On-Screen Countdown Timer in Premiere Pro CS3?

Greetings.  I have been assigned a small video job for a local church.  Essentially, I need to have about 3 minutes of video showing pictures and a "countdown timer" to cue the church attendees of how much time remains before the service starts.  Essentially, it's a gentle "get to your seats now" kind of prompting. 
I've got the project laid out with pictures and words.  What I really need is the ability to have an attractive "T-minus" kind of countdown timer showing each second, starting at 3 minutes.
Does such a technique or tool exist within Premiere Pro CS3?
I thank you kindly.  Thanks for reading.  Cheers!
Todd

The effect is not native to Premiere.  You may be able to tweak the Timecode effect to suit your needs, but I've never tried it myself.
After Effects may also have something, but I'm less familiar with that program.

Similar Messages

  • I Reinstalled Premiere Pro CS3, loaded a project I edited using CS3, and NOW I get jagged edges!

    Hey everyone. I was using Premiere Pro CS3 to edit some footage I shot with my HPX170 in 1080i 24p Advanced. The P2 footage looked great in Premiere CS3. I upgraded to Premiere CS5, imported the same exact project into CS5 using the same 1080i 24p Advanced setting, and I got jagged stair stepping edges on the objects that were in sharp focus in my footage. Okay, I thought, I'll just reinstall Premiere Pro CS3 and continue editing the footage in CS3 since it looked normal in CS3 with no jagged edges. But, to my surprise, I'M GETTING THE SAME EXACT THING NOW IN PREMIERE PRO CS3!!!! What in the heck is up with that? How can the footage look normal when I imported and editied it before in CS3 and NOW I get jagged stair stepping edges?!!!! I even tried importing a fresh clip from the footage and that clip still has the jagged stair stepping edges. This makes no sense whatsoever! Does anyone know what's going on with this? It seems like an interlace artifact problem BUT, if that's the case, why didn't it do this the first time in Premiere Pro CS3? And trust me, I would have noticed right away if it did!

    Hey Shooternz. Which exact playback settings are you asking about? I set the one of the playback settings to "Highest Quality" instead of "Automatic" and nothing changed. I unchecked 24p Pulldown in the "Interpret Footage" section and nothing changed (I don't even remember "24p Pulldown" being in the Interpret Footage section the first time I installed CS3, which is strange. Was that added in an update?). I tried different sizes like HD 1.5, HD 16:9, etc. in the Interpret Footage section and the jaggies are still there. Nothing seems to work. ??? This is weird because they weren't there the first time I edited the footage in CS3 when I installed CS3 the first time. One thing I noticed is, when I installed CS3 the second time and loaded the project, as the project was loading, I got a message that said something like "These project settings cannot be loaded. We will now switch to Desktop Mode." Would that have something to do with it you think?

  • Premiere Pro CS3: How do I get rid of hundreds of short horizontal lines all over the screen?

         I have taken over a high school computer lab. We have Premiere Pro CS3. The Premiere Window gets peppered with many hundreds of horizontal dashes that interfere with readability. The dashes are uniformly about 16 pixels long and two or three pixels thick. They seem random in how many appear at any time. If I resize the window, they diminish and then come back. Occasionally they are gone completely. They never appear outside of the Premiere window. These dashed lines do not appear with other programs. We use Photoshop, Illustrator, and many other programs with no problem.See the attached image.
         The machines have Pentium(R) 4 2.80 ghz; 2 gigs ram; Nvidia graphics card Gforce 8400 GS.
    I have never run across this behavior before. I would appreciate any help. Thanks,
    Geo Monley

    Probably a bad video card - or a bad video driver.  First, try to reinstall the video driver.  If that doesn't work, replace the card.
    Evanf

  • Error in Premiere Pro CS3.

