Help me, please!

[Alec]

Me and some friends are editing a small movie we made.
We just lost (for the second time) EVERYTHING in the project (Premiere 6.01). We close the file, and next time we open it, POOF, everything´s gone from the timeline. The movies in the Bin have as title "-1", and we can´t play them back. We also can´t drag them into the timeline. The project file size is equivalent to the work done (about 260Kb), so where is the information gone?
Has someone had this problem? It´s the second time in three days that this happens, it´s frustrating to watch your work down the drain.


Pentium 4 1.7Ghz
512Mb RAM
VIA Fire II Firewire card (for DV capture)
40Gb IBM hd

Windows XP Professional (NTFS)
Premiere 6.01

[Dr Mordrid]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Premiere-isms.

First consider deleting the prem60.prf file and reconfigure Premiere from the get-go. A new file will be created when you restart, hopefully without the gremlin that's causing your problem.

Another fix to try is to set the number of undo levels to 3 or less. The default is 20.

The problem is that unless you have huge amounts of RAM a large number of undo buffers can (and often does) cause memory handling problems, which in turn can cause loss of data and errors when the project is saved. Reload the project and it doesn't look anything like what you started with.

Needless to say; Premiere's memory management leaves a lot to be desired, not to mention the stability issues this can cause.

Now you know why I use MSPro 6.5 whenever possible. It's not possible with the RT-2000 in this machine, but that's the price one pays for some of ones toys.....

I'd also re-think that VIA based IEEE-1394 card as well. As with VIA chipped mainboards these can be problematic.
I'd go with either a TI or Agere (formerly: Lucent) chipped OHCI board. TI's are found in the ADS Pyro and SIIG boards. The Agere is found in ATI's DV Wonder.

Dr. Mordrid

[Alec]

Thanks, I´ll give it a go.