PREL 8 running low on system memory...fixes haven't yet worked!

[heyruthie]

OK. I've read a few other posts where others are encountering this. i will try to give as much info as possible. probelm arises at about the 50% mark during the DVD burning process. I get the "system is very low on memory proceed with caution" message. when i close the message, the burn process says "transcoding error." sometimes when i close this out, PREL crashes and burns too.

computer info:
OS: Windows 7 home premium 64 -bit
PREL 8 (already downloaded 8.01 patch --I *think* it is in effect!)
ATI video card
8 GB RAM
2.6 GHz intel processor
744 GB free on C drive
only 2 GB free on D drive--which is supposed to only be the recovery partition....but i'm wondering if this is a problem.....

project info:
NTSC
video files originally from mini DV camcorder, along with titles transitions and other PREL basic effects. files are .avi.
some audio files in .mp3 format
project is about 1 hour long--it's an infant baptism
1 opening menu with 3 subsequent menus, totalling 12 "chapters."
two sets of titles: opening and closing "credits"


so far, I have:
updated Quicktime
downloaded 8.01 patch
cut project length in half (was originally nearly 2 hours long)
turned off the "auto-preview" stuff
rendered the entire project several times
rebooted countless times
a ton of other stuff i can't remember right now....i've been working on this for about 8 hours......please help!

P.S. i'm a newbie here and do *not* have a technical background--totally self-taught. so please be understanding ;-)

[ATR]

heyruthie

While I think about the whole picture some more, just some basics to get out of the way...

a. Go to Edit Menu/Preferences/General and verify that there is no check mark next to the automatic Background Rendering option.

b. In the Premiere Elements workspace, click on Organizer in the row below the active Organize (Blue) Header to open the Elements Organizer. In the Elements Organizer workspace, go to the Edit Menu/Preferences/AutoAnalzyer Options and make sure that they are all turned OFF. To get back to the Premiere Elements workspace from the Elements Organizer workspace, in the Elements Organizer workspace go to File Menu/Exit.

c. Next, in the Premiere Elements workspace, go to Edit Menu/Preferences/Scratch Disks and see where all the scratch files are directed and how much free space is at each location. Also, wherever that location, check the Adobe Folder for pile ups, especially previews (Preview Files Folder) and conformed audio (Media Cache Folder)

d.

1 opening menu with 3 subsequent menus, totalling 12 "chapters."
two sets of titles: opening and closing "credits"

What specific DVD Menu? How many Timeline markers...main menu, scene, or stop? Are you saying that you have 1 main menu page with three scene selection pages, each with 4 scene thumbnails? To what extent, if any, have you customized this Adobe menu or is this a from scratch menu created by you in Photoshop CS or higher? When you reach the burn dialog, what does the burn dialog say for Space Required and Bitrate? You mention that you cut 2 hours down to 1 hour and still no go. What happens if you separately remove all the titles from the whole...see if that has any impact on the situation. Then do the same thing, but this time with all traces of the menus and Timeline marker as the variable. Go or no go?

e. What is your project preset in the new project dialog...NTSC or PAL DV Standard or Widescreen? What is your preset for export as DVD-VIDEO...standard or widescreen?

Let us clear all of the above out of the way and then we will decide what next if necessary.

Thanks.

ATR

[heyruthie]

OK! I'll get you the info as fast as I can!

Originally Posted by ATR

a. Go to Edit Menu/Preferences/General and verify that there is no check mark next to the automatic Background Rendering option.

Yes. Did this already.

Originally Posted by ATR

b. In the Premiere Elements workspace, click on Organizer in the row below the active Organize (Blue) Header to open the Elements Organizer. In the Elements Organizer workspace, go to the Edit Menu/Preferences/AutoAnalzyer Options and make sure that they are all turned OFF. To get back to the Premiere Elements workspace from the Elements Organizer workspace, in the Elements Organizer workspace go to File Menu/Exit.

No--at least I don't think so. I just *tried* to do it, and the whole program crashed Will go back in and try again. It seemed confusing, and then it crashed.

Originally Posted by ATR

c. Next, in the Premiere Elements workspace, go to Edit Menu/Preferences/Scratch Disks and see where all the scratch files are directed and how much free space is at each location. Also, wherever that location, check the Adobe Folder for pile ups, especially previews (Preview Files Folder) and conformed audio (Media Cache Folder)

They were originally directed towards the external hard drive that holds the .avi files. Before I posted here, I had already redirected them all to my C drive, since there was a lot of space on it. I was really hoping that would solve the problem since years ago when I was using Premiere (full version) that was a usual fix. But I just kind of slapped them into an empty folder on C--did I need to redirect them to a specific location or type of location?

Originally Posted by ATR

d. What specific DVD Menu? How many Timeline markers...main menu, scene, or stop? Are you saying that you have 1 main menu page with three scene selection pages, each with 4 scene thumbnails? To what extent, if any, have you customized this Adobe menu or is this a from scratch menu created by you in Photoshop CS or higher? When you reach the burn dialog, what does the burn dialog say for Space Required and Bitrate? You mention that you cut 2 hours down to 1 hour and still no go. What happens if you separately remove all the titles from the whole...see if that has any impact on the situation. Then do the same thing, but this time with all traces of the menus and Timeline marker as the variable. Go or no go?

