14 Replies Latest reply: Aug 1, 2010 12:16 PM by Bill Hunt RSS

    CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render

    Christopher Duncan Community Member

      Hey, guys.

       

      I've spent the better part of the morning searching the forum and it appears that pproheadless crashes are not uncommon. That said, I've not seen anything in discussions yet that leads to a solution, but I may have missed something. So, here's the story. In short, AME crashes about a third of the way through a rendering job on a project reporting that pproheadless has stopped working and pointing a finger at the Titler dll with an access violation (sounds like somebody blew a C++ pointer). Here's the geek stuff on the crash from the event log:

       

      Faulting application name: PProHeadless.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4b04af19

      Faulting module name: TitleCharacterFactory.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4b04a39b

      Exception code: 0xc0000005

      Fault offset: 0x000618fd

      Faulting process id: 0xa24

      Faulting application start time: 0x01cb2fe6159fb67a

      Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS4\PProHeadless.exe

      Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS4\TitleCharacterFactory.dll

      Report Id: 886e72e8-9bda-11df-8fb9-b8ac6f8200f4

       

      This is a new box with decent horsepower, new install of Windows 7 / CS4. For general specs, see my "Faster Ponies" post: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2974680#2974680.

       

      What I've gleaned from my reading this morning is that the Titler is a bit fragile, and in fact I had numerous instances yesterday in Premiere where I'd be in the titler and the app would crash and vanish. Corrupt fonts were one thing mentioned, but I'm using titles from a Premiere template, Government 1. The project source material is AVCHD, so I'm using the HD versions.

       

      The video is about 9 minutes long. I've just run a test where I render with the titles video track set to not visible. Renders fine. Then I rendered with only the titles track visible. Also renders okay. So, it appears that AME crashes only when trying to render the titles in combination with the other material.

       

      In a previous lifetime on this video, I had converted my AVCHD source material to SD and used it in an SD project. Same title sequences using the same Government 1 template, but no crashes.

       

      So, to summarize: the Titler dll (TitleCharacterFactory.dll) is causing an access violation in PProHeadless.exe when attempting to render a project combining footage and titles, but succeeds when rendering either exclusively. The Titler also causes occasional spontaneous Premiere crashes. Have run the updater for all Adobe products, video card, etc., rebooted the machine numerous times, burned incense, sacrificed chickens and uttered the sacred words of geek frustration multiple times.

       

      I know pproheadless crashes have been done to death, but if anyone has any insights on why the Titler is so flaky and what possible fixes I might explore, I'd be most grateful.

       

      Thanks,

       

      Chris

        • 1. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
          Community Member

          Hi

           

          I did some googling...first on pproheadless , then on titlecharacterFactory.dll. Did you by any chance see the post about headless and cpu cores ??

           

          excerpt from post-------------------------

           

          OK folks, I was able to contact Adobe technical support on this issue and they have at least for now have solved my problem.  I also need to say that I'm not a computer engineer so any explanation as to why this works is beyond me.  Technical support suggested that PProheadless is working with too many core processors.  Since the i7 as has 4 physical cores and designed to multi-thread to 8 cores technical support suggested reducing the number of cores that PProheadless is working with.  In this case the magic number is 2 cores.  Hopefully adobe tech support will appear to clarify and perhaps verify this.  Below is the process by which to accomplish this:

           

          Set-up AME to encode as you normally do.  When parameters are set and AME has loaded the file, before starting the queue bring up Task Manager in Windows Vista.  Under the tab Processes find the PProheadless process, right click and find the setting "set affinity."  Once you click "set affinity" another box will pop up with all processors clicked, i.e., CPU 0 through CPU 7 (8 cores).  Uncheck CPU 2 through 8.  Then start the queue.  AME is a bit slower but it does make it through the code without the PProheadless appears.

           

          Thanks to adobe tech support and to forum members who looked at  this issue last night.
          regards,

           

          Cliff Williams

          end post---------------------------

           

          link to whole thread  
          http://forums.adobe.com/thread/428973

           

          Im wondering if you slow down the process by going to 2 cores ( you have 4 right ?) just to see if it works for this project...if it might work with 3gig ram....

