the LEFT Shift and Ctrl keys, this will flush the cache and preferences. Ctrl shift will clear the preferences but not the plugins cache which is in the registry. To clear the plugins cache press and hold shift while starting premiere elements.

4. Another thing to try is to delete your prefences folder in C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR NAME\Application Data\Adobe\Premiere Elements\8.0 (delete the complete Premiere Elements folder) it will be rebuilt next time you start PRE. Note it might be a hidden file on your PC and so you need to go to into Tools>Folder Options>View and select Show hidden files and folders. Note that this folder also contains all your custom preset settings for projects, effects, and transition so these will be deleted as well.

[russhart]

Steve,

I had already tried rendering a small area by reducing the work area bar to window width and not including any photos - rendering still fails. I will now replace all the photos reduced to 720 x 576 and see if that works.

Chuck,

I had already done your suggestions 1, 2, & 3 with no luck. I will try 4 but before I do can you please clarify if this removes "custom" presets only or do you mean all the references to transitions and effects in all my projects?

I have 2 possible clues which may be relevant. If rendering has not be done, why do I not have a red line across the whole project (work area bar is also across the whole project). What I have is red showing above my transitions and above parts of some clips. The remainder has no colour at all? Secondly as I have been trimming my clips to ensure that the transitions will work I have noticed in one area of the project that in the transition properties window the clips are shown in yellow and not grey. What does this mean?

[Steve Grisetti]

It might be worth posting a screen capture of your timeline so we can see what you mean, Russ.

If you don't have a red or green line above your clips on the timeline, it means you don't have to render them at all. This is the case with DV clips in a DV project and HDV clips in an HDV project.

However, you ALWAYS have to render photos. Is that not the case on your project?

[russhart]

Screenshot attached. Please note I have already tried Chuck's 4th suggestion with no success and I have also uninstalled an reinstalled PRE8 8.01

[Steve Grisetti]

Well, I certainly don't see anything obvious there, Russ.

You also seem to have plenty of room on your hard drive -- if that 185 gigs free is your C drive.

One thing that may or may not be relevant is that I've sometimes found my rendering choking if my C drive gets below 20 or 25 gigs free. This isn't because the program needs more than that amount of space to work but because it needs CONTIGUOUS space. So fragmentation can also choke your rendering. If I defrag and/or clear off some more space, I'm fine again. (BTW, I would never edit video with only 20 gigs free. That's just my C drive. I have about 750 gigs of secondary drive space for editing.)

Likewise, ensure that that second drive of yours is formatted to NTFS rather than FAT32. That too can choke video editing work. And, as Chuck recommends, clear your Media Cache (in Edit/Preferences) and clear your old rendered files and see if that makes a difference.)

But the biggest culprit remains oversized photos. Even a machine with a terrabyte of free space and lots of power can choke on photos much larger than video frame size.

[russhart]

Steve, I run O&O Defrag 12 in the background. Iv'e done all that Chuck suggested plus all my drives are in NTFS. I am now working through resizing all my photos and have my fingers crossed that you are correct??

PS. What about my comment regarding the clip color being yellow in the transition edit window, what does this mean?

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

If you click on the 'properties' for your system drive how much free space is reported? You'll be surprised at just how many .cfa files accumulate there over time and that may be the cause of the problem.

[Steve Grisetti]

I'm not sure what you mean by the transitions appear "yellow and gray". Is that showing in your screen capture above? I don't see it.

[russhart]

John

Yes I do have a large number of files in both my Media Cache and Media Cache Files folders. 100's are 0 bytes so should I delete these? Why are these not removed when you clear the Media Cache within PRE8?

Steve

Image attached. I have removed the clips from the project that were yellow coloured, but it made no difference to my rendering problem. However I would still like to know why these are yellow and not grey like all the other clips? Could it be because these are wide screen where the others are 4:3?

I have finally reduced all the photos to 864 x 576, but I can still not render this project, so they were not the cause of my issue. What next? Are there any log files or tools that can analyse the project to show if there are any errors?

[Steve Grisetti]

Sorry, Russ. I have no idea why this is.

For what it's worth, those clips on the Transitions Properties panel timeline are yellow on my version 8 screen also. Although I can render my clips easily.

[russhart]

Okay thanks. Looks like there are no answers and that I will have to redo the whole project from scratch.

Cheers