Things to try when Premiere Pro has issues exporting a sequence

If you use Premiere Pro enough, you will run into issues, and the most frustrating issue of all can be when you have problems exporting a sequence, especially when you are on a deadline. This can be absolutely terrifying, and you need to get your sequence exported ASAP!

So I thought I would give you some things that have been known to work for me.

The first thing to try is to trash the current render of your timeline and re-render. If you have a rendered timeline and you go to export a sequence you can save time and sometimes export easier by selecting use renders.

You can see this select above in blue, USE PREVIEWS. When your sequence is rendered and things are going well, it will use your Previews to render and should greatly speed things up.

Still sometimes the renders can get screwed up so clean fresh renders are a first step.

A second thing to try is is if you are compressing to a different format than you are editing in, is to try to match the sequence settings.

Especially if you are using the Previews this can speed things up and with no cross compression make the video easier to export. You can then recompress using Media Encoder, which should go quickly. Sure it is an extra step, but if it gets a working sequence out, it is worth it.

Next if things are really bad and you can’t get the sequence to export at all, you should move the sequence to a new clean project. 

You should make a new project and drag the Sequence over, which will bring just it and the associated media files.

Most of the files are even brought over organized as they previously were, though unfortunately the organization of the sequences has not come over. Still save this Project and export from this project. This might mean that there is corruption in your project file.

Sometimes I move all the files in a project into a new fresh project and it can solve some issues.

Earlier of my posts talked about trashing the preferences and that is another thing I would try.

Hopefully when you run into the problems of exporting a sequence these things can help, and hopefully they can help you.

In Premiere Pro if the paste attributes menu item stops working, try right clicking in the timeline

 

Ok until recently this had never been a problem for me, but when it happened it was super annoying. My edit menu command Paste Attributes command just stopped working in Premiere Pro 2019, neither the menu item or the keyboard shortcut option-command-V was working, and even after resetting the preferences the problem persisted. I did some research and it is was not just me and there is a workaround that always seems to work.

If the menu commands and keyboard shortcut for this stop working, then you can use the right click (or control-click) on the mouse to copy.

And do the same right click on the destination clip and paste attributes this way and it works.

Now I have no idea if this is fixed in newer versions, as it just recently happened to me in 2019, and here is a post about it at the Adobe Forums on how to fix it.

It is just good to know if you run into this, just do it from the timeline, and it will still work.

Adobe Photoshop version 22.2 February 2021 releases most exciting new feature is Super Resolution for scaling an image in Camera Raw’s version 13.2 March 2021 release

 

So Adobe Photoshops February 2021 version 22.2 update only had a couple of new features, the ability to invite others to edit, and to sync your presets.

It is the Camera RAW version 13.2 March 2021 release that has the most exciting new feature. It had some normal updates, like Support for new camera and lenses, other enhancements, and Apple ProRAW profile, but the most exciting feature is Super Resolution.

Super Resolution helps create an enhanced image with 2x the width and 2x the height of the original image, or 4x the total pixel count. Most file types such as JPEG and TIFF are supported. You can especially use Super Resolution when you have to make large prints or increase the resolution of a cropped image.

This could be a huge feature for video editors, as I am always getting images that are way too small for what I need. 

Now from what I see this need to be either activated through Adobe Bridge 2021 for non RAW images, or by opening a RAW image in Photoshop, activating the RAW panel form within Photoshop doesn’t seem to allow this happen.

So open the image from within Camera RAW.

Now if the Open in Camera Raw doesn’t show up for JPEG or HVEC files, you can go to the Camera Raw Preferences.

And select File Handing.

And under JPEG, HEIC, and TIFF Handing you should select Automatically open JPEGs and HEICs with settings.

Once you get the image in Camera RAW, you right click on it (or control click if you don’t have a right mouse button on Mac) and chose Enhance or hit Shift+Command+D.

This will bring up the Super Resolution Dialogue box.

And when you hit Enhance, it will a little time and double the size of the image, quadrupling the resolution and amaz�ingly it looks damn good. Way better than previous scaling. The image will be an Adobe DNG file.
I wish they would put this in as a feature in Photoshop itself to do it easier, and let you chose format, but the results can’t be argued with.
I have a feeling I will be using this quite a bit!

Stu Maschwitz has updated his Prolost EDC Presets to version 2.5

Stu Maschwitz, author of the DV Rebel’s Guide and designer of the Magic Bullet color grading system for Red Giant and now Chief Creative Office of Maxon has updated his Prolost EDC Presets for Adobe After Effects. You can pay what you want, though they default is $4.

EDC, as in “everyday carry” — the stuff you don’t leave the house without. Whenever I install a new version of After Effects, these are the handy little timesaving presets that I drop in first.

Most of the EDC presets are simple. Shortcuts to common settings, better defaults for often-used effects, or better interfaces for my favorite expressions.

But hey, Prolost EDC has been around since 2015, and some of these tools have gotten quite powerful. Check out Prolost Array, or Prolost Levels, both new in v2.5.

I update this set from time to time, and you’ll receive a fresh download link every time I do. It’s like subscribing to my personal After Effects toolbox.

And these include 2 new powerful filters, Prolost Levels and Prolost Array, for a total of 48 presets. Well worth picking up for any price.

Adobe releases March 2021 of After Effects version 18

 Adobe has updated After Effects to version 18.0 with it’s March 2021 release.

They added Media Replacement in Motion Graphics Templates and essential Properties.

Real-Time 3D Draft Preview.

A 3D Ground Plane to give a sense of 3D Perspective.

Improved Composition Toolbar.

Team Projects Performance Improvements.

And the most exciting thing to me that is currently in beta testing, which is Mult-Frame Rendering using multi-core CPU that can have up to 300% Render improvements.