           

          Rod

           

          ps...your system: ------------

          The C: drive is the 300 gig that shipped with the box and is used for  OS, programs and page file.

          ---------------------------------------

          Did you try putting your page file on a different drive than your C drive ( os and programs )... I have mine on another (2nd internal drive) as per Harm's suggestion in some thread...and it made things a lot faster for me...

          • 2. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
            Christopher Duncan Community Member

            Hey, Rod.

             

            Thanks very much for taking the time. I waded through so many posts I somehow missed that one. I gave it a try this morning, but unfortunately received the same crash at the same roughly 40% point.

             

            I normally have Preview turned off, but turned it on to get a visual of where in the project it's dying. I'd expected it to be at a place lining up with where one of the titles occur, since it's the titler dll that's faulting. Surprisingly, there are no titles within several seconds in either direction. And yet, if I turn off the titles (they're on a Video track of their own) it renders fine, and if I turn everything else off and render just the titles, it's fine. Only the two in combination kill the render.

             

            Now that I have a decent machine I've really been enjoying working with CS4, but the titler thing is a bit disconcerting. Failing on the rendering of the final output means nothing else matters much. My Plan B is to render all output except titles and then bring it all into After Effects to finish the project. While AE is more fun & cool to play with, I mourn the loss of the titler in PPro since sometimes all I need is simple - and quick - titling, an ability that I can no longer trust unless I can find the source of this problem and fix it.

             

            BTW, is it considered a "normal" workflow to just use Premiere for the slice & dice editing and then render the entire video to finish up in AE? I know AE is an FX program, but wonder if it's also used by folks to generate final output of a movie.

             

            On your other note, while I toook Harm's advice on multiple hard drives, etc. I neglected to move the page file, which I'll be doing this afternoon. Doubt it will have any influence on this paticular problem, but I'll take all the speed increases I can get!

             

            Thanks again for digging around on this, man. I do appreciate it.

             

            Chris

            • 3. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
              Community Member

              Hi,

               

              Well...I don't use after affects now...won't until I upgrade to CS5 and build new computer ( or get ADK to build maybe)..hopefully in 5 months. I don't like the title program in CS3 for the sort of stuff I do and use photoshop instead.  You might want to test that out ( using photoshop ) for a title and test that in your project to see if it works well for you.  Somewhere here there's a link to Bill Hunt's SD photoshop "grid" ( guidelines that make it easy to line stuff up and stay within the " tv safe" framelines -I think he has some HD ones too ).  There's threads here too from Bill mostly about how best to use photoshop in layers ( psd files ) and import those layers as your titles...it's the same as the titler basically...where slightly off white ( 245,245,245 approx RGB settings) in a file with no background looks good in premiere, and you use the tracking matte to make it work.  When creating the titles I use a black layer under the text to see in photoshop where the text is and how it looks etc..and then turn off that black layer to see the "no background" when I need to.

               

              I think most people export right from the editor unless they need to add fx or color correction from AE...

               

              Good luck with pagefile thing..it should help a lot, and who knows...might even solve your problem...stranger things have happened.

               

               

              • 4. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                Bill Hunt CommunityMVP

                Here is the link to Alignment Grids. I'd planned on doing more, but the Attach File function has been disabled in the PrE Tips & Tricks Forum, so have not done so yet.

                 

                I use these, or similar, for PiP, as well as for Titles in Titler. PS has a full set of Grids and Guides, so it is easier to use, plus there are more Alignment/Arrangement functions in PS too.

                 

                For most intricate Titles, I just do them in PS. Only limitation is that the Text Layers are Rasterized, when going to PrPro, and they are no longer editable easily in PrPro, like a Title from Titler is. Since I Save the full working PSD with all Text Layers, I can bounce back to PS and edit Text there. That is the only shortcoming that I find with my workflow.