    Whenever I had a problem and i posted it here, i always got helped by you guys, so first of all, i want to thank those who helped me out there, and wanted you to know that i really appreciate that help.
    Here is probably my last issue with Premiere Pro CS3.
    The problem:
    From time to time, i get an error. A message saying: " sorry a serious error has occurred that requires adobe premiere pro to shut down"
    It saves the current project, and when i start premiere over, it loads it from there. It usually happens when:
    I ' activate ' an effect, example: I change the opacity to 0 ( typing it with the keyboard as a percentage ) and press enter. Right when i press enter, it pops up. ( it happens with any kind of effect, just from time to time, when i ' activate ' it)
    When i minimize an audio file by dragging it to the left or the right, it happens when i release the right mouse button. These are just examples. The issue is that when i make a change, this error repeats.
    I'd love to hear what the issue may be.
    Appreciate any kind of help.

    Can you give us the specs. of one of the typical Projects, and their Assets, where you see this happening?
    Next, can you give us the specs. of your computer, in as much detail, as is possible?
    Can you also list the programs/processes, that load at boot up? A screen-cap, or report from Process Explorer will tell us a lot.
    Also, before beginning an editing session, you might want to look into this ARTICLE. If you have Win7, be sure to look down-thread for the link to Black Viper's Web site for tuning that OS.
    This ARTICLE might be useful for telling you what is happening with your system and your programs, when you get the error and crash.
    Good luck,
    Hunt

  • Startup with Premiere Pro CS3 - few questions

    Hi,
    I am totally newbie to video editing (and to ADOBE CS programs).
    To introduce, here's my setup.
    New camcorder (Canon VIXIA HV30, HDV format, miniDV) - still in the owner manual for very basic things...
    Premiere Pro CS3 (soon CS4 as entitled to upgrade)
    Vista x64 Home Premium
    Core 2 Duo 1.86 Ghz, 4GB RAM
    Firewire card
    I just started to fool around with CS3 and with this camcorder, doing some tests (I use the mini DV HD tapes).
    When I capture to Premiere, here are some of the annoying things happening :
    1) instead of viewing in real time what is happening, I get a multilingual screen saying that tape is being captured... (very very useful !!...)
    2) when I playback the scene, I see edges of things kind of blinking white - just the edges - some sort of what I would call 'distortion' but maybe it's not the right term... Is this just a matter of not having a high-end video card and then, I should not worry: the editing I would do would not appear on a DVD or a published video ? Or, am I doing something wrong ? (last but not least: does it have to do with the camera ? - although I do not see this when watching on the camera side viewer.)
    3) This camera can shoot 30p, 24p, hi-def (but HDV format - not AVCHD): what should be the setup to choose :
    - on the camera ?
    - when I launch Premiere and am prompted with a window to choose format?
    Let's start with these basic questions...
    Thanks in advance,
    Rob

    Rob,
    1.) You *may* have problems with CS3 and 64-bit OS. CS4 is optimized to work with (though it is still a 32-bit app) 64-bit OS. Things *should* be better. CS3 works beautifully with 64-bit OS for some. Others are not so lucky.
    2.) With the Capture of HDV, you will not get real-time Capture preview - nature of the beast.
    3.) Can you post a tiny amount of this footage, or a still cap to show what it looks like?
    Good luck,
    Hunt

  • Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 Confusion

    Hi guys,
    I have very basic problem in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. When I import video it's size is scaled down and quality is rapidly droped down. When I export it quality is very bad and my video have a black frame. How would I keep the quality and get rid of black frame?
    I really need this project to be done soon, thank you very much!
    Maksimilijan.
    Project details:
    DV - PAL
    Widescreen 48kHz
    30Fps

    The great little utility, G-SPOT will tell you what FRAPS is Exporting. What you are seeing is a disparity between that FRAPS footage, and your Project Preset. They must match 100%. You will most likely need to set up a Desktop Project and adjust the Frame Size to match your footage.
    Also, going back about a year, there were several long threads on FRAPS footage into PrPro. I would Search this forum for "FRAPS," and read. There were some good tips in those. One was quite long, and used to have some neat flight-sim screen-caps, but last time that I looked, the images were no longer up on the OP's server, so they will be missing now - the discussions were all still there.
    Good luck,
    Hunt

  • Premiere Pro CS3 Crashes when I right click the timeline

    I have Premiere Pro CS3, and it runs fine most of the time. But as soon as I right click on one of the video clips on the timeline, it crashes and gives me an error: "A serious error has occured that requires Adobe Premiere Pro to shut down." This happens pretty much every time; but only when I right click on timeline clips. I'm using Windows 7. I also have it on my laptop (Also windows 7) and I don't have any trouble running it there. No crashes even once. Any ideas?

