Can't render: Error Compiling Movie: Unkown Error

Hey There,
Need some help,
I am working on a short sequence (15 seconds).
It has a few video channels stacked up and I have applied overlays and color correction to most channels.
The footage is XMF Files from a C300. Sequence settings set as per the suggested recommendation (ie when I dropped the clips in).
I keep getting the 'Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error' message every time I try to render or export. I have gone through many of the steps suggested by a blog post I found on here - I went through the sequence, removed clip by clip, tried to render, then deleted the effects.
When I deleted the effects and layed the clips out side by side it rendered out for me. That's great, but I need to be able to export with the effects all in, and the vides layered. What can I do?? Starting to pull my hair out!
Details..
CS6.O
MacBook, 4 GB Ram,
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256 MB
Thanks,
Simon

Hey,
Thanks for the tip - tried all those, unfortunately with no joy.
I just cleared my cache - also no joy.
BUT I installed an update (now 6.0.5) and it's doing it.
Thanks for the help,
Simon

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Dreaded "Error compiling movie - unkown error" message.

Hi,
I'm getting the above message on a project I worked on a week ago, with no problems, and went back to today.
It's on render, I don't know yet about export. On the timeline I've got clips, photos, titles, effects and an adjustment layer.
I removed everything one by one and still got the render error right down to the last clip which I had to add an effect to to make it need render.
I'm on a 8 core Mac with 40gb ram and gtx285 card (which I also tried turning off cuda), lot's of room on drives.
Any ideas?
Thanks

Hi Norma3n,
Please go to file>new>sequence and once the sequence settings window pops up go to settings tab and chnage the editing mode to custom and Preview file format to Quicktime and codec as animation or prores (if you are on MAC). On windows you can choose Microsoft AVI as preview file format and codec as Uncompressed UYVY. Copy and paste the old sequence into this new on and then try to render and check if you are getting the error message or not. Please also mention the operating system and the and the Version of the product that you have.
Regards,
Vinay

Can't render MPEG-4 (.mov) previews?

First time poster.
Just downloaded the trial of Elements 11, wanting to use it with videos taken by a Canon DSLR. The videos are MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression in a .mov container.
First of all, I'm getting the common laggy playback problem when playing a clip in the timeline. I know that the common fix for this is pre-rendering the preview file so it will play smoothly during editing, but I'm strangely not getting any option for this. Basically above the clips there is no red, green, or yellow line at all. I tried pressing enter to render, and all it does it play the clip. I tried clicking the render button, and trying from the menu, and all of these just play the clip but don't actually render it.
I tried grabbing a random .wmv file from elsewhere and put it in the project, and there's a yellow line above the clip in the timeline showing that I need to render. I rendered that clip, and it played fine.
1. Why won't it even give me the option to render the MPEG-4 files?
2. How can I lower the playback quality to hopefully smooth out the preview video? When I right click the preview box it only gives me options of automatic or highest quality, no draft or anything.
3. Also, what specifically in my hardware is the likely culprit of laggy playback? In other words, what aspect of your hardware specs is most important to improve for smoother editing?
Thanks!

IF you decide you need a new computer, this is what I would build for Premiere Elements (for PPro, I would use an nVidia card, which requires a larger power supply)
Sorry about the funky formatting... I can't figure out how to copy from Excel and paste here with formatting (seldom do such a copy/paste)
And, of course, install the 64bit version of Premiere Elements 11
Computer For PreElements - Prices 11-28-12
300
Intel i7 3770 CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116502
110
Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121599
66
16Gig Ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148466
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Mid-Tower Case
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550w Power Supply
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500Gig Drive
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1Terabyte Drive
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Use for project and media (video & sound) files
35
ATI 5450 1Gig
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120mm x2 Case Fan
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1 in front to cool drives, 1 in side to cool CPU and graphics adapter
19
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Live Type render error

just moved from fcp 5 to fcp 6. i opened my last project from V5 and everything looks ok but the live type fonts. Instead of seeing the font, i see "rendering error in live tpe file (and the name of the file below it) when i try to open this in the editor (live type) and play it, i get a "can not render- error 2048" can anyone help?

