Encore CS4 Start-Up Problem

Question

Hi,
When I try to open Encore CS4, either by creating a brand new project, or by using dynamic linking to bring in a short sequence from Primiere Pro, I get about 80% through the progress bar labeled "preparing transcoder settings" when I get the following error messasge, and the application crashes:
Adobe Encore Debug Event
Adobe Encore has encountered an error:
[..\..\src\AMEPresetProber.cpp - 258]
As best I can make out from the crash report, Encore is trying to run dvacore.dll when the crash occurs, although I'm not absolutely positive about this (I'm basing this on the program counter address where the exception_breakpoint occurs ; this address fell within the range populated by dvacore.dll if I am reading the crash file properly).
I'm assuming the error message is telling me that a routine in the C++ source file AMEPresetProber.cpp was running at the time of failure.  I'm further assuming from the name of the file that Encore was looking through a list of Adobe Media Encoder presets when the problem occurred.  But of course, without access to the source code, there is no way to see what the program was doing, or what error code 258 means.
If anyone has seen this problem, and has a suggestion on how to fix it, I would appreciate your input.
As an FYI, I did carefully read a long thread about Encore CS4 crashes, and tried several of the fixes there -- Updating my nvidia card drivers, installing the "roxio" px patch, updating QuickTime, and erasing Encore's preference files.  I also checked Adobe's web site to see if there were any updates for Encore CS4 (I am running 4.0.1.048), but when I tried installing the only update available, I was told that it was older than the version I currently had loaded.  At this point, short of reloading the entire CS4 suite, I'm out of ideas of what to try next.
I'm also wondering if there is something I could change with Media Encoder's settings that might help, since the problem seems to occur when Encore is looking over AME's presets.
Thanks in advance for your input.
-PTCruiser105
P.S.  I'm running Vista Ultimate, service pack 2 on a dual-core 2.4G 6600 machine with 3GB of RAM.

Answer 1

Hi Stan,
Thanks for responding.
Truth be told, I got so focused on the Encore problem, it didn't occur to me to see whether Media Encoder was still functioning properly on my machine.
At any rate, I did byte the bullet, and re-install Encore, and the problem in question went away.  Interestingly enough, when you opt to re-install Encore, CS4 automatically re-installs Media Encoder as well, so I guess the two programs are pretty tightly joined at the hip.  Not surprising, perhaps, since I suspect that Encore is in some ways just a special case of Media Encoder, at least as far as the transcoding is concerned.
Of course, once I got Encore up and running, I tried to bring over a very, very small sequence from Premiere Pro and build it, and Encore crashed again (In PproHeadless.exe call to  ImageRender.dll).  Frustrating, since as a newbie all I'm trying to do is understand how the sequence settings I'm using in Premiere translate into final DVD output.  The project I am working on involves a mixture of still images and short video clips culled from many sources in many formats, and my first renders in Premiere yielded lots of letterboxing (I'm learning the hard way about pixel aspect ratios and the like).  As such, I figured before I built too many sequeneces, I should find a set of settings and work procedures that yield good results.
I used dynamic linking to bring over my sequence from Premiere, and I'm thinking that perhaps having both Encore and Premiere open at the same time requires too many resources on my limited system.  Time to go figure out other options for moving sequences from Premiere over to Encore to see if that is in fact the issue.
-PtCruiser105