    More information needed for someone to help... click these links and provide the requested information
    -http://forums.adobe.com/message/4200840
    -http://forums.adobe.com/thread/416679
    -http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419406
    Does this happen will ALL types of video?
    Read Bill Hunt on a file type as WRAPPER http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440037
    What is a CODEC... a Primer http://forums.adobe.com/thread/546811
    What CODEC is INSIDE that file? http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440037
    Report back with the codec details of your file, use the programs below... a screen shot works well to SHOW people what you are doing
    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/592070?tstart=30
    For PC http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en or http://www.headbands.com/gspot/
    Are you running CS3 in compatibility mode?
    PPro before CS5 NEEDS to be run in compatibility mode with Windows 7, which means right click the program icon and select WinXP compatibility mode from the popup
    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/help/compatibility
    OR
    If you have Win7 64bit PRO or higher, try Microsoft's Virtual XP
    This is only ONE example of using Virtual XP http://forums.adobe.com/thread/702693
    -And a Tutorial http://windowssecrets.com/newsletter/using-windows-7s-xp-mode-step-by-step/
    What is your EXACT brand/model graphics adapter and driver number?
    Example... I have an nVidia GTX285 with driver 296.10

  • Premiere Pro CS3  Vs Premiere Element  (latest version)

    Hi there,
    I need need help on whether to buy Premiere Pro CS3 or Premiere Element (latest version) ?
    1. Can the Element run multiple videos at the same time ? For example, I wanted to run say 4 videos at the same time on different part of the screen.
    2. Can Premiere Pro CS3 create a 3D words say "Adobe" and do the following effect:
    i) a 3D alphablelt of "A" appear from inside the screen them zoom out, and as it zoom out, it rotates along the Y-axis then stop. This followed by "D" then "O" then "B" then followed by "E". By the time E stops, you will have the words ADOBE
    Thanks

    Cool3D is a much more powerful program for creating the effects you described then After Effects. The 3D layers in AE have no depth: they are like postcards that you can move in 3D space. The objects (and words) that you create in Cool 3D are three-dimensional. They have depth and you can see their thickness when moving them through 3D space. Like in AE you can use multiple light sources of different colors and types. The program is easy to use if you limit yourself to the presets provided. The program has not been updated to make use of multiple processors so rendering takes a long time. But the results are superb. Just make sure that you render to "Uncompressed AVI with 32 bits" to get the alpha channel. (In Ulead lingo "Field Order A" is lower field first.)
    Don't get me wrong. Cool 3D is very limited in its capability. It is not After Effects. But what it does it does very well.

  • Premiere Pro CS3 now exits after loading

    After using premiere pro cs3 for quite a while, all of a sudden it exits after loading. I'm not sure if this is an Adobe problem or a Norton problem or a machine problem. It happened after a power failure, and while I was running premiere at the time, my power backup let me close the file and shut down premiere before it too died.
    The computer is working fine with all other programs, including Encore & Photoshop. I just can't run Premiere. The other strange thing is that I can no longer access the Adobe site from that computer. The site starts to load then hangs forever.
    I tried re-installing Premiere, no-luck. Then I downloaded the last update to CS3 (on another machine because the Premiere machine won't connect to the site) and tried to install it. No dice. The install hangs forever with "installing" on the screen.
    I thought maybe there was an "installer" or "updater" problem, but can't figure it out.
    Anybody have any suggestions?
    Thanks.
    Brad Tyrrell

    Hunt,
    Thanks for the reply.   I'll try that too.
    A suggestion I got over at the DV board was to create a new admin account in XP and try opening premiere under that.   That worked!   Unfortunately, since I created my projects under the old admin file, I don't have access to them under the new one.   I'm copying files to a different folder at this point, but I know Premiere doesn't like that.
    If deleting the preference file works, it'd be a lot simpler.
    Thanks.
    Brad
    By-the-way,  how did you get your screen name to not be your email address?   I can't seem to do it.   I went into my account and changed things, but the forum seems to insist that my screen name is my ID which seems to have to be my email address.