In LiveType, highlight the track that has your LiveFont on it.
Go to the text entry box and press command and A keys (select all).
Go to the Media Browser > Live Fonts and locate the Font that was used in the original project file.
Click on the font name, go to the bottom of the Media Browser panel and click on the Apply button.
Save the project.

Can't EXPORT or RENDER in PREM CC!! "Error compiling movie. Unknown Error."

I am using PMW200 MXF files alongside 5D MKiii files - I finished the edit and went to render/export and it won't let me do either! I can't get the edit out of the software and I have a deadline in an hour.
I only bought the software today (have been using the trial version and I am just coming from FCP 7 - I get this error:
"Error compiling movie. Unknown Error."

Hello Bill
The Adobe KB Article (http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/error-compiling-movie-rendering -or.html ) does not answer the question asked, because the end of the error message is "Unknown error" which is not listed in this article.
I often encouter this error which is a RANDOM error which occurs only with pictures (4256x2832 .jpg or more when I use panoramic pictures with more than 50 MPx) but never with video (1920x1080 HD .m2ts) from my camcorder. The only way I found to do a complete render is :
- save and close the project without editing it,
- close Adobe Premiere Pro (CS6 or CC, same error),
- reopen Premiere Pro and reload the project,
- resume the render.
If I render WITHOUT Mercury Playback Engine : all is perfect, no error but the render needs very much more time.
My own conclusion : this render crash might be due to VRAM oveflooded during render with Mercury Playback Engine (this might be checked and monitored with the freeware GPU-Z).
My GPU is GTX 570 with 1280 MB VRAM and the render are only full HD (H.264 1920x1080i).
If you have a solution except remove the GPU and purchase a GTX 770 OC 4 GB VRAM, I am waiting for it.
My actual system :
- CPU Intel core i7 970 (6 cores, overeclocked to 3,9 GHz),
- MoBo : Intel DX58SO2,
- RAM : 24 GB,
- GPU GTX570 with VRAM 1280MB (Nvidia driver allways up-to-date),
- HDD : RAID 10 with four WD 1002FAEX (7200 tpm, 64 MB cache),
- OS W7 64 SP1, 64 bits (allways updated)
Regards
Jacques

Error compiling movie: Unknown Error during render

Over the past day or so, I've been having some issues rendering out my premiere pro sequence. It is `1920X1080 sequence with the DSLR sequence settings. I'm attaching an image below to give you an idea of my sequence settings. Everytime I select: render effects in to out, immediately receive the error message a video preview box shows up saying "error compiling movie: unknown error" I literallly have tried everything- first I trashed my preferences, changed my scratch disks, but neither of these did the trick. I also created a new copied sequence where I tried isolating files to see if any one file in particular was being problematic, and the same error message showed up. A lot of people on this forum have noted that the problem primarily lies with images, but I know it's not that because I've tried removing all of my images and just dealing with footage. I've basically tried having a sequence with every single combination of footage and nothing has worked.

Error Compiling Movie
-http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/error-compiling-movie-rendering-or.html
-http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-elements/kb/error-error-compiling-movie-render.html
-and nested sequences http://forums.adobe.com/thread/955172

Error compiling movie 'unknown error' premiere elements 11, tried every troubleshoot, what now?

