h264 crash?

[[email protected]]

I can't make a H264 Mp4 without my computer crashing - totally turning off.

It has happened since a Microsoft auto update - but that could be coincidental, not sure what happened. Also happened at this time : windows media player works kinda, as it will play an mp4 but it takes about 3-4 min for me to gain any control over the playing (just keeps playing, then I'll get control to stop or pause or even close the screen).

I did diagnostics, cleaned up the hard drive, and I updated the graphics drivers for my machine, and even updated to newest WMP but still having issues.

Any suggestions?

I CAN make MOV files with no issues. JUST MP4 is the problem.
THANKS!

Sherri

[antonsvideo]

how full is the C drive? is the C drive showing a healthy status in disk management? is C a regular disk or SSD?

do you empty the hidden temp folder daily? what antivirius and or spyware software is running?

it is best to disable automatic windows updates and do it manually once a week or so, often things go wrong with auto updates

[Liverpool TV]

Can't remember if Edius 6 does Intel QuickSync, or if your machine supports it. If it does, are you making your MP4s in software or hardware? And do they both have problems.

You may also want to try reinstalling QuickTime.

[David Clarke]

Quicksync came in about EDIUS 6.03. Do you have a "hardware encode" tick box underneath the bit rate settings when you are setting up an MP4 export?

[Jerry]

On an outside chance that the unit might be overheating, make sure the vents are clear of any obstructions.

[[email protected]]

OK - Thanks guys - update:

C drive 3/4 full - still has room - did a clean up on it and it's running faster
reg HD not Solid State - running healthy

not sure what the Intel QuickSync is? (edius 6.08 version running)
However - making MP4 thru Edius usually - however, any OTHER program (like media encoder) also does NOT work - same issue. I use the H264/AVC Explorter plug-in and there is no box to tick for hardware. Is there another way? I CAN make MOV files with QT and that works fine, but specifically looking for the Mp4... not so much like I need it ONLY but it's now the symptom of a serious problem in the machine. This is a recent issue - never had a problem before that stupid update.

WILL TURN OFF auto updates. grrrrr.

Vents are clean - it's an alienware laptop so it sits on the desk - it's may be a bit hot (tad - not really) so I DID elevate for airflow and it's nice and cool now - but still having issue

Problem is still there and now it reboots randomly when editing or not.

Hubby thinks it may be in the registry??? yeah, he explained it to me and i was like - yeah.... ok... what? LOL
Could that be the problem and if so, what should I do, oh techie guys I rely on???

i hate computers sometimes.
S.

[David Clarke]

Quicksync is hardware which is in some processors (and which probably is in the processor you have) which lets you make MP4 files very quickly. An hour file can be made in 10 minutes. If you have Quicksync then you have a "hardware encode" tick box in your H.264 settings. You do not have this tick box so it either means you do not have Quicksync or you have to do something to get it working on your machine.

However getting Quicksync working, if you can, is a separate problem to your crashing problem so I would ignore it for now.

I suspect this is pointing to a larger problem with the laptop, especially as you have random crashing now. It could be a Windows update as EDIUS 6 is quite old, but if it was I would expect other people to have problems.

It is also odd Adobe Media Encoder does the same thing which points to some problem with the H.264 encoder system wide. Have you installed any other programs recently? Particularly programs for converting video or playback codec packs? These can mess machines up in odd ways.

Do you have an NVidia graphic card inside the machine and if so what drivers is it using? If you have one you should see a green icon near the clock which says NVidia when your mouse goes over it. Alternatively right click on the desktop and choose "NVIDIA control panel" and it will pop up with a screen which will have the version of the drivers and type of card written on it. NVidia recently released some new drivers (347) which have caused problems with some programs. They have not been a problem for me with EDIUS 7, but maybe they cause a problem with EDIUS 6.

What anti-virus program do you have running? Does it do anti-malware and have you run it to see if some dodgy software has got installed?

Finally are all the problems you are having with EDIUS and Adobe with the same clips? If so try a project with some different clips. The problem could actually be a corrupt clip rather than a computer problem.

BTW I make computers for a living and I hate them quite a lot.

[[email protected]]

HAHAHAHA! David, your computer comment made me laugh out loud for real :)

ok - I have the AMD Radeon HD 7970M - Graphics Processor (0x6800) 2G (and driver was updated last week to try an fix this) PCI EPX x16
I'm assuming (again, techie-challenged) that this is not NVidia.

YES! I think it's a problem with H264 in general. it JUST started happening and I was fine with Edius 6 before - I really do think the update screwed up the system.

Anti-virus is Trend-Micro - never EVER have had an issue with them tho. Could be that??? not thinking it is but.... never know. Also, it runs every night checking the machine and no, I have not seen any issues reported at all.

NO - happens with all different clips. ALL different edits. Nothing consistently like -OH that's a bad file or anything like that. Even if i'm NOT in edius, if i try to make from Media Encoder is also crashes.

Can I roll back to a previous windows update? (NO, I don't have a backup - don't start with me - I KNOW.) or do i have to reinstall Edius (but again, that probably is not the issue).

So far today, I had a random crash twice with one clip in Edius. I put a simple strobe on a dance scene and POP. off it went. So, restart, reload, redid the same thing - POP. off it went. Deleted the scene, all is fine so far. This is the first time i have had THAT issue!

Any help appreciated!!!!!

[burnandreturn]

The first thing I would do is backup all your files to an external HD or SSD.

I wouldn't go one step further without a complete backup of my data files and a system image.

