Adobe Premiere Elements 4: Crash, Crash, Crash

[Jason Dunn]

I've seen that screen, or a variation of it, more times than I can count over the past week. Oh wait, I can count, thanks to the Windows Vista Problem Reports and Solutions: 11 times. How would you feel about an application that crashed 11 times in less than a week? Would you trust it with your work? Yeah, that's how I'm feeling about Premiere Elements 4. I won't bore you with the details, but I chronicled some of this over in the Adobe peer support forums.

The short version is that if you're seeing errors like this:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Adobe Premiere Elements.exe
Application Version: 4.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 46df9114
Fault Module Name: nvd3dum.dll

Then you should uninstall your NVIDIA video card drivers, reboot, and install the latest drivers. Using DriverCleaner.net isn't a bad idea either - video drivers always seem to leave pieces of themselves around after an uninstall.

If you're seeing an error like this:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Adobe Premiere Elements.exe
Application Version: 4.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 46df9114
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll

Then it might be from the preset you're using to render your video. I have no idea how a custom preset I had for a high-quality h.264 video could possibly cause an ntdll.dll crash, but once I deleted and re-created the preset, it started working again.

And, yes, once I finish this video editing project, I'm going to take a look at Sony Vegas - Adobe rarely if ever releases patches for their consumer-level software, so I want to get off the roller-coaster of buying every new version of Premiere Elements hoping that the new version will be something I can rely upon.

UPDATE: Looks like I spoke too soon. On my second editing project I tried doing the YouTube upload and it took five attempts, four of them crashing on ntdll.dll. When I finally got that uploaded, I next tried rendering an h.264 file, and it continued to crash on ntdll.dll for the next eight (!!) attempts. When I was opening the program again after one of the crashes, I saw a new crash error I hadn't seen before:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Adobe Premiere Elements.exe
Application Version: 4.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 46df9114
Fault Module Name: UIFramework.dll
Fault Module Version: 4.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 46df819d

I suspect that's more of a random crash than anything related to this particular problem. After eight attempts to create the h.264 file, I rendered it to a DV-AVI without a problem. When I attempted to render that DV-AVI file to an h.264 file, it completed without a problem.

I really dislike this software.

[Jason Dunn]

I've seen that screen, or a variation of it, more times than I can count over the past week. Oh wait, I can count, thanks to the Windows Vista Problem Reports and Solutions: 11 times. How would you feel about an application that crashed 11 times in less than a week? Would you trust it with your work? Yeah, that's how I'm feeling about Premiere Elements 4. I won't bore you with the details, but I chronicled some of this over in the Adobe peer support forums.

The short version is that if you're seeing errors like this:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Adobe Premiere Elements.exe
Application Version: 4.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 46df9114
Fault Module Name: nvd3dum.dll

Then you should uninstall your NVIDIA video card drivers, reboot, and install the latest drivers. Using DriverCleaner.net isn't a bad idea either - video drivers always seem to leave pieces of themselves around after an uninstall.

If you're seeing an error like this:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Adobe Premiere Elements.exe
Application Version: 4.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 46df9114
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll

Then it might be from the preset you're using to render your video. I have no idea how a custom preset I had for a high-quality h.264 video could possibly cause an ntdll.dll crash, but once I deleted and re-created the preset, it started working again.

And, yes, once I finish this video editing project, I'm going to take a look at Sony Vegas - Adobe rarely if ever releases patches for their consumer-level software, so I want to get off the roller-coaster of buying every new version of Premiere Elements hoping that the new version will be something I can rely upon.

UPDATE: Looks like I spoke too soon. On my second editing project I tried doing the YouTube upload and it took five attempts, four of them crashing on ntdll.dll. When I finally got that uploaded, I next tried rendering an h.264 file, and it continued to crash on ntdll.dll for the next eight (!!) attempts. When I was opening the program again after one of the crashes, I saw a new crash error I hadn't seen before:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Adobe Premiere Elements.exe
Application Version: 4.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 46df9114
Fault Module Name: UIFramework.dll
Fault Module Version: 4.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 46df819d

I suspect that's more of a random crash than anything related to this particular problem. After eight attempts to create the h.264 file, I rendered it to a DV-AVI without a problem. When I attempted to render that DV-AVI file to an h.264 file, it completed without a problem.

I really dislike this software.

[Vincent Ferrari]

It amazes me how much Elements has deteriorated over the years. I think you'll definitely like Vegas. I've been hearing good things about it lately. Hell, I even heard Pinnacle has improved their offering in their latest version but I haven't looked at them in years.

Good luck. Nothing is more frustrating than crashing while rendering video.

[bcre8v2]

I am currently using Pinnacle Studio Launcher 10.7 and also Premiere Elements 3.02.

After upgrading each to next version, I encountered nothing but frustration. Pinnacle is good, but sucks memory. PE keeps crashing even after "conforming" video of more than 30 minutes.
I have also tried Sony Vegas (the $99 version), but found it less than intuitive and taking too long to render longer clips. Any other suggestions from the Thoughts readers?

[timmy]

I have also tried Premiere 4 since I got Photoshop Elements recommended. I had the idea to buy the bundle, but have changed my mind....

I had a TV recording I recorded from my Pinnacle TV card, and the recording had some glitch in it which, when using Pinnacle Studio 10 (included with the TV card) to render the recorded mpg file to DVD, caused out of sync audio.
I thought Premiere might be able to fix this, but Premiere simply crashed when it encountered the position in the mpg file where the glitch was. No warnings or anything, just a crash dialog box...

Some people rant Pinnacles Studio, and there are some strange things with it, but I haven't seen it crash like Premiere.

By irony Google ads present a PS Elements/Premiere bundle on the same page where you show the crash dialog...

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by bcre8v2

Pinnacle is good, but sucks memory...I have also tried Sony Vegas (the $99 version), but found it less than intuitive and taking too long to render longer clips. Any other suggestions from the Thoughts readers?

I've been told by many people that Pinnacle 12 is a much, much better version than v9, v10, and v11. I'm hoping to carve aside some time to check it out in a couple of months. Regarding Sony Vegas, yeah, it's not as intuitive, but it's quite powerful and fast. I'm surprised you said it's taking it longer to render clips than other software...that surprises me, but I haven't tested the latest version, so I'm not quite as up to speed on it as I used to be.

Ulead stuff isn't bad...

[brianchris]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

I've been told by many people that Pinnacle 12 is a much, much better version than v9, v10, and v11. I'm hoping to carve aside some time to check it out in a couple of months.

Pinnacle version 12? Was that a typo? It looks like version 11 is the latest. Please advise!

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by brianchris

Pinnacle version 12? Was that a typo? It looks like version 11 is the latest. Please advise!

Oh. Heh. Sorry, I meant version 11. 8 was solid, 9 was a disaster, 10 was a bit better, and 11 is apparently leaps ahead of that. I really need to get my hands on it and see for myself though...