I'll try to answer all these. I'm using a "canned" menu from PREL (hoped in the beginning it would make things smoother.) it's the one with the "column" on it (ugly--but whatev.) it has spots for thumbnails. on the main menu, it asked for a still image. i took a freeze frame, and turned it into a .jpg and put it in there. the rest of the 3 menus are the "scene selection" sub-menus. each sub-menu has 3 scene selections with thumbnails that were randomly chosen by PREL based on where the scene marker was. I took another look, and realized I only have a total of 9 scene markers, each having a thumbnail on a sub-menu. (3 sub-menus, 3 scenes each, plus one main menu with a "play all" or "scene selection" choice.) i'll try the other suggestions now.

Lastly--I jsut tried something different. I exported to a file on my computer--as an mpg file. any thoughts on now burning to DVD??? maybe i can work around PREL now.....but i don't even know what my HP computer can do.....

Originally Posted by ATR

e. What is your project preset in the new project dialog...NTSC or PAL DV Standard or Widescreen? What is your preset for export as DVD-VIDEO...standard or widescreen?

Let us clear all of the above out of the way and then we will decide what next if necessary.

Thanks.

ATR

[ATR]

heyruthie

First order of business...make sure that the automatic AutoAnalzyer feature (Elements Organizer/Edit Menu/Preferences/AutoAnalzyer Options) is OFF, no matter what. The automatic Background Rendering and AutoAnalzyer features of Premiere Elements 8.0/8.0.1 are two major resource grabbers that will kill a project. The answer may be that. Just slowly follow the path from Premiere Elements to the Elements Organizer and back.

Assuming you have an external hard drive (formatted NTFS) or a supplemental drive with adequate free space for the job, create a folder there called Premiere Elements 8.0/8.0.1 Scratch Files. Then open Premiere Elements,
a. In the new project dialog, browse and set the Save In: to that newly created folder. That will get the project.prel file there. Be sure to set for a project preset that matches the properties of your sources media...if DV AVI standard, then DV Standard and if DV widescreen, DV Widescreen.
b. then, when the workspace opens, go to Edit Menu/Preferences/Scratch Disks and browse to and select that newly created folder as the location for each of the Scratch disks categories.

Your source media should be DV AVI already if they came from DV Capture firewire into the Premiere Elements Capture Window. DV AVI is a native format of the Premiere Elements Timeline and is typical the format of choice to bring to the Timeline. Do anything is particular happen to these files on the route from the miniDV camcorder to the Premiere Elements Timeline? If your Timeline were any other format than, DV AVI, I would suggest that you convert the Timeline content to DV AVI.

It is now time for a definite answer for:
a. if you take just all titles from the project, does it go to successful completion?
b. if you take just all DVD menu/Timeline markers from the project, does it go to successful completion?
c. you said that you cut the project in half (2 hours to 1 hour), that did not help...depending on how "a" and "b" go, we could look for an offending part in that Timeline content, section by section of the Timeline until we pin point the problematic place...could be gaps, placement of a title, effect, transition, Timeline marker....

Also, please check back to tell me exactly what the name of the DVD Menu is.

When all is said and done, let me ask this...have you tried to start this project as a new project from scratch or have you been trying to salvage what you built and partially unbuilt in this one project?

We will be watching for your results.

ATR

[heyruthie]

OK. this is a big list of new things to try, and my window is closed for a little while until i get my kids in bed. i just went to Office Depot for some new DVDs. Speaking of, should i be using DVD+R or DVD-R. I bought both.

alternately, the /mpg file did save/export to my computer and I was able to burn it to a DVD. However, the .mpg that PREL created was video-only. No audio. Is that always the case? Because at this point, I have been able to burn a lovely silent copy of my movie (using and external program called Power2Go, which seemed to come with my HP media edition computer.) is there any way I can get PREL to export a file with both audio and video in .mpg format? I could just use another program to burn....

i will try all these different fixes and update this thread!

[heyruthie]

ok. big snag. it wasn't a fluke: the elements organizer crashes every time. won't even open. i get the following message: "Adobe has detected that the application Elements Organizer has unexpectedly quit." What now?

[ATR]

heyruthie

Let us see how you do with the "to do" list.

But, here is what I am going to do to see if I can help you with the export of a .mpg file with audio.

Under Share/Personal Computer/ I am assuming that you used MPEG. But once you selected MPEG, what did you set for the preset...NTSC DVD Standard or other? Now click on the Advanced Button for whatever was your choice of preset and go to the Audio Tab. The Audio Tab will show a setting for Audio Formats with choices of Dolby Digital, MPEG, or PCM. What was it set at when you did your .mpg export that ended up with video but no audio?
If it was Dolby Digital, try again with MPEG selected or vice versa.

But, if you have source media = DV AVI you should not be having these crashes related to the format of the video...except..what is the comparison in file size between your DV AVI and that .mpg?

We will continue to watch for your results. Do not give up. Success is right around the corner...we just need to identify the right corner.

ATR