Premiere Beta 27.0 UI Hangs/Locksups (Solution Found, Included)

I’m posting this because I feel I have come across a pretty niche issue in the last few versions/updates of Premiere Beta 27.0, and I have found the solution. I hope the Adobe team fixes this, and perhaps my findings can help anyone else experiencing this. I could not find anybody else talking about this, so apologies if it has been discussed before.

Issue:
Entire program shows unresponsive UI redraws and visual lockups while audio and video continue to play. Lockups are only fixed in a single instance by clicking any menu dropdown at the top of the program, then continues the lockup behavior.

Also wanted to note, I have been having more and more playback issues as new updates come along in both Premiere and Premiere Beta, and that was NOT the reason I was troubleshooting. I’ve long accepted that the program is sluggish and gets worse over time. But the solution seems to have helped in that regard, unexpectedly. I didn’t include this in the title because I didn’t want to misguide anyone down the wrong path if it isn’t a universal fix for playback issues. It could be, but I would need to test a lot more for that.

Anyway.

Example symptoms:

• Clicking on any clip (video, audio, adjustment layer, etc) will not highlight in the timeline, yet Effects panel will populate
• Scrolling timeline will visually work, but this action locks out the ability to move the Playhead. Pressing space will play the timeline in the Program Monitor, but timeline will no longer update.
• Effect Panel is unresponsive visually. Clicking the dropdown arrow for an effects folder in this panel will, in the background, expand the folder, but again it will not update visually until a dropdown from the top (any) is clicked.
• Sometimes clicking on a separate sequence tab in the timeline will allow Playhead adjustment, but it’s rare.
• Noticeably sluggish playback if able to play after refresh. Scrubbing is as well.
• Exporting sometimes would get “stuck” on credential verification, or a certain percentage, yet rendering would complete in the background and yield a full export in my local storage, while Premiere stays visually stuck.

Tested fixes that DID NOT work (for me):

• Cleaning Cache manually
• Resetting preferences
• Disabling third party plugins
• Re-installing current version of Premiere Beta
• Rolling back latest Windows 11 updates
• Updating/rolling back Nvidia GPU drivers
• Disabling GPU accelerated UI rendering (Preferences > General)
• Disabling Hardware accelerated GPU scheduling
• Creating new projects/sequences
• Resetting Workspace Layouts
   

THE SOLUTION:
Remove ALL additional metadata columns in Project Panel except those listed under “Premiere Project Metadata”.

I have not tested all of them, but ANY from the “Basic” section causes this issue immediately. 

I tested this discovery vigorously, on and off alongside all of the above tested fixes, and the results are the same. If any of those columns are present, you get the issue immediately. Removing them, without even restarting the program, fixes it instantly. In fact, it seems like this was also causing hangups on my entire PC while Premiere was open, as the slightly sluggish responsiveness seems to disappear outside Premiere when this solution is applied. 

My assumption is there is a validation/detection pipeline issue when that metadata is fetched, and it’s possible it’s happening constantly.

I’m also curious if this issue has been a growing one, just not so blatant as it is now, and has been causing many people playback issues in the past. I’m getting none now, it’s actually noticeably smoother than before. For instance, zooming out on a heavily edited timeline would lag a bit in previous versions, now, in an arguably heavier edit, there is no lag whatsoever. Perhaps this bug has been present for a while, but it wasn’t noticeable enough to report.

PC specs in case it helps at all:

• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super
• MAG x670E Tomohawk
• 64GB DDR-5 @6000Hz
• Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
• NVME PCIe storage, separate drives for videos, exports, program

Anyway, hope this helps the team, and anybody else with this issue.

If you’re having playback issues in general, I would recommend adding this solution to your troubleshooting workflow, just in case this causes any other issues with the program.

It’s a minor, easily revertible fix, can’t hurt.