  • Premiere pro cs3 window "flickers" or "shakes" then windows shuts down

    lately, i've been having this problem. when i run adobe premiere pro cs3, the window "flickers" or "shakes." i'm not quite sure how to explain it, but it's like a quick "jolt." sometimes it recovers from that and i'm able to continue editing. other times though, i get a blue screen giving me a "stop error" then reboots.
    it was happening with the old video card driver. i've since updated the driver and it's still happening. i thought it was the RAM so i replaced them. new RAM didn't help.
    i'm running Windows XP SP2 on AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ with 2.5GB of RAM.
    anyone know what the deal is? has anyone experienced this? it only happens when i'm running adobe premiere pro cs3.
    thanks!

    I don't remember the exact name(s) but I've seen two KINDS of related messages... one was with problems caused by a particular version of the Microsoft intellipoint mouse driver and the other was caused by a product called windowblinds
    If you have either of those... do a forum search to find details

  • Premiere Pro CS3 shutting down

    Sorry to ask such a simple question, but I am new to Premiere Pro CS3.  Basically, whenever I start it up, I get to the point of importing some video (a small file), and then it seems like 3 out of 4 times when I try to do anything with the program after the import is complete, it simply shuts down and disappears with no warnings or errors.  I know from experience with Vegas Pro that video editors can be picky and unstable, but this is ridiculous.
    Short of "re installing the program", are there any words of advice of things to check concerning the program (or me) to help keep it running longer than 60 seconds?  It is running on a Win XP32 machine with no other programs running at the same time.
    Thanks in advance for your input.

    Excellent article!
    SYSTEM:
    Let's start with the hardware.  This is a built from scratch PC about 2 -3 years old that I put together for using Vegas Pro and other high end Autodesk programs.  It is a Tyan server motherboard with two AMD Opteron quad core micros (8 cores total) running at a nominal 2.3 Ghz.  Total ram is 8 G of DDR2.  The video card is an ATI FireGL V5200 with 512M of video ram, driving two monitors.  The operating system is Windows XP 32.  It is a dual boot machine, capable of booting into either XP32 or XP x64.  The OS are on a 320G SATA2 hard drive.  The video files are on a striped RAID consisting of two 320G SATA2 hard drives.
    Installed software includes everything from Master Collection CS3, Microsoft Office 2007, and a few other odds and ends.  The antivirus is Kaspersky 2009.
    ASSETS:
    The imported video clip is 80M AVI from a camcorder that plays fine in either Vegas or Windows Media Player.
    WORKFLOW:
    Have not got that far yet!
    Let's start with the simple questions first:  When I get to the initial splash screen "Welcome to Adobe Premiere Pro", pressing either the "Exit" button or the red button with the X in the upper right corner of the splash screen causes the program to shut down.  Is that to be expected?
    Oh, and to the best of my experience, this is the only software from the Master Collection CS3 suite that is having this problem.

  • Premiere Pro cs3 performance slow

    Hello, I tried checking various places for this answer but could not find the answer, so apologies if this can be answered somewhere else.
    I use Premiere Pro CS3 (I have the suite).  When I start to work on a project, all is well.  When I get to about the fifteen minute or twenty minute mark in terms of footage that is on the time line (perhaps just one or two video tracks and then a title or two on tracks three and four), then Premiere behaves very sluggishly.  When opening the project, it takes a fairly long time (about two minutes) to open.  Playback always stutters, no matter what.  If I select "File" or "Edit" on the top bar, I might have to wait a few seconds, or longer, for the drop-down items to appear.  If I dare to do something like add color correction to a shot, or some other effect, Premiere is even more sluggish.  I used to use Premiere 6.1 for years and never had a problem -- even did a massive production with enormous number of SFX, green screen, etc...no problem.  My system smoked.  I have a great system now (see below).  Now I do a project in CS3 and am so very careful not to get near the 30 minute mark (otherwise very slow performance) and even then I feel very limited in terms of what I can dare do, lest CS3 crashes altogether. And sometimes it has.  "Premiere Pro had encountered problems and will now close..."   Any suggestions?
    Here is what I am working with:
    Pyro PCI card
    650W Power Supply
    Supermicro X7DAE Dual-Core Xeon Motherboard
    Dual Intel Xeon 5150 (10.64 GHz Total)
    4GB DDR2-667 FBDIMM RAM (4x1GB)
    ATI FireGL V3350 256MB PCIe Video Card
    Creative Labs AudigySE Sound Card
    80GB OS/Application Hard Drive
    1000GB SATA Internal Video RAID (2x500)
    Microsoft Windows XP Professional
    Adobe Production Suite CS3