I'm trying to export a video and I keep on running into this error message, which stops the export process. I've already visited and tried the troubleshooting suggestions on this page and this page, and this page, and none of those suggestions have worked. Here's a list of what failed:
Export in various file formats, every single one failed
I removed each asset individually and tried to export the video after each removal (100+ assets, imagine how long that took) and I got the error after every single time
I removed the front half of the video and tried exporting, still failed.
I removed the back half of the video (because if it failed if I removed the front, the problem asset should be in the back, right? nope.) and tried exporting, it still failed.
I don't have any Auto Color, Auto Contrast, Auto Levels, or Shadow/Highlight on any of my clips, although if I did, I'd try removing them.
All of my video files are the same format, so it's not a mix of formats in my timeline which is causing the problem.
I tried disabling auto-save, but it already tried to auto-save during the first 20 times I've attempted this, so the damage might already be done.
I obviously didn't use any other programs during this process
I moved all my assets to a different location on my harddrive, then reopened the project and refound the assests one by one, each of which had no problem getting into the timeline. I tried rendering after this, and the render bar sailed along until a certain point, where it got stuck indefinitely. I cancelled the render, which froze the program. I had to close it and re-open the project, and re -link every asset again. Once again there were no problems adding the assets. I saved the project before the next render, so I wouldn't have to do this a third time, and it was a good idea I did, because the program froze again during the subsequent render.
My computer didn't go to sleep or hibernate during the first 5-10 times I tried various methods for exporting. It has slept in some of the 10+ times I've tried it since, because I don't have the patience to sit in front of my screen and watch it fail again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. CAN YOU TELL THAT I'M FRUSTRATED???
The first thing I noticed that was wonky with this project was when I first tried to render my sequence. The render window chugged along just fine until it got to a certain point (can't remember the %), at which point it got stuck indefinitely. I had to cancel the render, and then render other parts of the sequence bit by bit, avoiding what I thought was the problem part. I tried rendering the problem part, and it got stuck again, so I eventually just decided that that clip didn't need to be in this movie, so I deleted it from the timeline. All should be good at this point, my whole timeline is green from being rendered. But, when I tried to export the video, I started down this tourtuous path of failed exports and frustration, and now here I am, posting in the forum, hoping someone can help me out.
The problem asset (if that was the problem in the first place) isn't in the timeline any more, but I'm still having issues exporting the movie. The fact that rendering still gets stuck after re-linking assets, and after getting rid of the first problem asset, makes me think that there is some bigger underlying issue, but I have no idea what that could be. I followed these instructions and re-opened the project, tried to export, and still got that 'Unknown Error'.
Please assist before I put my fist through this company computer.

maxlong99
Thanks for your update. Let us go through it.
You wrote
During one of my isolation tests, I stripped the timeline off all assets except clips from the same footage and I also removed that New Blue effect, and the project exported without issue.
Did you run a control which included "with the New Blue effect" in this isolated test which does not sound like the "Full Project" as suggested in what you wrote next?
You wrote
Could multiple renders and project files be part of the problem? I've created many, many different versions of this project to test and see where the problem is, which in turn means I've created many different render files for each different project. If this could be part of the problem, should I keep the original project and delete all my test projects and associated render files therein?
Each of the projects should have its own name which will be applied to its files. And each project should have rendered files specific to it (for SD project whether video or still clip = DV .avi file; for HD project whether video or still clip = MPEG2.mpg file). Are you naming these different projects with distinctive names?
Have you expanded the Timeline with the -+ slider and closely inspected the track content for
a. leftovers such a very thin vertical black lines scattered about
b. gaps
c. transitions, and especially audio placement
You have probably seen the following, but I will post the link just in case. I suspect you have been there and done that.
http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-elements/kb/error-error-compiling-movie-render.html
Please let us know what the closer inspection of the Timeline content (as mentioned) revealed.
Thanks.
ATR

Error compiling movie. Unknown error. In both Premiere and Media Encoder

I am trying to export a a batch of six sequences, out of Premiere Pro CC to my internal hard drive using the Apple ProRes 422 Quicktime setting. All of the sequence exports are failing in the first couple of seconds. This happens if I do them individually directly out of Premiere and if I export them out as a batch to Media Encoder. All get the same "Error compiling movie. Unknown error." error message. I have tried restarting the computer, that didn't fix it. I had the same problem with some other files yesterday but I was able to export them out individually OK. But with this batch, no dice. The sequences are all fully rendered. There aren't any problematic clips in the sequences, not that I can tell. None of the sequences is very long, only about 1-2 mins each.
Any ideas?
My system details are:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB
plenty of space on my startup disk

Error Compiling Movie... some past discussions and ideas
-http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/error-compiling-movie-rendering-or.html
-http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-elements/kb/error-error-compiling-movie-render.html
-and nested sequences http://forums.adobe.com/thread/955172

"Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error" or program crash when rendering

I just built a new PC because my Macbook Pro couldn't render fast enough. Now that I have built this brand new computer, I can't render at all! I render once and get the "Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error" and if I try to render again, the program crashes.
My files are not corrupt as I can render them without problems on my laptop (just slowly) and on a friend's PC. I can export fine but the project I am working in is currently very small. I have 450gb of space and when using After Effects, rendering is a breeze. I have restarted, uninstalled and reinstalled and nothing seems to be doing the trick.
I feel like this must be a bug in Premiere Pro CC. Has anyone had this problem and/or come up with any solutions?

