Timeline playback stops

[studio99]

My timeline playback randomly and frequently just stops. You can start it and it stops again in a few seconds. Other times it works just fine.
Rendered and unrendered clips
various formats
large projects and small

I have a Dell laptop, win7 prof, i7 processor, 4GB ram, nvidis graphics card

Any help would be appreciated. Very frustrating problem!

THanks

Pat Leach
studio99

[momoffduty]

Welcome Pat to Muvipix! One of our many tech experts will be along soon to help.

[VernonRobinson]

I am not at my computer right now, but PrEl will stop playing if it is not the program that has focus. When it stops are there other programs or pop-ups that have started?

Under Edit/Preferences, I believe you will find the setting that changes the playing behavior.

Regards,
-Vernon

[Steve Grisetti]

Also, you'll need to be more specific about which types of video this happens with. Even if this means you have to create a project just for experimenting and troubleshooting. (You aren't mixing formats in a project, are you?)

What model of camcorder is your video coming from?

When you set up your project, which settings did you select?

Have you cleaned and defragged your C drive?

[studio99]

Thanks for the response!
I've closed all other programs at the time I'm editing to try to avoid this problem. Of course, there is always stuff going on in the background in Windows. I'm not entirely sure how to prevent that and would welcome any suggestions

I've had this problem on a variety of types of footage ranging from a project shot on an iPhone in .mov format to mixtures of stock footage and still images.

My project setting is DV/AVI usually widescreen, sometimes 4:3

I've never worried about mixing formats in a project. I used Premiere Pro 1.5 for several years on a fairly limited XP machine and combined avi, mov, jpg and other formats within a single project and don't recall any significant issues once the timeline was rendered.
Doesn't rendering conform everything to the project settings therby making it one format when it's playing off the rendered preview files?

If it doesn't work this way in PE9, what's the fix when you have multiple formats you want to combine in a single production?

Thanks again for your help! I really appreciate it.

(Incidently, my c drive is defragged, clean and in the bottom 50% range of full)

Pat

[RJ Johnston]

Playback stopping on it's own has been a problem in the last few versions. There's nothing you can do about it. At one point I used a utility called Windows Sniper. That encapsulated Premiere Elements in a bubble that was impervious to outside influences. But that got to be a pain to use. Besides the website is no longer there.

[studio99]

Any word on whether this issue is addressed in vs 10?

Pat

[Steve Grisetti]

Which issue?

As for mixing formats in the same project, it's almost never a good idea. I've even created a tutorial on dealing with it for our subscribers.

I've also created a free PDF Steve's Tips article on how to convert files to a common format.

To see both of these, just go to our home page and type "convert video" in the product search box.

[RJ Johnston]

While I was out I played back a standard definition MPEG-2 video with 3 effects applied in PRE10. When I came back, the video had played all the way through without stopping, 1 hour and 49 minutes. That's much better than previous versions, although I thought PRE9 was pretty good, too.

EDIT: I tried the same thing in PRE9 and within 30 seconds playback stopped.

[studio99]

Thanks for the help everyone.
I'm pleased to report that the problem is significantly better if not gone. Did 2 things:

1. pre converted all content to the project format and reimported prior to editing (Steve's suggestion. Thanks for the download suggestions, they were great information)

2. Removed a file in the program data format called BadDriver.txt based pn a suggestion I got in another forum. Here's the adobe tech note:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/515/cpsid_51526.html

I may also upgrade to 10 as it's not expensive and is rumored to work better on 64bit machines from what I've heard.

Thanks again for the help and input and I'll keep you posted on what goes on

Pat