    I guess what Harm is saying is that if your hardware checks out, your footage is "typical", and no immediate solution is evident, then a re-install is often the fastest and most effective solution. If you have your OS on one drive and all your data on another, this process becomes pretty straightforward, even more so if you've "slipped" your copy of XP with all its updates. Why spend 6 hours troubleshooting and get a possible solution when you could spend 2 hours re-installing and get an almost guaranteed solution!
    If you want to have a tinker before taking the plunge, there are a couple of things that I'd look at:
    1) Virus Checker. Download MS's "Process Explorer" (overblown Task Manager) and see if anything is going nuts when you open a larger project
    2) CS3 all patched up?
    3) Hard disk cache setting. You say things go pear-shaped at about 30 minutes (about 6 gig in DV language) maybe there's an issue with your Windows Page File that is slowing things down. If you have a "hard" setting in there, change it back to automatic and see if you have any improvement. Also, where is it? across two disks? check you have enough room on your OS disk for the pagefile to work as it should.
    4) Check the location of your Media Cache files. Think about trashing all the cache files for the project and see if that improves anything. Make sure that anything that Premiere will be accessing (the Media Cache Database, the cache files etc) is where it should be and not in some wierd place (like on a network share)
    5) On the timeline, what display options do you have turned on? First frame/last frame? or "movie strip" view?
    That's all I can think of for now... is the re-install looking more attractive??  ;-)
    MP

  • Need to Download Premiere Pro CS3 (CD won't install)

    Hi there,
    My laptop's HDD recently crashed, and when I went to reinstall the Premiere Pro CS3 cd, I get to the screen where install progess is shown (after I've entered my S/N).  The installer seems to hang on 'instaling 3rd party content' and takes FOREVER for the green bar to 'move'.  Then, after hours of letting it sit, I get a window that says install has failed... pretty sure that it said 3rd party content DID install, but PP itself and something else did not.  I tried twice, with the same result.
    The CD is clean, no real scratches... just been sitting in its case for years.
    FWIW, I'm running Vista 32bit. 
    I'm hoping there's some CS3 files still hidden on Adobe.com that I can DL in place of the CD.
    Don't really edit from home much anymore. Just need my copy of PP to work so I can recut my resume reel, which is a fairly important task. 
    Thanks,
    Joe

    Thanks for that link.  Got it downloaded.
    It appears that something is wrong with my laptop... because the downloaded file stalls at the same point as the disc.  While it still says "Installing Shared components".  This is when the green progress bars stop(about 10% of the way) and the HDD activiity light on the laptop stops as well.
    Back when I reinstalled windows, I had some issues updating.  Once I got to a certain point, one of the updates would render my laptop screen completely blank.... so after reinstalling a few times, I stopped installing updates at a certain point... though I did make it to Service Pack 2.
    That's the only reason I can think of, as to why the program won't install. It's really odd.
    BTW:  I did shut down the antivirus while attemptinng Premiere install.