You may have more luck getting help with this kind of problem on the AME forum. Or at least have a look at this page from the AME forum prompting you for the information that can help in isolating the cause of this problem: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1011883.

"error compiling movie: unknown error" in premiere cs3.2 / win8

This happens during both Export and Render Work Area, as soon as the renderer hits one of my assets. Initially, this asset was an uncompressed AVI with an alpha channel, over another uncompressed AVI. You can see the Progress bar suddenly get extremely slow when it hits that point, and then it gives the unknown error within about 10 frames. As far as I remember, this NEVER happened when I was rendering on my laptop, running Windows 7 (a former temporary setup while I was waiting to get a new workstation).
I've tried taking some pressure off Premiere... I rendered the sequence in AfterEffects, so Premiere didn't have to deal with the compositing. I also wrapped the asset in a MOV container, with PNG compression, so the files weren't so large. This seemed to help in certain cases -- using this method, I can get through some of the biggest assets. It still happens a bunch of times throughout my sequence, though.
I have the rendering optimized for "memory" in the project settings. I also have more than enough hard drive space on the drive I'm exporting to.
My instinct and limited powers of observation suggest to me that this is a memory problem. This computer's not exactly a world-class production system. However, there are other clips -- mostly HD footage directly from the camera (HVX200) but also some shorter-duration uncompressed AVI's -- that seem to render fine. Plus, even some clips already recompressed to MOV's in AE are causing the same problem. I don't want to have to fiddle with this on every project til I can afford Adobe CC... has anyone else seen problems like this, and found some kind of broader solution to them?

If you have not seen this Adobe KB article on Error Compiling Movie, it might also be helpful: http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/error-compiling-movie-rendering-or.html
Good luck,
Hunt

One cause for "Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error"

I just finished a huge promotional video project, one which was fraught with problems.
To start out with, most of my interview footage was RED Epic material, and my b-roll was comprised of a combination of RED Epic (some at 4kHD and some at 5k), RED ONE (some at 4k, some at 3k), XDCAM-EX 1080p, HDV 1080i, Sony AVCHD 1080p, previously exported Vimeo HD h.264 material, and still shots. Needless to say, quite a mess of codecs and odd file types to combine into one project.
Since much of my b-roll was 1080p, I decided to do my entire edit on a 1080p timeline; however, since all my interview footage was RED, I decided to use a RED Epic 1080p timeline. In doing so, I discovered something important about Premiere, and I don't know if this is a bug, or if it's meant to work this way: when you put 5k RED Epic material on a 1080p timeline and use the zoom controls in the motion effects panel to bring it to size, and attempt to export, you'll get the "Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error" every time. This may happen with other types of footage that's too big for the timeline too, i'm not sure. However, when you instead right click on the clip and use the "scale to frame size" command, it exports just fine, with no errors.
I also discovered that (at least with my setup), PrPro can't handle large stills on the timeline; I contiually got OpenGL crash errors until I resized all my images in Photoshop to be no more than 1920px wide.
The promo video is 11:30, and comprised of five segments. I edited each segment (interview and b-roll) in it's own sequence, and then nested the sequences along with the transition/motion graphics/title slides between them on my master sequence. However, I kept getting crashes and freezes when attempting to export that master sequence which I couldn't explain. Ultimately I had to export each of the individual sequences as a Lagarith UT AVI file, and then import that file back in and place it in the master sequence where the nested sequence had been. Once that was done it exported fine, so I'm still not sure what the problems were, since each individaul sequence exported okay, and the master exported just fine after replacing the nested sequences with the Lagarith clips...
Anyway, I think I've got a pretty good promo done, and it's definitely a TON better than our last one. When I get it online I'll post a link over in the Lounge and ask for feedback...