                 

                Good luck,

                 

                Hunt

                • 5. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                  Christopher Duncan Community Member

                  Hey, Rod.

                   

                  Yeah, I think the Photoshop route is the sensible solution to this problem, and I'll look into Bill's stuff for the guides, etc. Sounds like the way to go.

                   

                  Got the pagefile pointed over to one of the other hard drives but haven't had a chance to do any work since then. Be interesting to see if there's any boost. With only 3 gigs of memory, I'm sure there's still quite a bit of swapping going on, so there will doubtless be a performance benefit.

                   

                  Thanks, and have a good weekend!

                   

                  Chris

                  • 6. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                    Christopher Duncan Community Member

                    Hey, Bill.

                     

                    Thanks for the links and all your work, just bookmarked it. Sounds like PS is the way to go. Should be fine for most simple titles, and when I need something more elaborate I can just flip over to After Effects.

                     

                    Appreciate all the help!

                     

                    Chris

                    • 7. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                      Community Member

                      Hi,

                       

                      Yeah, would be nice if your title thing worked OK too though....

                       

                      another thing...re: memory. I use 32 bit XP in a mousey Dell computer right now. At first I had 1 sata HD and 3 gig ram. As per suggestions here I got another HD ( can't fit more in this machine) and put all my projects and pagefile on the 2nd drive. I also bought 1 more gig of ram...even though I knew XP wouldnt see the whole 4 gig...it would see about 3.5 ....( which is in fact what it does now ).

                      In order to upgrade to 4 gig I had to buy 2  1 gig chips and throw out 2  512meg chips..

                      Also, I had to make sure ( very important ) that I got EXACTLY the same memory as the other chips ( same hz, CAS, even the same brand if possible )

                      see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency

                       

                      It's hard to believe but that "change" made everything about ( rough guess ) 40% ...maybe 50% faster and very stable.  Amazing difference.

                       

                      On the pagefile did it when the drive was brand new so it would be at a good spot on the drive ( heads in drive wouldnt have to seek far to find it ). You won't have that option now...but you can defrag the drive completely, then add pagefile with same min. and max "size" ( 1.5 x your ram )..that way it never gets fragmented....because it is min and max same size all the time.  All this little stuff made a major difference.

                       

                      Good luck !  and if you need help with photoshop let us know...

                       

                       

                       

                      ps. if you want to "redo" the pagefile as per min max etc..just defrag first...change pagefile the way you want...and defrag one more time just for the heck of it...and you should be good to go...  I usually restart my computer every time I defrag because it re-writes the hard drive FAT table ( file allocation table) which I kinda like to do just because I'm totally crazed. Anything to insure stability and so on I usually do it.  Defrag drives every week if I use a lot, delete a lot, etc

                       

                      There's a program called defraggler that you might like ( free )...works great for me on XP.

                      • 8. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                        Christopher Duncan Community Member

                        I've optimized this box fairly well for being what it is, a 32 bit Windows 7 machine. The next major upgrade will be CS5 and a 64 bit box that's more of a beast, but that's pretty far down the line. I should be able to get a lot done with this environment, and I have a lot to learn in CS4 before worrying about features that only exist in CS5. That said, I might get around to replacing the C drive with an SSD, but that's not going to happen anytime soon unless SSDs start falling from the sky (or at least their prices do).

                         

                        Yeah, it would be nice if the titler worked like it should, but it is what it is. I can get all bent out of shape about the software not being 100% bug free, or I can look at all the cool stuff I can do with the other 99.9% of it and be happy. As long as there are reasonable workarounds I can live with it.

                         

                        And believe me, I'll gratefully take advantage of the experience you guys have in PS or anything else if I hit the wall on something. I've been a professional geek for a couple of decades, and one of the most productive phrases I ever learned was, "I don't know." 

                        • 9. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                          Community Member

                          hehe...me too..the more I learn the more I realize I don't know.  On my deathbed someone will probably ask me "how do you feel" and I will probably respond, "How do you define ' feel ' ? "  duh....