  • Audio in Premiere Pro CS3 appears on one PC, not the other

    Hi everyone,
    I'm the Network Administrator for a high school and we have a digital media lab here using Adobe Creative Suite 3: Master Collection.  All systems here are running Windows XP Professional and are on a Windows domain.  All users are standard users, with no administrative rights for obvious security reasons.  When I originally did the deployment of the lab by running sysprep on a reference computer and using ghost to deploy the rest of the computers, I noticed a problem with Premiere Pro CS3 after the deployment.  In that lab, none of the computers would capture video via firewire and the built in capture function in Adobe Premiere CS3.  I believe I have a post about this on these forums that was never resolved.  To get around this, I'd capture the footage for students in my office and then transfer it over to their network drives so they could import it into Premiere Pro CS3 and edit the footage.
    Recently, the school purchased some HD cameras that record to a built in hard drive or an SDHC card.  The idea here was that the .MTS files could be copied from the camera to the computer running Premiere Pro CS3, the media files in .MTS format [at 1280x720] could be converted using KoyoteSoft's Free HD Converter using the settings MPEG2 [a preset], MPG2 as the format, 1280x720 // 16/9, 29.97 FPS, 9000 video bitrate, and 224 audio bitrate, and then the new media files could be imported into Premiere Pro CS3 and edited using the HDV 720p30 preset within Premiere Pro CS3.
    This works great...on my office computer.
    The problem is that if any student tries to import their footage on a computer in the digital media lab, the converted media files, the exact same ones that just imported into my Premiere Pro CS3 installation on a computer in my office with identical hardware as the computers in the digital media lab, fail to import the audio.  I can see the video with no problems in the lab, but no audio layer appears.  If I right click the video file and choose Open With> VLC or another media player, the media plays fine with audio.  All audio/video codecs that are installed on my machine are also installed on the digital media machines.  If I right click Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 from within a student account on those computers and choose Run As and use the local administrator account, Premiere Pro CS3 does the exact same thing, it still can't see the audio.  Adobe CS3 is fully up to date on both my office computer and all digital media computers.
    Any help fixing this would be greatly appreciated, spring break is coming up here this coming week and I'll be here all week.  Hoping to get this resolved during that time so students can edit their own movies.  Again, video imports, audio doesn't.  No audio layer appears.
    Thanks!

    See if this helps... To work with AC3 sound files in Premiere CS3, copy the ad2ac3dec.dll file from the Encore CS3 directory into the Premiere directory

  • Audio balance greatly different in Encore CS3 after encoding 5.1 master track in Premiere Pro CS3

    Hello! I'm wondering if anyone can offer some advice for my DVD audio problem.
    I have a Premiere Pro CS3 project with a 5.1 master track that appears to behave correctly judging by the meters when I play it in PP. It also sounds reasonable (in a mixed-down fashion, I guess) on my PC system's speakers (L,R,LFE), and all rebalancing and panning seems to work well. However, once I export the master track to Encore using PP's SurCode Dolby Digital codec, the resulting audio mix is totally off. Here's what I get: both front channels play mainly out of the right front and center speakers, and the rear channels play mainly out of the left front speaker. I've tried all different settings, but I can't seem to change this. Well I've read that Encore just sends the audio mix straight through (the DVD trancode status is "Don't transcode"), but when I build the DVD and play it on both of my 5.1 surround systems, the results are just as bad as what my desktop PC speakers were hinting at. [Actually all DVDs that Encore builds are UNSUPPORTED on one of my set-top DVD players and they're both Panasonic! So first, I first have to copy the DVD using Nero and then the copy is accepted by all. That seems to have no bearing on my audio dilemma but I thought I'd mention it. I would love to know what Nero is doing right that Encore is doing wrong!)
    Anyway, here's some background: I began to notice this problem with the audio balancing whenever a .wav music source is imported into PP as a stereo source. [A side issue here - I don't seem to be able to explain - or control - how one .wav file gets imported as stereo while another is imported as 5.1!] Anyway, as one would expect, since my master track is 5.1, the stereo track is automatically set up with a rebalancing tray with the puck set in the middle. The meters show that the source is stereo and the sound has been rebalanced across the master track. If I drag the puck around, the master meters behave accordingly. Then I import my video (.avi video clip) and that sound is imported as a stereo track. For that track, I drag the puck to the rear. Again, the master meters respond correctly. So far so good. But when I export to Encore, the resulting audio mix so completely wrong it can't even be explained as a 5.1-to-stereo downmix situation. The sounds that were supposed to come out of the rear channels are in front left and center (and deafening), overpowering the music that is only coming out of front right. And the rear speakers are silent unless I turn on Pro-Logic on my amplifier, which just confuses the issue. I didn't bother to check LFE as things were bad enough.
    Where I DO NOT have the problem is when the audio file is imported as a 5.1 source (although it is just a stereo CD track ripped using Sony CD Architect). In that case, there is no rebalancing tray and the track meter shows only the L and R channels active, as expected. Ditto for the master track. Now if I go ahead and send the music to a stereo submix track and let that rebalance to the master, I see all channels active. But that results in the problem above after exporting to Adobe Media Encoder using SurCode and then importing the audio into Encore. If I don't remix to 5.1, the audio on the DVD is OK. But I would like to have the music come out of all speakers when there isn't a video soundtrack as there are many still pictures in the presentation.
    So the question is, if I can rebalance and pan channels in PP CS3, why are the results coming out all wrong in Encore using SurCode? And how can I hear my project on DVD the same way I mixed in PP?
    Any help would be greatly appreciated!
    Doug Herbst
    Holmdel NJ

