To Start, my laptop:

CPU: Intel® Core ™ i7-2330QM CPU @ 2.00 GHz

CPU Clock Frequency: 2.00 GHz

System Memory: 8 GBytes

Cache Memory: 1 MBytes/6 Mbytes

Manufacturer: Sony Corporation

Model name: VPCF226FM

BIOS VERSION: R1190V#

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

ME Version: 7.0.10.1203

System Type: 64-bit Operating System

I downloaded the 30-day free trial of Premiere Pro CS5.5 with all updates.  To play with the program, for my own personal amusement, I wanted to edit together pieces from a bunch of avi videos that I know to play properly outside the program, tested on more than one computer.

At first, importing the files seemed to be no problem, making subclips as I went along.

However, as I continued to import files, there began to be a sound issue--sometimes the sound not being present till I was 1/3 of the way through the clip, sometimes the sound seemingly playing catch up with audio that should be earlier in the video appearing later, sometimes the sound wouldn't come up at all, and still other times I'd be, for example, on video 5 when pieces of audio from video 2 would start playing over the current video.

I initially thought it may just be a memory issue, working with many large video files.

But later, when I went to edit the subclips I made, I found that many of them no longer had sound, even if they did when I initially subclipped them.

Weirdly, in the timeline, there is no consistency, as clips will appear in the video track but only some show audio tracks too.  But those with audio tracks don't always play audio and those that show NO audio tracks at all actually do play audio sometimes.  Also, those that show audio tracks and don't play them sometimes will show waveforms, sometimes don't.  A clip with no waveform may not play 95% of the time, but then occasionally will suddenly have the waveform and play a couple times before reverting back to no audio.

A suitable solution for this personal amusement project would just be to drop a new soundtrack over the thing but, before I even got that far, I tried exporting as avi's and mpeg4's but then get error messages such as:

Premiere Pro has encountered an error.

[..\..\Src\Win\WinFile.cpp-785]

Error compiling movie.

Unknown error.

In case it was a memory issue, I tried starting a new project, only importing 2 videos, but had the same audio and exporting issues.

I'm getting really frustrated as I spent a lot of time importing/subclipping and then even more time prepping before that.

For those who are bound to ask, while new to Premiere, I'm not a novice with editing.  I've used Final Cut Pro at work for many years (without such issues).

Thanks for your help.