A guide that starts out by assuming all issues are a result of ignorant users?

I never upgrade or update Premiere until the User's Forum does not talk about major bugs.  I have  used many editing  programs.  They all have some bugs.  Davinci Resolve has been touted to be a  serious contender to Premiere.  Go to the Black Magic Forum for Davinci  Resolve.  Their program also has bugs.  There are so many configurations of computers it is amazing that these editing programs work at all.

I'm having the same problem except now it doesn't show what I'm working on. It's either not showing anything or  just a solid white or black box.

The bugs I'm encountering in PP v12.0 simply don't exist in PP v11.0 so clearly it's an Adobe problem NOT an end user problem.

Unless you're new to the NLE update game this is the same old story. Every single release causes a certain percentage of users to go a bit crazy in anger over new bugs or old bugs not addressed. It's all part of the timeless cycle of NLE software updates. If people are so frustrated with the 2018 variety of Premiere roll back to 2017 until these issues are addressed.

And for those that think it's ridiculous that they become power users as well as editors, I would venture to guess that a little knowledge gained about how things operate under the hood would greatly cut down on postings here in this forum when problems arise.

They never acknowledge bug filings, which many of us have continually pushed for the staff to change. It is way up the company I think, a company wide policy I would guess. Because as with many other things, in person staffers will acknowledge the request politely  ... and conversation moves on.

These are very clearly a user to user forum provided as a useful "support alternative" for the users at Adobe's expense. They are monitored and managed by Product Support staff for the various programs. Note, Product Support is not part of the program staff.

PS Manager Kevin-Monahan for digital video is a very experienced editor/colorist, was a certified instructor for FCP around FCP4 or so, and takes representing the user base rather seriously.

Jim's guide starts with the most common things that happen in these forums  ... and the vast majority of posts here are fixed by changes in settings, practices, and setup of the computers involved.

Followed closely by educating the user on how something is actually done in PrPro rather than how they think it should work, or worked in ECP or Pr Elements or whatever.

So as a very practical person that's how he starts. Most common issues first.

Your knowledge and capabilities are rather past a lot of people on this forum.

As to the app being full of "serious bugs" ... we've had a very light uptick in posts on this forum since 2018 was released, nothing like the flood of posts with 2015 (9.x builds) or 2015.3 (10.x builds). Even fewer than with 2017 (11.x). So in general, my guess is this release is relatively solid.

They don't share their internal data on user issues with us user types, but other than the mess over Dolby, this <seems> a better general release.

Which is NOT to say that there aren't issues to fix. There certainly are. But not nearly as many, nor apparently affecting as large a percentage of total users as gas been common.

For myself and a number of the other regulars here, it's been rock solid in general. For some, there is an issue killing their workflow. I've of course had those myself and am neither quiet when it happens nor do I want others to be quiet when it ain't working as they need it to do.

But a wider perspective can be a good thing.

Neil