Perplexed with PE9

[nickky007]

Hi Steve, I did not mean to add new footage from _another_ camcorder to the same project (That definitely would not be good practice) but to add new footage from the _same_ camcorder (shot in the same recording mode) to the same project.
Example: You record a family party. The AVCHD recording quickly sums up to some 00080.MTS. You start your new project only with a subset of all clips in the STREAM folder. Let PrE9 choose its best match preset for project settings, Accept it and use it for the rest of the clips in your STREAM folder of that family party recording.
I may have misunderstood zimmedl+1's problem, though.

I just was going to add a quote from your important advice from "Can't view video":

...The best indicator is to place your clips on the timeline. If you don't see any red lines above your clips on the timeline, you've got an ideal match between source video and project settings...

[nickky007]

Now, I'm perplexed too! Maybe found another one of the fine 'features' of Pre9?!
1. You can't really on the mismatched project settings notification. It does not notify every mismatch of the first clip dragged into the timeline! Then you simply get the red mismatch line!

2. This reproducebly happens with my 1440x1080i TFF 25fps footage.
The 'PAL AVCHD HD 1080i 25' should be a good preset since it promises to serve 1440x180i AVCHD-camcorders, 16:9 interlaced,... so far so good.
But, then it shows General Edit mode: HDV 1080i ??????????
Which only Adobe could call consistent! I'm tempted to make a screenshot of this 'feature' (HDV for AVCHD h.264 ???)
Great Adobe Pre9 simply does not offer a preset for h.264 HD 1440x....
-> Red line!

Maybe zimmedl+1 is enjoying a similar service?

P.S. I have the impression, Adobe makes every effort to tease its customers and to give its competitors a fair chance.

[brenda]

I have been experiencing almost the exact same two bugs with Elements 9.

After the splash screen fully loads, and the squiggly line goes away in the middle of the New Project button (or whatever it is that indicates it's still loading) when I would click on the Open Project or New Project button the entire program would close. This started happening after I had successfully used Elements to edit a high def project. I reinstalled it several times. I saw on in this forum that there are several patches for Elements 9, and after installing the patch 9.01 the program started working again. Periodically I have encountered the same problem again - though not as often. After a while I realized that the problem is more likely to occur if I open Elements after I've been using the computer for a while. Since then I reboot the computer before opening Elements. If it crashes again, I reboot again. It's a very weird bug. I think something that is loading before Elements opens is interfering with it - probably some other media player. (Incidentally, I have Quicktime Alternative 1.8.1 - or whatever it is that Streamclip requires - on my hard drive. If I ever use Streamclip I have to reboot before I can use Elements, probably because Quicktime Alternative clashes with the latest Quicktime.)

I also had the very same problem with importing my widescreen standard footage from my Sony HDR-UX7 camcorder (which uses mini-DVDs). I used the presets recommended in Steve's Elements 9 book for DVD or harddrive standard DV 16:9, and I even tried every other standard widescreen preset listed in the chart on page 25. Whatever setting I used, I would get an error message saying the project settings do not match my clip, and asking whether I wanted to change the project settings to match the clip. Whether I said yes or no, the imported clip would come out squished up into 4:3 aspect ratio. Then I noticed that if I told it not to change the project settings, the monitor screen would be 16:9, but the clip would be 4:3 with black bars on the left and right side, and I experimented with going into properties and stretching the image to fit. It worked. The exported avi looks fine. Is there any way I can save this as my custom preset?

I've come to the conclusion that the standard widescreen preset is either defective or incapatible with my Sony. Back when I was using Elements 4, I couldn't import directly into Elements. As I learned from Steve's very excellent book for Elements 7, I had to use Streamclip to read the DVD from my computer's DVD drive and export the clip as an AVI which I could then edit using Elements. I was looking at the Streamclip settings that I used for widescreen and saw that to import widescreen standard footage, I would have to use the Apple DV/DVCPRO_NTSC setting and then go into options and change the aspect ratio to 16:9. I'm thinking this might be a clue to what's going wrong with Elements 9. The Elements widescreen preset doesn't change the aspect ratio to 16:9 when it imports the clip. If you let it change the project settings, it changes the project to 4:3.

The good news is that high def footage from the same camcorder imported flawlessly with Elements 9 using the settings Steve's book recommended.

[Steve Grisetti]

Glad you've found a solution, Brenda. Unfortunately, in locking down the program, Adobe has, at least as far as I can see, disabled the features for creating custom project settings. Sorry.

[zimmedl+1]

Some good suggestions. I guess I am somewhat of a purest in that when the presets specicially speak to my format Canon EOS and I check them, I expect them to work. I am beginning to wonder if it is not video related but audio related. I am using a Rode Stereo mic on my camera. I can't believe that is the problem but don't know what else to think of.
Anyway, I do allow PRE9 to fix it and hope that it will work. I have not tried adding more clips from the EOS to the timeline after the project has been saved and reopened. Will need to see if I continue to get mismatches or not.