PE7 Crashing when in Edit with List view

[Finnkai]

I have a strange problem and wonder if anyone else has seen it. PE7 is generally pretty stable on my Dell laptop running Vista but always seems to crash if I go to one type of screen.

If I select "Edit" and scroll down through my Project's clips in the "List" view the programme crashes with a message like PE7 has encountered a problem and needs to shutdown. However, if I do the same thing in "Icon" view there is no problem.

I guess the answer is to stop using "List" view but it kind of bugs me that it doesn't work. Any ideas?

PS I've tried to do all the things recommended for Vista in Steve Grisetti's book and have also done a defrag.

[Paul LS]

Welcome Finnkai, I have never heard of that problem before. Hopefully someone may be a long later who has seen the same issue.

[Steve Grisetti]

Hi, Finnkai! Welcome to Muvipix!

Can you tell us about the media that's in your Project media panel?

What type of camcorder did this video come from and how did you get it into your computer?

[Finnkai]

The material consists of quite a number of video clips from a Panasonic mini-DV camera captured via PE7; some .wma sound files and some still photos loaded via PSE7. All are stored in a folder on the laptop's second hard drive (D:\).

As I explained the clips don't give a problem in Organiser mode or in "Icon" view when on the Edit/Project screen. It's only when scrolling in "List" that the program crashes.

[Steve Grisetti]

Hmm. None of those file formats is troublesome.

I'd recommend you make sure your photos are sized to no larger than 1000x750 pixels in size before you try to use them in a project. That's pretty standard. Photos larger than that can choke a timeline.

But even huge photos usually don't corrupt the Project media panel.

You say the media consists of "quite a number' of video clips? How large a number? Like 10-20 or more like 50-100?

I suppose it's possible that you could have so many that it would overload if you didn't have sufficient RAM or free, defragmented space on your C drive. How are your system specs?

It's also possible that your second hard drive isn't set up a NTFS but is at the factory default FAT32. FAT32 drives have a file size limit that could choke a project too.

[Finnkai]

I have just tried to recreate the problem while watching the CPU usage and memory in Task Manager.

If I scroll very slowly by using the arrow in the scroll bar it seems to be OK. However I notice that it uses quite a bit of CPU each time the files move. If I drag the scroll bar so the clips move much faster (or repeatedly press the arrow) this seems to lead to the crash and the program reports "Adobe Premiere Elements.exe has stopped working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

Steve, I purchased your book on PSE7/PE7 and therefore have re-sized the stills to the right resolution so don't think that is a factor.

The laptop has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor 2GHz and 4GB of RAM.

There are a lot of clips - around 200. Most of them aren't used but were captured and just ended up in the Project (I think because they were automatically put on the timeline at capture and then had to be removed (deleted) but stay as part of the project. I am only just learning the difference between files/clips being a part of the project or just appearing within Organiser. I must admit I find this quite confusing and last night couldn't understand why some clips visible in Organiser couldn't be found in Editor - I think I now know why this can happen but only after searching and finding a useful post on this site!

So perhaps I should remove all the files/clips I am not using in the Project from my Project and then only move in clips from the organiser when and if I need them? Is there a good way to go through the Editor/Project list (which shows how many times a clip is used) and remove clips which are not being used?
Maybe we're getting somewhere!

[Steve Grisetti]

Yes, I think you're right, Finnkai. The program is just overloading when you scroll through those 200 files too quickly.

The easiest way to clear out your Project media panel would be to click on the Used column so that the panel sorts your media clips so that the clips used in your project (with a green check mark in this column) move to the top of the list. You should then be able to scroll and select groups of the unused clips, right-click and select the option to Clear. (They won't be removed from your hard drive. They'll just be removed from the Project panel.)

Another option would be to create a folder or two in the Project media panel and drag groups of your clips into sub-folders so you're not trying to scroll through a list of 200 clips on one screen.

Does that help?

Meantime, hope you're finding my book helpful. We really do put a lot of effort into making our Muvipix Guides as concise and as full of helpful information as possible!

[Finnkai]

Steve

Thanks that makes sense, have now cleared a huge number of unused clips and, touch wood, no crashes so far!

And, yes, your book, the tutorials and the forum are proving a great source of support. Please keep up the good work, I'm sure I'll be back for more.

Finnkai

[Steve Grisetti]

Best news I've heard all day! Thanks, Finnkai!