.avi to .m2v Problems

[wrawlind]

I captured 2 files from my Sony camera with Adobe Premiere Pro as .avi's. All I want to do is burn them to DVD. One of the .avi's is 3.5 Gb (~13 min), and the other is a little over 1 Gb (~8 min).

The smaller 1 Gb .avi exports to an .m2v just fine with the Adobe Media Encoder. The other one causes Premiere to hang at the same frame each time I've tried to export (stops at frame 3400, ~ 2min in). My computer remains fine, the countdown clock continues to run, but Premiere just stops working.

Here's what I've tried:
- Exporting with both PPro 1.0 as well as 1.5
- Installing the Mainconcept updates for both 1.0 and then for 1.5
- Updating my XP SP2 OS with the recommended Windows Update file for the Mainconcept Encoder (from http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/330380.html)
- Changing the bitrate parameters (CBR vs VBR 2-pass, default Kbps and higher)
- Enabling then disabling the hyperthreading on my CPU

I've also tried the conversion with TMPGEnc but it crashes during the "analyzing" stage on VBR and within the first few seconds on CBR.

The .avi's play just fine in Windows Media Player.

I run a Pentium IV 3.0 GHz with 3 Gb RAM.

Any suggestions?
-R

[pijetro]

Did you try to cut out the potentially bad frame, and try a reencode??
Sometimes i catch myself not exporting the whole project, because i forgot to make the "Work Area Bar" extend to the end. Is it possible with you?

[wrawlind]

Thanks for your reply.

I don't think it's a bad frame problem because I have a 3rd .avi (didn't mention it because I was trying to simplify the scenario) that is also about 3.5 Gb and causes the same problem. With this 3rd .avi, Premiere hangs somewhere around frame 9000.

It's not a work area bar issue either.

?

[pijetro]

It wouldn't be an issue of 4 gig file limit would it??
I'll assume your running with NTFS partitioning, correct?

[wrawlind]

I didn't know about the 4Gb NTFS file limit. Thanks!

Initially, I was dealing with a 7Gb .avi that was probably causing the bulk of my problems. I then broke this down into smaller files. Surprisingly, the largest of the .avi's (about 3.5 Gb) exported okay. The others (< 3Gb) continued to give me problems in Premiere--BSOD (page faults, other), Premiere freezes, sudden crashes, etc. With advice from a post under a different topic, I ended up frameserving these smaller .avi's with Virtualdub and CCE. Worked much better!

Thanks for your help.
-R

[pijetro]

Aww poop, that was a typo...There's a 4 gig limit on FAT partitioned drives..To resolve this, you need to go to NTFS partitioning..But since you say you had a 7gig file to begin with, this wouldn't be your problem..

Load the file into VirtualDub. Video and Audio can be set to Direct stream copy, and go to Scan video stream for errors..Takes a bit of time though...