I can't Burn DVD - transcoding error

[tiny]

Hi,
i'm trying to burn my dvd movie in premiere element. and when i click on the 'burn dvd' button and burn. it says encoding media transcoding error. i've waited for a while and burn dvd progess does not seemed to work.
i'm not sure what i'm doing wrong, can anyone please help me, this is frustrating. Has anyone experience same and solved the problem?

Thanks
Cam

[tfry]

Hi,

A couple of questions to get started figuring out your problem..

Version 1.0 or 2.0?

Have you restarted your computer and tried to burn the project again?

Heres a FAQ for DVD Burn Problems from the Mother Ship (Adobe)

Let me know if any of this solves your issue, if not, I'll keep looking :)



1. How long is your video project? A single-sided DVD can hold only about an hour of video. Also, larger projects need huge amounts of scratch disk space, as discussed in the next question.

2. How much free space do you have on your drive? In addition to room for your native video files and the output files you are going to create, you'll also needs lots of free, contiguous space on your hard drive for temp files and scratch disk space. Keep at least 20 gigabytes of space free on your drive. More for larger projects. And, if space gets tight, try defragmenting the drive before attempting an output.

3. Can you burn to a folder? An alternative to burning directly to a disk is to burn your DVD files to a folder on your hard drive. This has the added advantage of removing the possibility of an out-of-date or incompatible DVD burner driver from the mix. Once these files are burned to your hard drive, your standard DVD burner software can burn them to your DVD.

4. Are you using non-DV-AVI video files? MPEGs and other non-DV-AVI files can choke the encoding process in Premiere Elements 1.0. Try removing them from your project and seeing if your DVD encoding will complete. Also, see the workaround in step 7.

5. Is a transition or effect stalling the process? Occasionally an effect or transition can corrupt and stall the encoding process. If your encoding seems to abort at exactly the same point, it may be worth removing some transitions or effects and seeing of your DVD encoding will complete. Also, see the workaround in step 7.

6. If you are using photos, how large are your photo files? When several unnecessarily large photos files are used in a project, the program can often bog down trying to downsample them. Photo resolution rarely needs to be greater than 1500 x 950 pixels. See the FAQ on photo resolution for more information.

7. One way to avoid or work around problems occuring in the rendering process is to export your completed video project as an AVI movie, import that AVI into a new project and then produce your DVD from this project file. Providing Premiere Elements a pre-rendered project allows it to go straight into the DVD encoding process and removes from the mix the potential challenges in dealing with unusual video files or corrupted transitions or effects.

[tiny]

Hi,
Using PE v1.0, restarted program but still same problem.

1. video project approx 30mins

2. 'C' drive 23gig and 'D' drive 21gig

3. Cannont burn to folder either, same error msg - encoding media transcoding error (maybe i'm missing a codec file etc?)

4. this project only contains photos taken from my 5megapixel camera, i haven't reduced the resolution (1920 x 2560 pxl). In future if i can get this program to work i'll start using video files .MOD - i normally just change the extension to .AVI or .MPG so PE can recognise and open the files (i know this might not be the proper way to do it, but it works)

5. Not sure if transition is the problem, the burning process doesn't even activate. I've tried loading PE onto my other older computer and using same project, it is encoding the media and burning successfully to folder but it takes at least 5hrs to do so. I've created the project using my laptop Pentium III 1.6ghz, 798mhz, 1gig ram, Win XP and since then i ran to all sort of problems and still cannot burn to disc nor folder.

6. i will try reducing the photo res, if this might help.

7. Ok will try exporting as AVI file. i think i may have to reinstall the program anyways - i've tried exporting as MPEG and it crashed several times too.

This is such a good program but it's ashame i can't get it to work 8(

[tfry]

You don't need to change file formats to bring in photos....
That could be part of the problem.

Just click the add media and go find them, I bring jpegs in all the time.

I think the image size maybe another part of the problem, try bringing down the size a bit as well as not changing the file extention.

I use fairly large files when I photos in but not *that* large.

Let me know :)

[tiny]

Hi,
I don't change the extention on my jpg files. i've tried reducing the resolution of the jpg files as you said - and burn project to folder/disc and i get same problem - encoding media transcoding error.
I haven't even started to use video files yet, it's just created using still photos.

i cannot work this out, driving me nuts..

thanks for trying anyways.. i think i'll have to just live with it..

[tfry]

Hrm,
You said it works ok on your other system?
If that's the case it is probably something with your system itself.

Let me do some more checking :)

btw, what are the file formats in our project that you are having problems with?

[skicat]

I had the exact same problem. I called Adobe support & everything. I thought I might have to reinstall Elements. Luckily, I found the solution & I hope that it works for you as well.
Is your Screen Saver feature turned on? I found that when I left the DVD to "burn", it would stop just like yours does with the same message- transcoding error. What the problem was, was that when the keyboard is idle for a period of time, the screen saver comes on. For some reason, this messed up the encoding to DVD., This solved my problem, let me know if it solves yours! :wink:

[tfry]

Skicat,

Great piece of information!

Let's hope that's the problem, as I haven't found any thing else weird
that it could be so far.

Thanks for sharing that :)

Cam,

Please let us know if that turns out to be the problem.

[tiny]

Hi,
I've tried everything possible but still unsuccessful. Tried to disable all that's mentioned fr Skitcat, still no luck.
I know it's something on my system is the cause because tested on two my other desktop and they work fine.

My Acre laptop specs:
- Intel pentium M730, 1.6ghz
- ATI Mobility Radeon X700 PCI Express 128mb vram
- 80 gig HDD
- 1 gig ram
- WinXp w/ service pack 2

My burner is working fine. 'Encoding media transcoding error' come only when i'm trying to burn my movie project.prtl - to disc or folder

I will keep trying to find a solution, until then thanks for your help so far guys, greatly appreciated. And when and if i solve it i will let you know.