So, I ran into this the first time recently. I discovered it when I copied an adjustment layer for quick grading with an RGB Color Corrector and Color Balance effects in it from a rehearsal cut of a short film.The effects worked fine and rendered out without issue. I imported the sequence into my 'final' cut so I could reuse the titles and adjustment layer. I copied the adjustment layer to the new rough cut of the final sequence and ran into this error when I tried to render it, but only after applying the adjustment layer. I found that if I turned off the Color Balance, the sequence rendered fine. I found that if I moved the Color Balance above the RGB Color Corrector, the effect of the RGB effect completely disappeared AND it rendered correctly (both effects turned on) - so reversing the order worked, but effects were weird. I also found that if I added ANY non-GPU accelerated effects to the RGB Color Corrector that I'd get the same compile error (unknown).
I went through and deleted clips until I got to 0 on the timeline, added a new one back on, and it still wouldn't render. So, I created an entirely NEW sequence, copied all video and audio (not adjustment layer) from the original failing rough cut of the final sequence, and pasted it into this new sequence. I also copied the adjustment layer again from the rehearsal cut into this new sequence and it is rendering just fine.
HOURS WASTED DOING THIS! It would be awesome if Adobe actually tested their products before releasing them instead of forcing us to do it for them. My project consisted of about 30-40 different clips and audio, all from the same DSLR (Nikon D810), nothing fancy, two effects in an adjustment layer applied to the entire sequence, and Premiere couldn't handle it. Given this and some of the comments I read while troubleshooting this on this forum, gives me pause in trusting Adobe products for any real work that has a deadline (unless, of course, you build in the required Adobe testing time into your budget).
So, just another data point; something else to try. Create a new sequence, and copy everything from your non-working one to it, and see if this will jump-start Premier. Worked for me. Good luck.

"Error compiling movie"!?! error message

Hey,
I've finished editing my film, all the effects are in, the final cut is just about there and when I try to render it gets half way through then stops and brings up this message:
"Error compiling movie" with nothing else.
I edited each scene in its own sequence. Then used one separate sequence to put all those scene sequences together as one whole movie. So basically I have a sequence that has lots of little sequences in.
I tried to export this big sequence (the whole film) and that message just keeps coming. I tried cutting it down and doing like the first half of the work area then the second. The first half worked okay but the second half still brought up that message.
Aspect ratio: 720x576
Format: Microsoft DV Avi
Compression: DV Pal
Frame rate: 25fps
Length of video: 25minutes
and it's in Pal wide screen.
Finally, free space on the hard drive I'm burning to is 63.7GB so that should be plenty of space, right?
I can't think of any other information to put here but if you need any just ask and I'll put it up. It's really stumped me this and with my premiere coming up in 20 days it's not really helpful at all.
Any help at all would be much appreciated.
Thank you,
Ben Derrick.

Often these errors are caused by some black space between clips or troublesome effects on a single clip.
Your first step was quite good to locate the problem. Now repeat that for the last 25 minutes. Split it again into two parts, each 12.5 minutes, find the part that exports OK and focus on the troublesome part. Divide it into two equal parts, etc. until you find the culprit.
An alternative might be to set the CTI to the beginning of your time line and hit page down to go to the next edit point, until you find the troublesome spot. It may mean hundreds of page down's but it is a relatively sure way of finding the culprit.

Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error - Simple Solution in Premiere

ADOBE PREMIERE EDITORS: Be forewarned about the infamous "Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error." It usually doesn't happen unless you're editing a big project like I am and then it screws with you because you've been editing fine until it's time to export and you can't even make your project into a movie, which defeats the purpose of all your hard work. I looked up forum after forum and finally there were a-few solutions that worked for some and not for others. (Adobe said they will get their team on this case right away.) Let's just say I do not have Final Cut Pro, so I cannot export to XML and then import into FCP to do the exporting like some people found helpful. Nor do I have the time to import my Premiere project into After Effects only to manually create all of my "dip to white" transitions. But I would have had to do that if nothing else I tried worked and thankfully, I was able to trick Premiere. It's so simple, it's stupid. Just open a new project in Premiere. Then "import" the project you wanted to export. For some odd reason, without changing anything of substance or in other words, doing practically nothing about the issue, it exports now. Just because I opened a "new" project and "imported" my old project. Of course, this may not work for others, but please try it and then reply your results. Me and I'm sure Adobe would find it very helpful to see if that worked for most people. It worked for me.
[Profanity is not permitted. Removed. Please keep your language family-friendly.]

I agree, Jim, but my train of thought was that a lot of people were changing and replacing and taking out effects and clips from their sequence to see if it was the components in the sequence that was causing the "unknown error." However, I had the same "unknown error" and was able to export in Premiere anyway by just practically "telling" Premiere that it's a new project, when I'm importing an old project to do the same task. Which makes me think that maybe Premiere doesn't have a problem exporting the specific files that most people thought were the problem, maybe it was just a glitch somewhere in Premiere that made the software think there was a problem after a certain amount of time, when there really wasn't. I don't know, I'm not a coder so that's just my layman guess. I did notice that Premiere was exporting/rendering fine when I was just beginning my project, but after it got to a certain length, that's when I couldn't render or export anymore. It honestly baffles me too. It would be useful to see what the results are if other people tried this simple switch-a-roo so possible issues can be narrowed down.

Unknown error compiling movie - tiny sections export fine - no one bad clip

This week I've been dealing with a huge pain exporting a 6 minute video on my retina macbook pro. The sequence is 720p 24fps (23.976) and contains a mix of 720p & 1080p (scaled) AVCHD footage, a couple of 1080p GoPro shots, some 1080p time-lapse clips (quicktime h.264) and some mp3 files.
Earlier I was having trouble with playback in premiere, but by replacing one bad clip and rendering the rest in small chunks I am now able to play back the sequence with zero issues within premiere.
However, when I go to export the whole movie, or even a significant chunk, either the system starts spinning its wheels partway through export or I get "error compiling movie - unknown error."
The workaround I have found when that happens is to restart premiere (often having to force quit) and then try to export a smaller chunk. (Restarting seems to be necessary after an export has failed). Sometimes the chunks become ridiculously small, but there is no one clip or section that won't export if the clips are small enough. I have also tried cleaning the media cache trashing the preferences, neither of which have changed anything.
Even when I export using the sequence settings of the sequence (which has already been rendered and plays fine within premiere) the problem persists.
My first question is: how can there be an issue exporting a video with identical settings to a sequence that has already been rendered and plays back fine?? Am I wrong in understanding that no conversion is required in that case? Clearly there is something about the process that I don't understand.
My second question is, if no one clip or clips are to blame, are there any likely culprits in my system? Is there perhaps a less time-consuming workaround?
Finally I want to ask: what good does it do to allow users to put different types of media into one timeline if they can never export it?!?!
This is super frustrating, thank you for any help or insight.

So, I ran into this the first time recently. I discovered it when I copied an adjustment layer for quick grading with an RGB Color Corrector and Color Balance effects in it from a rehearsal cut of a short film.The effects worked fine and rendered out without issue. I imported the sequence into my 'final' cut so I could reuse the titles and adjustment layer. I copied the adjustment layer to the new rough cut of the final sequence and ran into this error when I tried to render it, but only after applying the adjustment layer. I found that if I turned off the Color Balance, the sequence rendered fine. I found that if I moved the Color Balance above the RGB Color Corrector, the effect of the RGB effect completely disappeared AND it rendered correctly (both effects turned on) - so reversing the order worked, but effects were weird. I also found that if I added ANY non-GPU accelerated effects to the RGB Color Corrector that I'd get the same compile error (unknown).
I went through and deleted clips until I got to 0 on the timeline, added a new one back on, and it still wouldn't render. So, I created an entirely NEW sequence, copied all video and audio (not adjustment layer) from the original failing rough cut of the final sequence, and pasted it into this new sequence. I also copied the adjustment layer again from the rehearsal cut into this new sequence and it is rendering just fine.
HOURS WASTED DOING THIS! It would be awesome if Adobe actually tested their products before releasing them instead of forcing us to do it for them. My project consisted of about 30-40 different clips and audio, all from the same DSLR (Nikon D810), nothing fancy, two effects in an adjustment layer applied to the entire sequence, and Premiere couldn't handle it. Given this and some of the comments I read while troubleshooting this on this forum, gives me pause in trusting Adobe products for any real work that has a deadline (unless, of course, you build in the required Adobe testing time into your budget).
So, just another data point; something else to try. Create a new sequence, and copy everything from your non-working one to it, and see if this will jump-start Premier. Worked for me. Good luck.