Then I would resume my investigation into what is wrong.

[Liverpool TV]

Have you installed any media player type software other than QuickTime and Windows media player? Or have you ever installed any extra codec packs, or any software that installed any extra codecs?

[David Clarke]

You probably will not get Quicksync on that laptop. On some laptops with NVidia cards you can but it is less successful with ATI. Still that is not your problem.

I have one desktop with an ATI card in it (no laptops) and that is not causing a problem so it is probably not the graphic card drivers and you have updated those anyway. Anyone else with an ATI card on a laptop that can offer some advice out there?

I can't say exactly what is the problem. The fact that it happens in EDIUS and Adobe to me says that a re-install of EDIUS will probably not fix it. However it is worth trying. You could also try re-installing the Adobe software. If the problem is caused by some program that has been installed, re-installing either of these may overwrite whatever the problem is.

I have not used that anti-virus but sometimes anti virus programs cause problems with EDIUS. I have less problems caused by anti-virus with Adobe. You could try disabling the anti-virus and see what happens However, it did not cause a problem before so it probably does not cause a problem now.

Presumably the footage you are using is on a variety of different hard drives? I see from your signature you are using various raids, presumably external. If all the clips are off the same RAID it may be there is a problem with the RAID or the cable.

If you think the problem occurred after doing some windows updates you can see what was installed recently and uninstall them.

Go to the control panel - programs and features and click on the "view installed updates" heading in the top left. This shows the updates and the date they were installed. You can then uninstall them one at a time and see if it fixes the problem. Unfortunately you are unlikely to see an update called "mess up MP4 encoding".

If a Windows update had messed up H.264 and MP4 encoding for EDIUS 6 I thought other people would be complaining about it, which makes me think this is as a result of something else.

The other thought is what other programs are you running in the background. What icons do you have near the clock in the bottom right? You could do a screen shot of that area which may help. I use the "snipping tool" which is part of windows and lets you take a screen shot of a bit of the screen. Just type "snipping" in the windows "search programs" box. Sometimes some icons are hidden next to the clock so it may not help.

Regarding the back up - when you start messing around with the system there is always a possibility that you will do something bad and stop the whole machine working, so making a back up is good. You should always back up your media clips anyway. If you mess up the C drive then your only solution may be reinstalling the whole computer which would loose anything stored there (emails, pictures etc..) so you should regularly back up those as well of course.

[[email protected]]

ok - to be clear - I have back ups of ALL my video files- they are on the external drives. I just don't have the C drive backed up recently. I WILL... I know...

YES - I have external raids and then just USB3 drives that I use (I edit for various people) and the issue is across the board.

"Unfortunately you are unlikely to see an update called "mess up MP4 encoding"." - OH were it the case tho!!! LOL But good point - that I'll do tomorrow as well.

I'll get a photo of the programs running in the background tomorrow as well. I DID go thru the start up and disabled tons of stuff... but again, issue is there. so maybe not that - but who knows.

I have VLC Media Player (been on the machine since day 1), WMP (which has been plagued with some bugs lately as well - mentioned that earlier in the thread) and QT player and RealPlayer. That's the media players. no - i have not installed any other codecs recently.

I have Adobe CC, so they are all up to date as well.

THANK YOU, all - for the ideas and things to try. Update tomorrow!
S.

[Liverpool TV]

You may be best off backing off your system, re-blitzing it and starting fresh with a base install of Windows and Edius. Then take it from there if all is well. Ghosting or disk imaging will really save you a lot of future head aches.

[David Clarke]

As Liverpool TV says it may be easier just to wipe it and re-install. Since I make systems all the time this is probably what I would do rather than spend ages going through all my suggestions. As we don't know what the problem is then my suggestions may all be wrong. You have to make sure you de-activate EDIUS (and Adobe) first so you can re-activate it when you have re-installed.

This does assume you are happy re-installing the whole computer of course.

Before you do this my only other thought is the graphic card. I know you have updated it after you had the problem but is there any chance that there was a driver update about the time the problem started? It could be that the current driver and the one before it both cause problems but earlier ones do not.

In that list of updates is there an ATI driver which got installed at about the time the problem started?

If so get an older driver and install that and see what happens. Some ATI cards have software for H.264 encoding and it is vaguely possible that is causing the problems, and an older driver would not. Unfortunately we do not have laptops with ATI graphic cards so I cannot say which is the best laptop ATI driver for use with EDIUS.

[[email protected]]

yeah, I REALLY don't want to reinstall everything. I would need a massive list and a week to get the programs back in, plus I have all my personal set ups of transitions and templates in Edius that I would lose. obviously I'll do it if I have to but what would you suggest as first and easiest??

So, the problem started with an update, so I looked back on the installed updates and here is the gist:

HOTFIX for MS
UPDATE for MS
on 2-26

then a bunch of security updates and one UPDATE for MS in march. The issue is those 2 on 2-26 but additional were added since then so I mention them. NOTHING else is on there except microsoft updates - and I would think all the updates I did last week should be there? no?

also - Would deleting them mess up the system????

as an aside: How do I turn off auto updates? been looking around in the lists but cant seem to find that. I thought it would be in "Turn Windows Features on or off" but not there, or I'm not seeing it.

Snipping tool is my new favorite thing ever. OH the possibilities... LOL ok - I attached the programs running here. The little blue circle with the wrench in it is my alienware SupportAssist from Dell - have that turned on since the issue to give me updates but nothing there so far.

Thoughts??