Adobe, Didn't You Know SP2 Was Coming Out?

[Jason Dunn]

Neil Enns from our review team sent me this rant and I thought it was worth making into a front page post. How many of you were bitten by this problem? Neil writes...

"As part of our planning for Hawaii my wife and I dropped a bundle on the Adobe Video Collection, in anticipation of all the editing fun we would have when we returned. Everything worked fine until it came time to export the movie to MPEG to burn to a DVD.

It turns out that Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 has miserable problems on Windows XP SP2 machines with Hyperthreaded CPUs. This manifests itself in a couple of ways, most annoyingly in a complete inability to export movies as MPEG using Adobe Media Encoder. The failures are random and the error messages useless. I'm also incapable of generating a complete rendered previews of my movies; the rendering fails silently. A search through the Adobe support site turns up absolutely no KB articles about these issues. The only way I found out I wasn't the only one having the problem was to read Adobe's user forums.

Windows XP SP2 has been in beta and Microsoft has been warning companies to test their software against it for at least a year. For a company like Adobe to allow such egregious problems to persist without so much as a KB article is inexcusable. C'mon Adobe! Where's the fix?"

Ouch, that's gotta' hurt - yet it's something I see every time there's a major update of Windows (usually a new version of the OS though). I remember when Windows 2000 came out - I wasn't able to use any of my external hardware (printer, scanner, etc.) for months until the drivers came out. Talk about a poor customer experience!

[Jason Kravitz]

That's why I wait before upgrading to a new MS service pack or OS level :?

Neil - sorry for you pain buddy - Adobe should have been testing this more thoroughly.

[Doug Johnson]

I hate to say it, but this is typical of Adobe. They really shy away from admitting fault with their products, and very rarely publish updates. But it is well known among those that use Adobe products regularly that they do have problems.

I had an issue with Premiere Pro not rendering any video with a drop shadow on it. I spent about 4 hours on the phone with their tech support, and they absolutely refused to admit that the software had a problem. They insisted it was a problem with my video card (????) even though I installed a new video card in the computer while I was on the phone with the support rep.

When they do release updates, it is in the form of a version upgrade, which you have to pay for.

Not a very favorable support policy, if you ask me.

[Neil Enns]

Sadly that's the gist of what I've heard on the Adobe forums too. I've been a heavy Photoshop user for a long time, but it's been relatively bug-free. This one is so egregious though that I sure hope I won't have to wait for a fix.

Rumors are that because the MPEG2 encoder piece is actually licensed from another company, it might be even longer until the problem is fixed.

So, I'm left with two possible workarounds: 1) uninstall SP2 (HA!) or 2) turn off hyperthreading in the BIOS and reinstall Windows.

Neil

[Jason Dunn]

So, I'm left with two possible workarounds: 1) uninstall SP2 (HA!) or 2) turn off hyperthreading in the BIOS and reinstall Windows.

Or just output a DV-AVI file and use another MPEG encoder, perhaps one that comes with DVD burning software.

[Neil Enns]

I tried that, but Premiere Pro dies trying to export my whole movie as DV-AVI as well. The failure is totally silent, the encoding dialog just goes away.

I can get by with exporting pieces of the movie and then having Encore DVD transcode them to MPEG, but then I can't put chapter markers where I want (since they're all in separate pieces).

:evil:

Neil

P.S. Hey! This is my 100th post. :bday: :rock on dude!:

[Doug Johnson]

Or just output a DV-AVI file and use another MPEG encoder, perhaps one that comes with DVD burning software.
Problem with doing that is that you introduce two different types of compression artifacts into the video. If you have Premiere Pro encode the video you don't introduce any DV artifacts into the video on any portions that have to be rendered.

I was greatly relieved to find out that titles on video a video I have been working on that showed artifacts when rendered to DV don't show the same artifacts when rendered to MPEG directly from PP. Had I been forced to export to DV first, then convert to MPEG, I would have had artifacts from both DV and MPEG. Ick.

[Jason Dunn]

I tried that, but Premiere Pro dies trying to export my whole movie as DV-AVI as well. The failure is totally silent, the encoding dialog just goes away.

Wow, that's insane! So, really, NO export works?? Ouch. :evil:

[Jason Dunn]

Problem with doing that is that you introduce two different types of compression artifacts into the video.

I haven't used the latest version of Premiere Pro, but if their DV-AVI codec is creating artifacts, something is very wrong. DV-AVI compression is supposed to be extremely slight, no more than 5 to 1, so seeing compression artifacts on a DV-AVI expoert is very unusual. I've rountinely done double exports on DV-AVI and never seen ANY compression artifacts. It just shouldnj't be possible. It's like trying to eyeball the difference between a JPEG at 99% quality and one at 97% quality - there is some compression, but it's so slight it's impossible to see...

So I'm inclined to think that Premiere Pro's DV-AVI export is badly flawed based on what you're saying...

[butch]

So, I'm left with two possible workarounds: 1) uninstall SP2 (HA!) or 2) turn off hyperthreading in the BIOS and reinstall Windows.

I don't see why you would have to reinstall Windows?
XP wiil see only 1 Processor if you disable HT in the BIOS, you may need to refresh it in the Device manager...

[Neil Enns]

I don't see why you would have to reinstall Windows?

Apparently it uses a totally different HAL for Hyperthreaded CPUs, which requires a re-install.

But, there's good news! The smart folks on the Adobe Forums have discovered a workaround. Rename the "Adobe Premier Pro.exe" and "Adobe Premier Pro.exe.manifest" files to something else. I just dropped the "Adobe" from in front of both. Result? Exporting works perfectly.

Apparently there was a specific fix in prior version of Windows for Adobe Premier Pro to work around an issue that was later resolved by SP2. But the SP2 update didn't remove the workaround, so some sort of weird interaction happens that causes the export problem.

Neil