Error compiling movie: out of memory !!! Premiere CS3

Hey every1 --- desperate need of some guidance here. I've been all over the internet and these boards --- have seen this come up with a lot of people but no real solid answers that I'd seen or that have helped.
First off, my comp is an imac 3.06 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory. (just bought the computer last year)
I'm shooting with a canon 7d in HD (1920 x 1080p) and I'm editing using Premiere CS3. I've noticed that editing has become very difficult since I started using HD; playback is very choppy and the 'quality settings' in the preview monitor are a joke and do absolutely nothing whether it's on draft or automatic.
Anyway, despite the choppiness and slow editing, I was able to get a 3 min clip completed. These are my export settings:
Export > Movie
H.264
960 x 540
23.976 fps
Square pixels,
100% quality,
recompress: unchecked.
Once exported (I was able to export smaller timelines previously--- say, 50 secs of footage or so) the files look AMAZING and from there I use them for online video via vimeo -- stuff looks really awesome.
Anyway, recently I'm getting: 'Error compiling movie. Out of Memory. Change optimization preferences to memory', etc. etc. Well, I did as it asked and that did absolutely nothing.
So, I decided to open up my activity monitor and watch what's going on with my memory while premiere is exporting. I also closed ALL unused applications. System runs at about 2.16gb free memory before I start exporting. Memory seems stable during export UNTIL around the 50% exporting mark, and then its starts climbing like crazy and my memory just gets eaten up --- finally resulting in a crash at about 70% render.
I really don't know what else to do. Does my computer not have the power to export 3 min of HD footage??? This seems surprising to me ... I don't know what else to try.
Thanks for any help !!!
-Mark