Adobe releases Premiere Pro March 2021 version 15.0 Update

 Adobe has released the official 2021 Release of Premiere Pro with version 15.0.

New features include a much needed all new Captions engine.

Media Replacement in Motion Graphics Templates.

Equitable Language with changes in terminology to reflect diversity and inclusion.

A woohoo feature is a Faster Warp Stablizer.

Team Projects has had improvements.

You can now copy and paste audio effects in the audio track mixer and legacy audio effects have been removed.

I just wish the Speach to Text feature was out of beta, but it hasn’t even hit a public beta yet, so I am guessing it will be a while, damn.

Pro Media Tools from Digital Rebellion is their tool for Media and Workflow Management

 

So I have been a user of the other Digital Rebellion tools, Post Haste, Preference Manager, and Pro Maintenance Tools, but I have never actually used it’s Pro Media Tools available for $99. It does have some tools that I would use on occasion if I had them.

Particularly it’s Batch File renamer with full support for Frame Numbers, it’s ability to manage markers, the ability to manage clup metadata, and especially it’s Timeline Tricks, where you can collapse tracks, remove disabled clips, strip filters and markers (this could be useful in emergencies and the collapse track would be quite useful at times. And it’s ability to scan for broadcast safe on files.

Again a batch of useful tools that if you need them it is good to know about them in the case that you do need them.

Pro Maintenance Tools from Digital Rebellion can help maintain, optimize and troubleshoot Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro X and and Final Cut Pro 7

 

So I have talked about Digital Rebellion before and Post Haste and Preference Manager, but they have 2 packages of programs to repair and I have been a user of Pro Maintenance Tools since Final Cut Pro 7.0.

This suite of tools has a tool to Analyze Crashes, Repair Corrupt Files in a project (or at least help you see which ones are corrupt), Look up error messages, Manage Plugins, Schedule clearing of caches and preferences and a plug in installer.

It has a huge amount of tools (though of course Post Haste and Preference Manager are free), and most you don’t need until you do. This has saved me on a few projects where some media got corrupted, so it is a great tool to have around just in case, or to get in an emergency.

Corrupt Clip Finder also has often shown me bad JPEG’s, though I have had the problems a lot less since I stopped using JPEG’s due to corruption issues.

If you are having issues the $129 is quite worth the price of admission.

Premiere Pro stability and compression, and why I don’t use JPEG images or MP3 audio in my projects

 

Stability. Stability seems to be the thing most people complain about with Premiere Pro. I see all the time people complaining about it crashing.

AVID of course is going to have more stability if you do it’s normal workflow of importing footage, because you are compressing into an AVID format and of course that is going to be more stable, AMA of course, using external formats in AVID was not every going to be as stable.

To keep Premiere Pro stable I try to go for less compression, and pick a format and stick with that. Most of my deliveries are ProRES HQ, and if that is the case I want my footage to be be ProRES because it is going to be less compressed than many other highly compressed formats, especially formats like H.264. This wouldn’t apply if I was using a RAW format like ProRES RAW or Blackmagic RAW, which I would use with Proxy’s to speed thing up (though I would use ProRES Proxy and not H.264 Proxys).

So before import, I like to recompress my heavily compressed footage to ProRES HQ (or straight ProRES if that is the delivery spec). Yes this of course takes more time, but I have found that the stability that it gives me means that I save time on the back end, so the up front time is certainly worth it. And I use Media Encoder to it instead of using Ingest in Premiere Pro.

With Ingest you can Transcode, create Proxies, Copy or Copy with Proxies, and it is a great workflow when it works, but I have had bad crashes that have screwed things up and not finish the import or transcode process, so I tend to do transcodes myself before I import them. And yes this means I can’t start working right away, but I think the lost time up front is saved at the end when you don’t have any export issues.

I will talk about the Proxy workflow in another post, but I tend to do that in the program, but let it do it on it’s own, not while continuing to work because of crashing issues I have had. Best to let the machine go overnight, and if you can check it in remotely all the better.

And my compression issues extend beyond just you video files.

Since my early days of editing on Final Cut Pro 4-7, there have been issues with JPG images. Sometimes they are fine, and sometimes they can stop an entire project from opening, and it can happen randomly after working fine. Bad things happen with JPG images so I do not import JPG images into my projects.

Before using a JPEG I convert it to another format. Now I have seen people complain about PNG images causing problems in project, though I haven’t had that problem. I tend to convert to PNG, though the less compressed the better. And if you want to go even better you can go TIFF files, but they can end up being absolutely huge.

To convert images in a batch I use the $39.95 GraphicConverter from Lemkesoft. 

I use the Convert And Modify command to convert my images from JPGS.

Setting Convert on the let, and PNG as the format (or TIFF if you would like). The folder with footage to covert is in the middle, and you select hte ones you want to convert, and the to folder is on the right, and you press start selected function.

I feel the same about Audio files, heavily compressed audio files like MP3 or M4A I convert to WAV files using Adobe Media Encoder.

And yes this is all in the “Assistant Editor Stage” before editing gets started. And the net result has been that Premiere Pro has been very stable for me. Sure sometimes I have issues, but since dealing with highly compressed footage, stills and audio before a project the program runs much more stable for me.

Honestly if you think about it, it is like using Premiere Pro more like AVID. You think of it as importing the footage to an AVID codec. And then everything is the same, and so will just run better.

And I often get A & B cameras that are different cameras, and thus different formats. Think about the computer having to uncompress different kinds of formats at once. Of course it is going to do better if everything is all one format.

And more compression means processing power, so the less compressed things are the less processing power you are using, and that can help with stability.

Everything you can do to make the whole thing run easier will mean less crashes and things working better.