Cam

[tfry]

Hi,
Sorry you are still having problems :(

Have you tried this workaround yet?
Export to avi or mpeg and use the software that came with your DVD burner. You shouldn't see any quality loss.

Also how much room on your HD do you have on the machine that you are having problems with?

Oh, you don't have antivirus software running do you while you are trying to encode? If so try turning that off during the encoding.

Still pokin around for an answer...:)

[tiny]

Hi,
the workaround exporting to avi works but it crashes on exporting to mpeg. Tried exporting to mpeg from my other computer and it works. So the laptop has definitely got conflicting problems..so frustrating. :cry:

I have at 19gig on 'D' and 23gig on 'C' drive.

Disabled everything..

I also have another DVD making program that came with my laptop when i bought it - Cyberlink Power Producer Gold. i haven't used it yet. could that program possible be conflicting with Premiere elements?

I guess i'll jsut have to live with exporting and then converting to Dvd option..

cam

[tfry]

Cam,

I'm not familiar with program, but when you start elminating everything else,
you look at whats left and if thats left...

Any way you could uninstall it, try PRE again then reinstall if it didnt help?

If you have the disc to reinstall the suspect program, I think it would be worth a try.

Let me know!

[GaryK]

Hi

I was just reading the thread..not a Premier user at all (no horsepower here) but after your last post, I wondered whether the cyberlink program may have one of those quick launch, or monitoring programs running in the background?
You might be able to find it from the tasklist ctrl/alt/del. You could also check in the system startup sectoin of msconfig or even in the services part of adminstrator tools.

Just a thought, and it could be something totally different.

[Noonsy]

I received a similar transcoding error during burning.

I managed to get around this by saving the file as a different name (for safety!), selecting all the video clips, deleting them, undoing this and then resaving the file. The file size was different and it burned ok.

Kind Regards

Rich

[AlanWS]

I have had same problem with PE1 as several people on this thread - repeated 'transcoding error' on export to DVD. I have tried almost all the logically sensible fixes suggested (re-install, defragment, reducing still picture sizes).

The only thing that has actually worked is the off-the-wall one of selecting all the video clips in the time line, deleting and then undoing the delete. I am deeply grateful to the person who came up with this (inexplicably not listed in this forum).

May one know why? Also, why PE1 has no proper listing of error messages either on paper or in Help?

AlanWS

[gabrra]

I am new to AP 1.0 and faced the same error message - transcoding error - when burning to DVD or to Folder.

I got around this problem by rendering my workspace first. Initially, upon running this function, I was getting an - unable to render - error message. As you know, if the render function works correctly, you get a green line in the timeline section. For some reason, some edited photos and videos would not accept any transitions and therefore, a red line appeared in the timeline above those photos and videos. Upon deleting them from the timeline and adding them back, rendering worked fine. Once I had a green line throughout the whole timeline window, I had no problem burning to DVD.

Hope this helps!

[jigawatt]

I ran into this same "transcoding error" problem when I was trying to burn DVDs. I'm using Elements 2.0 on Windows XP MCE. I was able to solve the problem on my machine, so maybe this will help out some of you.

I was using an older hard drive with FAT32 for my scratch disk. Even though I had plenty of free space on my drive, FAT32 limits individual files to less than 4GB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463). I switched my scratch disk for DVD encoding to my C drive (NTFS instead of FAT32), and then I could create the DVD without error.

Edit - Preferences - Scratch Disks - DVD Encoding (Browse)

To see if your hard drives are formatted with the FAT32 file system, go to My Computer, right click on your hard drive, and go to Properties.

[davyspurs]

I too have this problem.
My project is about 2 hours long and consists of videos, music and photos.
I have 50gig free space on my machine and it keeps coming up with transcoding error everytime.
I'm using premier elements 3.0

How do i go about exporting this to one avi file ?

[ATR]

davyspurs

Even though the symptoms present the same, the diagnosis may be different. So, if you wish to discuss this matter further with your details, I suggest that you start another thread so that your issue does not yet lost in an old and long thread.

All that being said, here is the answer to your question about creating a DV AVI file (This applies to standard video and the whole content of a video on the Timeline.)
Go to the File Menu/Export/Movie.
When you click OK in the process, you will find a copy of the DV AVI in your Media Panel as well as saved in the hard drive location that you designated in the dialog box.
One section of the dialog will give you the properties for the DV AVI that you are about to generate. There is a settings tab when needed, but for general purposes just click OK.
You can also create a DV AVI from just a portion of this video clip on the Timeline, but I will leave those details for another time if needed.

ATR

[eweaver]

I was getting the same transcoding error on my movie that is 1 hour and 8 minutes long. Thanks for all the tips! Here's what I did to fix the problem:

1) I saved a copy of my movie from my external drive (FAT32 file system) to my C: drive (NTFS file system).
2) Defragmented my C: drive.
3) Then I deleted a bunch of old files until I had 20 GIG of free space.

After doing these things my movie successfully burned to DVD.

I first tried to delete all the clips, undo, and then save the file again (as suggested above). This didn't work for me. Bummer deals it took 3 hours to get to the error!

Here's some more information about my system:
HP Pavilion
AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+ 2.08 GHz processor
960 MB of RAM
120 GB hard drive

[ATR]

eweaver

Thanks for the feedback.

Have you ever given serious thought to converting your external hard drive format from FAT32 to NTFS?

If so, what external hard drive do you have? Do you have how to for the conversion?

Your progress sounds good. Thanks again for helping others with your project follow up.

ATR