Hi Mark,
Hope you are having a wonderful day.
Sorry to hear that you are having such a hard time. Although I did not specifically get the out of memory error, I can only be convinced that that is the problem.
Although I am not a computer whiz, I have learned my share of things. I have been troubleshooting a video all this week (really, a couple of months), but I had to put it aside and come back to it.
I tend to be talkative; so I will get back on topic or at least try to stay on topic, so bare with me. Smile....
Here is what I have learned and maybe it will help you with yours if you have not found a solution already.
Based on your hard drive specs and ram, I was thinking the same thing e.g. hard to believe that you are not able to render 3 minutes of video in HD. I primarily work in HD/1080p.
The place where we are similar is that I eventually could get the video to render by reducing the workspace that is rendered piece by piece until I was able to render the entire file. When I tried to encode the video, I kept getting error compiling messages. I tried different codecs, deleting xmpses, not rendering xmpses, etc. I could not figure out the keyframe trick so I just put in a black video from after effects. By the way, all of my videos intro the same and no problems with the other videos fading from black to a still photo.
Here is the problem from what I could gather.
Simply, out of memory. I was rendering and trying to encode a 45 minute video with after effects compositions and the dynamic linking kept timing out once the file reached a certain size. There were no other true fancy effects. I do alot on the green screen and just use after effects to make a white background. Smaller videos, rendering has been slow, but doable. This massive video would never compile. I won't bore you with my system specs, but know that similar to your situation, the system in theory should have been adequate.
Work around...
I ended up exporting the video as 3 separate 15 minute video clips. I could not get them to encode as .wmv files so I encoded them as .mp4 files. By the way, I still encoded in HD.
Here is the kool stuff.
After what seems like forever, I found a converter that could convert .mp4 to .wmv and rejoin the files to play as one large file with the same quality as my source file and no audio synching issues. By the way, I do not work for this company. I just found this encoder at 4 o'clock this morning after trying all of these other converters that were straight garbage or were free to try and not really free if you wanted quality. By the way, the conversion tool is not only user friendly, but free which is awesome.
The name of the software is Media Cope. Just visit www.mediacope.com.... Be sure to send the owner an e-mail to thank him and let him know that Mark sent you. I just sent him an e-mail earlier to let him know that I was going to post on Adobe what a wonderful software he created. I just needed something free, quick, easy, and user-friendly.
Whoops... got off topic....
I'll do a summary at the end for my recommendation to you.
Here are some other tidbits that I learned as well that may save you some time.
When editing this is what I do now...
1) I use CCleaner from www.piriform.com to quickly clean my system especially temporary files before I start editing and if I am switching from project to project.
2) In all of my troubleshooting this week, I found a kool little software call Smart Close. (Just google to find this one.) It closes all of your non-critical background files in order to maximize system resources. (When I am done editing, I just reboot and all of my background programs start up again. You do not have to do it that way, that's just how I do it. The nice thing is that it is a wizard interface; so you do not have to try to figure out if a process in the background is critical or non-critical.)
3) Depending on my mood and if I did not forget, smile.... I change the priority to high for the adobe products in the task manager.
More things that I learned...
1) We are not able to change the temp file for how Adobe encodes. My logic was if I could change the encoding to a hard drive that was simply empty so Adobe can render there, then I would be good. Wrong.... Adobe does not allow you to change the temp location. (Note: This is what I discovered in the different forums; so encoding to an external hard drive is not the best move. Read more to se why.)
2) It is best to have your scratch disks as your internal disk. If you have multiple internal disks, then you shoud check some other forums for the best way to set up your scratch disks. When I was just starting out, I bought an external hard drive enclosure with the thought that I would work primarily off of those external drives with the option of doing some RAID work. Bad idea... Even the simplest of tasks took forever. It was best to work off of the internal drive. By the way, I still use the enclosure hard drives for backups in order to allow me to free up some space on the primary hard drive. When rendering, it is truely a use of the RAM and the hard drive space in the editing process.
I'll leave you with this...
I take back what I said earlier, you do need a new computer with more RAM. If you can get 16 GB, great. The primary reason is that if you are editing in Premiere and if you do anything with dynamic linking into your after effects, it will cause your ram to climb as the file gets larger. Of course, be sure to get the largest hard drive possible as an internal drive, the maximum on processor speed, 64 bit operating system, etc.
I know you are like by now, Mark, what is the point of all of your gibberish... Really, it was to share with you and others on some really kool work arounds.
My recommendation for you are as follows.
1) You have already proven that you can render and encode 50 second clips and you are very happy with those clips, so create separate smaller clips for this particular project.
2) Once you have the final clips outputted, then use Media Cope to rejoin the files as one large file and you are done.
(Note: The one thing that I did notice is that there is a small break right between where the files are merged. The nice thing is that as a video editor/film maker, you will be the only person likely to notice it because you know where the breaks are. The other nice thing is that the untrained eye will not notice it and if you had to submit your work to a television station especially on DVD, the video system should recognize the file as one large file and play all the way through. Note: For the last sentence, I said 'should play all the way through' as I have not had a chance to check this one yet as I just finished this project today and still have to turn in all of my videos. I still have some more videos to merge.)
By the way, the only specs that I will share are that I work on a PC and it has 8 GB of ram.
The summary of the summary is that sometimes an error compiling message could simply be that your system does not have resources to render and the encode that large of a file. At least that is what I learned this week or at least my specific situation. The confirmation is that I just finished shooting a documentary which was one hour and some change and was able to render and encode to .wmv with no problems. Of course, I was not using after effects for this particular project.
In either case, hope all the information helps you with your project.
Have a wonderful day and happy holidays everyone.
Mark

Can't render: Error Compiling Movie: Unkown Error

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