                           


                          Bill Hunt is probably one of the best, if not the best, resource for all things "photoshop" , and others are really good too...

                           

                          I use it so far for most masks and titles and just use motion scale keyframes and so on...once you get used to it its great...

                           

                          Sometimes when working on those effects with still images from photoshop I "lock" the other tracks...cause sometimes the selection process gets wanky....like the wrong track gets selected when clicking away on the preview window...

                           

                          K, have a great day...

                          • 10. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                            Bill Hunt CommunityMVP

                            Chris,

                             

                            I am not saying that AE is not the more powerful option for full animation, but one can do so very much with just PS and PrPro.

                             

                            One of the beauties of the PS-PrPro Titles is the ability to create Layered PS images, where each line, or word, or even letter, is on a separate Layer. One would then Import that PSD as a Sequence. This will place each Layer into a separate Clip to be placed on a separate Video Track in PrPro. Then, one can apply Keyframed Effects to each Layer, independently of all others. You might be surprised at the power and control that you have with this workflow. It will do more than one might initially imagine - for everything else - there is always AfterEffects!

                             

                            Good luck,

                             

                            Hunt

                            • 11. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                              Christopher Duncan Community Member

                              Hey, Bill.

                               

                              Yeah, it sounds like the PS / PPro approach will cover a great many of the bread & butter situations I'm likely to encounter. Of course, I could just use AE for everything, but for simple needs that's kinda like fishing with grenades. It gets the job done, but it's a little hard on the fish. 

                              • 12. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                                Bill Hunt CommunityMVP

                                I understand. For simple, I just use Titler (never had issues with it, and it does have quite a bit of power). As the complexity goes up, I crank up PS. When things get really tricky, I reach of AE.

                                 

                                Maybe it's just me, but I usually prefer to go after the fish with light tackle, and only drag out the Penn Senators w/ Monel® line, when necessary. [Trying to keep up the "fishing" analogy there.]

                                 

                                Some users here keep hammering me to use AE more often, and I really should, as I would get better with it. Maybe the comments that I am a "lazy sot" are correct? One of the problems that I have with AE is that when I crank it up, and begin doing the R&D on the footage, I find so many neat, and new to me, Effects and Expressions, that I get side tracked. "Hey, that looks cool. What would this Expression look like?" It's like looking up something in an old encyclopedia - I always go off on a tangent, with all the interesting stuff I find on the way to my subject, and often forget what I was looking for to begin with.

                                 

                                Good luck,

                                 

                                Hunt

                                 

                                PS - for fairly simple animated Titles, I will often grab one of my titler plug-in programs, as they often have Presets for just what I want to do, and though I could do it by hand, simple can be better sometimes.

                                • 13. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                                  Christopher Duncan Community Member
                                  function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

                                  function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

                                  the_wine_snob wrote:

                                   

                                  PS - for fairly simple animated Titles, I will often grab one of my titler plug-in programs, as they often have Presets for just what I want to do, and though I could do it by hand, simple can be better sometimes.

                                   

                                  Yeah, I'd rather just use the titler, but I can't be hung up chasing software crashes on a deadline so I just look for workarounds. I'm with you, start simple and move up when necessary, as I, too, get distracted by shiny objects in AE.

                                   

                                  What are these titler plug ins of which you speak? Do they depend on the PPro titler, or are they separate critters?

                                   

                                  (You'll notice I'm leaving the fishing thing alone so the moderators don't throw us out again for being OT )

                                  • 14. Re: CS4: PProHeadless crash in TitleCharacterFactory.dll - unable to render
                                    Bill Hunt CommunityMVP
                                    as I, too, get distracted by shiny objects in AE.

                                     

                                    So very well-stated. I will "borrow" your line, with permissions and attributions, of course, in the future!!!

                                     

                                    Thanks for brightening my morning,

                                     

                                    Hunt

                                     

                                    PS - yes, the MOD's take great delight in banishing me to the Lounge, when I stray too far off-topic. Guess I do that too often, but hey, it gives them something to do, and I AM and easy target...