Encore CS3 - Hangs and import problems with menus and avi footage with audio tracks present.

Question

I'm trying to import some footage files in .avi format into Encore CS3 and am having several problems.
In what follows when I say "crash" I mean Encore quits with a standard Windows error. When I say "hang" I mean Encore does not quit but rather becomes an unresponsive process that must be killed manually using Windows Task Manager.
My System:
WinXP Pro SP2
2.93 GHz Intel Celeron CPU - single core
Intel PERL mobo
3GB 400MHz RAM
NVidia 7800GS video
I mention these specs however I am not experiencing any hardware
related bugs or issues (like out of memory or video driver crashes
etc) when using any CS3 app.
The footage files (as reported by GSpot) and problems I am seeing. In all cases GSpot reports that I have the appropriate codec installed:
footage1.avi - Dx50 XVid 1.0.3, Dolby AC3 48kHz 192kb/s, 716834 KB
Attempting to import as timeline causes Encore CS3 to hang.
Importing as an Asset allows it to import but when I try to click
on it in the project windown to add it to a new empty timeline,
Encore hangs. It plays fine in Windows Media Player.
footage2.avi - Dx50 XVid 1.0.3, MPEG-1 Layer 3 48kHz 128kb/s, 718302 KB
Imports fine as either a timeline or asset but no audio track comes
with it, even though there is an audio track in the footage. It plays
fine in Windows Media Player. Video imports perfectly, just no audio.
footage3.avi - Dx50 XVid 1.0.3, MPEG1-Layer3 48kHz 112kb/s, 717606 KB
Imports fine as either a timeline or asset but no audio track comes
with it, even though there is an audio track in the footage. It plays
fine in Windows Media Player. Video imports perfectly, just no
audio. I tried converting this one using AVS to both MPEG3 and DivX,
each using MPEG1-Layer3 44kHz 192kb/s audio, and got the same issue
upon importing into Encore CS3. I also loaded it into Camtasia
Studio and it looked fine over there. The audio was present and I
was able to export it as a .WAV file. When I tried looking at the
file in Soundbooth CS3, there was no audio track or, more
accurately, the audio track was a flat line.
By way of comparison these are importing perfectly:
footage4.avi - XVID XviD 1.1.0 Beta2, MPEG1-Layer3 48kHz 189kb/s Two mono
channels LAME3.96r, 717436 KB.
footage5.avi - XVID XviD 1.1.0 Final, Dolby AC3 48kHz 448kb/s Six
channels (3/2 .1), 716418 KB.
footage6.avi - XVID XviD 1.1.0 Final, Dolby AC3 48kHz 448kb/s Six
channels (3/2 .1), 716418 KB.
footage7.avi - XVID XviD 1.0.3, Dolby AC3 48kHz 448kb/s 6 channels
(3/2 .1), 717502 KB
footage8.avi - XVID XviD 1.0.3, Dolby AC3 48kHz 448kb/s 6 channels
(3/2 .1), 717180 KB
footage9.avi - XVID XviD 1.1.2 Final, Dolby AC3 48kHz 448kb/s 6 channels
(3/2 .1), 2291904 KB
Although this one imported & transcoded correctly, when I went to
build it to a DVD image file I got some strange errors during the
"planning video" stage that prevented the process from completing.
Unfortunately I neglected to write down the error message I recieved
which read like quite nonsensical babble to me, and I have since
deleted the project folder. I remember it was not a memory or
display related error and it included a timestamp where the error
was happening. I played the footage in the preview panel thru the
identified timestamp but it previewed perfectly without even a
jitter in either the video or audio. Took forever to transcode so I
doubt I'll be doing this one again anytime soon.
Another issue I am having is with the motion menus. I burned a DVD and it does not load correctly in one of my DVD players (a Sony rdr-gx330 recorder/player). It appears to take extra time to recognize the disk, the startup (first-play) menu does not show automatically, and I must press the Main Menu button on the

Answer 1

Another issue I am having is with the motion menus. I burned a DVD and it does not load correctly in one of my DVD players (a Sony rdr-gx330 recorder/player). It appears to take extra time to recognize the disk, the startup (first-play) menu does not show automatically, and I must press the Main Menu button on the remote control to make it appear. Other than that it seems to play ok in that player. Also tested it in 2 other DVD players (a Panasonic and Zenith) and it worked just fine like it's supposed to in them. Also plays perfectly in my computer's DVD player/burner using Windows Media Player v10. I tried burning to Memorex +RW single-layer single-sided disks at 6, 7, & 8Mbps project settings but got the exact same result every time.
Encore CS3 crashes fairly often during authoring, particularly during imports, and when I go to edit things like calling up a timeline in the timeline panel, dragging footage into an existing timeline, or changing button links in a menu etc.. I have also experienced seemingly random hangs even more often, probably 5 or 6 times as often as a crash. Saving the project after every little change I make, then closing and restarting Encore allows me to make progress albeit at a significantly reduced workflow rate. Accessing Photoshop from Encore appears to be working flawlessly so far aside from the slow load times. Encore hangs sometimes during video transcoding, repeat the process and it works ok. If I try to import a menu from the library after importing my footage files, Encore hangs trying to import it either at the 50% mark or the 99% mark (it varies even with the same exact menu selected from the library). If I import the menu first and the footage after, then no problems. Also trying to render motion menus after importing footage causes Encore to hang, render before footage import and everything works ok. Interestingly enough, previewing my project in Encore's monitor or preview panels works perfectly even in High quality mode -- in fact it operates quite smoothly in comparison to other apps I have tried. Although those footage files that had missing audio tracks on import obviously played silently, I have yet to experience a hang or crash during a preview or when scrubbing through a timeline in the monitor panel.
The last problem I've seen is with the project cache files. It doesn't always get rid of cache files when stuff is deleted from the project. I was working on one project and surprisingly ran out of disk space. When I tracked it down I found that there were some two dozen copies of a footage file I had repeatedly imported and deleted from the project still sitting in the cache folder. The file was an avi about 2GB so it was taking up some 40 GB of disk space for stuff that was no longer in the project. I tried shutting down Encore and manually deleting all the cache files, and that worked for most of them, but there was one 2GB file that kept reappearing in the cache folder even though it was no longer in the project. The XML file in the cache folder still had references to it in there so I can only assume that was the reason it kept showing up. I eventually had to delete and totally recreate the project from scratch to regain my lost disk space. This included having to sit thru a 6 hour long transcoding session which pissed me off to no end.
Encore CS3 appears on the surface to be a very powerful, feature rich, and approachable app with a simple easy to use interface, but it is awfully bugged in just about every area I have explored and still needs lots and lots of work for it to be really useful. Frankly for me it is pretty damn annoying that I have invested so much money in this suite only to find several of the apps in it (Encore & Premiere in particular) behaving this poorly. In my opinion every single app in the suite exhibits lousy performance whenever you must do anything at all involving the disk from the time you click to start it up until the time you click to close it down. Several of them are just as seriously bugged as Encore too, and being a long time Photoshop v5.5 user I expected much more from Adobe. Even Photoshop is two or three times as slow now (e.g. it takes about 20-30 seconds to simply create an empty 500x500 pixel image file and almost a full minute to load a 30x60 pixel single-layer gif). So far I have attempted to create 6 DVDs using Encore and after 3 weeks of effort have only succeeded in getting one of them onto a final disk -- and that one is kinda limping to work correctly in my DVD player. Three of those projects became so corrupted while working on them that I had to delete them completely and recreate them from scratch, only to find that I still couldn't get them to completion for one reason or another. Seriously disappointing.