    Problem solved everyone!!!
    Rebecca of Adobe support helped me identify the root cause: project was originally set up as standard (2-channel) and although it had evolved to a 5.1 project over time, it could never grow up to be anything other than a standard audio project. After you set up the new project, the setting that controls your audio is buried in the project somewhere. Changing your project settings to set up new 5.1 audio tracks for new timelines does NOT make the project 5.1! The real audio identity attribute set at birth is not alterable OR EVEN VISIBLE (even as a grayed-out project setting) although PP will allow you to set up and mix 5.1 audio tracks at will. So you may think you're working on a 5.1 project now, but you're only fooling yourself and PP goes right along with it. Even the .ac3 files you create via export are 5.1! But dare to build your DVD in Encore and all of your timelines are transcoded back to 2.0 instantly. Resistance is futile.
    A new feature in PP CS4 will allow you to view, and even CHANGE, your project's audio identify from standard to 5.1. How sweet!
    Well, I've devised a way to dig out myself out of this deep hole in CS3 and it worked, but I can't promise that it will work for everyone. (This assumes you own the Dolby Digital 5.1 codec from Minnetonka.)
    1. Create a new Premiere Pro project as 5.1 audio from the get-go.
    2. Import your suspected 2.0 project into this new 5.1 project and click each sequence to flesh out the timeline.
    3. Re-export all audio as elemental streams using Adobe Media Encoder. Make sure you export the audio component of each timeline as Dolby Digital 5.1 and exactly - and I mean EXACTLY - the same way. To deviate the audio settings for each timeline is to ask for trouble, so I recommend setting up an audio pre-set that you can just click when you need it.
    4. Create a new Encore project and import all original video assets and your new replaced and, hopefully, 5.1 audio assets into it.
    5. In Encore, create a separate timeline for each pair of assets (.m2v and .ac3 for example). DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PLACE MULTIPLE PAIRS OF ASSETS ON THE SAME TIMELINE! For some unexplained reason, the build process will transcode the audio back to 2.0, and if you continue pack new 5.1 audio assets on the same timeline, you will get an error message "an input contract violation has occurred" because you now have 2.0 and 5.1 assets on the same timeline, even though you really don't know that and didn't ask for that to happen anyway. (Thanks to Bill Hunt who mentioned his habit of keeping the asset pairs on separate timelines in another thread - that suggestion was absolutely essential to the solution here.)
    6. In Encore, check to make sure that all of your original video sychs up correctly with the new, true 5.1 audio. Link the end actions of each timeline with the next timeline to play in the correct sequence. Check your project for orphan timelines and other errors. Then, before you start building menus and start getting fancy, build a DVD and make sure it plays as 5.1 on your system.
    Tip #1: while you're re-exporting and replacing the audio files, don't have Encore running. I've seen it gracefully and automatically re-import the replaced file once the export is done, but I have also seen it choke with the terribly descriptive "Encore has encountered a problem" message upon discovered the asset is not available while it is being replaced. Encore then continues to mark the asset as offline.
    Tip #2: when re-exporting and replacing files, always select audio and video separately. For some reason, Encore will allow you to replace an .ac3 file when you perform an elemental audio export, but when you try to combine video and audio and both files exist, Encore will prompt you to replace the video, but immediately abort with an error that it cannot replace the .ac3 file, thus forcing you to delete the .ac3 component manually before trying again.
    Doug

Maybe you are looking for