Problems with Adobe Premier Elements

[jeffprice74]

Ok, I bought Premier Elements 4 thinking that it would be much better than my old version of Cyberlink Power Director. I wish I would have upgraded my Power Director. It is soooo much more user friendly. I have been reading forums all week trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. After much reading, I still have gotten no where with my project. Here is what I am doing. I have transferred some old VHS home videos to DVD using my DVD recorder. Of course the files are in the .VOB form. I started my project and noticed that the sound was getting out of sync. I read on here that .AVI files are a better format. I copied and pasted the .VOB files from the DVD to a folder on my hard drive. I downloaded MPEG Streamclip and converted the files to .AVI. The first thing I noticed is that the files are HUGE compared to the original. A 1GB file turned out to be more than 6GB after I converted it. Is this normal? I used the directions found here: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc4800e Anyway when I try to import them into APE4 they only show up as .02 second clips. These were originally about 30 minute clips. They will play in full in media player classic that was downloaded with Streamclip. Here is one thing that I noticed and I think it has something to do with the problem. There is a file that I converted that is much smaller than all of the others on the DVD. It was originally 74MB and converted to 484MB. After the conversion is done it will show up as a video thumbnail in the folder. None of the other files do this. They all just have the .avi icon instead of a thumbnail. This clip will import and play fine in APE4. Are my other files too big??? How is this project going to fit on a single DVD when these .avi files are soooo big??? Please help!! I am ready to pull out what little is left of my hair!!! Thank you.

[filmboss80]

The confusing thing is that there are many, many diverse video file types with the .avi extension. If you are editing in Premiere, you need to convert your .VOB files to DV-AVI. And yes, the DV-AVI files will be much, much larger than the VOBs. DVD is a chiefly a playback format, and as such, compresses the video to the point that it is difficult to do frame-accurate edits on the VOBs. For editing, especially in Premiere Elements, you need to do the conversion up to the DV-AVI format, which allows frame-accurate edits, at the price of hogging disc space. The cheapest (freeware) way to do the conversion is with VirtualDub and a DV codec like Cedocida loaded into your system. If your DVD audio is AC3, you will also need to load AC3ACM into the VirtualDub folder, then convert the audio to a 48kHz .wav file. If this sounds complicated, it is--but only at first.

Alternative #2 - Ditch Premiere Elements and edit the VOB files with an MPEG-2 / VOB editor (see the Tools section on this site). It won't give you the editing and effects latitude of Premiere, but you won't have to upconvert to DV-AVI.

[DB83]

I do not have a copy of PE4 but I do have one of PE2 (I assume the functionality is the same)

Up until this evening I had never used it (it came with my ATI card and my NLE of choice is Ulead). However I just installed it and also imported a 3 gig DVD-avi which I had on my HDD. There was no problem with importing this clip. The full length is reported correct and it plays correctly.

There, I suppose, could be all sorts of reasons for your problem and I would have thought it best to ask that one on the dedicated forum that you refer to.

The other question is easier to answer. You started with a compressed format (mpeg-2) and converted the VOBS to a somewhat less compressed format DV-avi. It is still compressed but much easier to edit.

Once you have finished your edit, you will be writing the file back to a dvd or making a mpeg-2 file to import into a dvd authoring program. It does not matter that you currently have 6 gigs of dv-avi as PE4 will have to re-compress that to fit on to a dvd disk.

As the previous responder said, there are other programs possibly more suited to your task as you have not made it clear why you are using PE4 other than the sound-sync issue which is quite common for most NLE's when editing mpeg-2 files and AC3 audio.

[jeffprice74]

I talked to tech support at adobe. They seem to think that my hard drive does not spin fast enough to import the large avi files. They suggested to use the VOB files and render as I go. That should take care of the sync problem. I am really doing this just for fun. Maybe the PE4 has too many features that I don't understand, or maybe my machine just isn't up to the task of the software. I had a full downloaded copy of Cyberlink Power Director 7 on my last hard drive. That drive crashed and I had to replace it. I was about 75% done with this project when this happened. Of course since the program was downloaded, I lost it when my hard drive went down. That's why I started shopping for a new NLE. After reading all the great reveiws on PE4 I thought that I would give it a try. That's why I am thinking I should have stuck with Pwer Director 7. It was very easy to use, edit, produce and make watchable DVDs. I like a NLE because it is fun to watch a home video with titles, music, credits, menus, and chapters. That's why I don't want to just cut it and burn it. I like something slightly more polished, but nothing too professional.

[DB83]

I've never heard that one before but your system could be the bottle-neck.

Most people will use a 2nd hard drive for video editing to avoid an issue if a program needs to access the drive with the OS on for virtual memory.

You have quite a small HDD. How much free space is there ?

Also, although you have enough memory to run the program, it never hurts to have more.