Adobe Premiere Pro is a truly horrible, buggy, unstable, unreliable program.

This post is  especially relevant while we're all dealing with the nightmare that is 24.5.  The key to using premiere is finding a stable iteration and sticking with it.  I'm on 23.2 / windows 10 and it's rock solid. handles mxf, red giant. i think the current iteration, 24.5, feels like a lost cause.   Long story short, find a setup that works and don't chase updates... 

It's been two months of v24 and it's still at 24.0 with so many people complaining about bugs. The top feature of this release is 'stability' LOL Where are the updates to address the issues paying customers are having? How are weekly updates not being rolled out for the people that rely on your software to pay their bills? Adobe is worth over 200 BILLION dollars. There's no excuse for this. Whoever is in charge of the Premiere team needs to be swapped out with someone who can manage all of this better, as the existing situation is just straight up deceptive. (marketing that it's stable when it completely isn't.)

Last night I tried to do speed ramping in Premiere by copying and pasting work I've already done to a new clip (Something I've done many times in the past). It just wouldn't work this time. Half the clip glitched at the end, so I ended up not being able to finish the project in Premiere. I was forced to do it in DaVinci Resolve, which worked perfectly on the first try. (Their workflows are actually significantly better for slow mo speed ramping too. It's easy to make adjustments in comparison)

imo, it's just a terrible UX. imo, but always, when you need to use tutorial or do 100500 actions for a generic thing shows that UX has big problems, like massivelly overloaded UI where person easilly get lost. functional wise PremierePro a powerfull tool, but imo, when for set of simple things you have to use manual or video tutorial/forum, where in FCPX you would just do it within a second without even noticing it by just using tools out of the box. As example, I had just read datetime from file metadata and append to video clip. While in FCPX its a question of drag&drop, in final cut pro i was surprised that it was just not possible at all: u need to install a plugin or do it manually and using setup out of box its just not possible. Also turned on that for simple editing of the video (cut, mix up audio, clean up sound, add protos and simple transiong effects in FPCX it takes 10-15 minutes and you use only few hotkey combinations and all the rest are quick drag&drop operations,in premiere you need to do 100500 operations with tonns of the hotkeys, otherwise you will get crazy from amount of clicks and menus selection). And definitelly I hate idea of this marketplaces implementation from Abobe with subscriptions. Of course its question of gettting used to it, but still it steals a lot of time and potentially a lot of money from the pocket because bunck of generic things just not available out of box. I trying already 3rd time to move into windows environment and to Abobe because need to use powerfull GPU to speed up operations, which is not possible to use with OSX.

I seriously do not understand all the bile I am reading in this forum. I honestly don't - and I can whine & complain with the best of them if necessary, I can assure you of that.

PPro works just fine - as long as you know what you are doing, and as long as you have a basic understanding of the file types you are working with then results are easily produced.

With YouTube, for example, the correct method has been stated already & this works. There is actually a YouTube preset.

Where I suspect a lot of people are going wrong is by trying to edit & work with heavily data reduced forms such as H264, mp4 (whatever the container form) and then expecting the recompressed output to have the same quality as you began with. This is simply never gonna happen. You start with heavily compressed footage you have already downloaded from the Interweb and then complain when it all goes to hell! There is a well known programmers saying 'GIGO'

Recently, someone we work with decided to do their own YouTube promo clip from an album we mastered for them as for various reasons they did not call us & ask us to do it for them but instead used Movie Maker, and ended up with a blocky, awful mess that had 'trial version' banners across the bottom of the footage to boot, so please don't tell me how much easier to use Movie Maker is - because it simply isn't.

The grass may look greener on the other side but when you ghet up close & personal it rarely is in reality. I still remember having to use tools like Edius, Canopus and the Windows 98 versions of Premiere Pro - they were unstable. What we have now basically works but you must put some time into learning what you are doing. This is a professional quality tool that is designed to run on as wide a range of systems as possible (admittedly with a heavy bias to Mac OS-X variants) and it has a steep learning curve. In just the same way you cannot possibly expect to install an Audio workstation & immediately produce commercial grade mixes - you must learn what you are doing & this takes time, patience & effort - all seemingly alien attributes in this modern world where there are a large number of folks who want everything, now, for free.

Welcome to reality.

Yes, Adobe can do a much better job with providing learning resources and developing a better, more comprehensive manual...  but

You don't become a doctor by reading a manual or doing a "curated" set of comprehensive tutorials.  You need to spend years and money learning.    As I often say, nobody's life is in the balance in our jobs but the creative and technical sides of video postproduction are incredibly complex.   I went to NYU film school many years ago and frankly did not get the training I needed to get a job as a professional editor.  I had to start by working in an apprentice situation it and it took years to learn the skills I needed to be a good assistant.. and years to become a good editor...   and I'm still learning.   

Perhaps you can point us to another NLE that has the kind of comprehensive free training you're demanding... Certainly not DaVinci Resolve...  I've worked exetensively in Avid in it's early days and in FCP 1-7 and in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve.  With a professional background in Film and Video postproduction I was able to sit down and start working almost immediately.    And if I hit a wall, I figured it out, either digging in to the program, or doing online research or asking other professionals.  I also spent about 5 years in the 90's teaching avid editing on a college level to both continuing ed and matriculated students.  The most important skill to teach:  how to solve the kind of problems you're talking about..  

There are fantastic resources out there both with and without cost.  And anyone can learn an incredible amount just briefly reviewing new posts in the premiere forum.    And if you can't spend the time doing "due diligence"

hire someone to help you.   Had an intial meeting last week with a very experienced editor with a strong background in traditional film editing and on the avid platform.  He's now working in Premiere and having many problems.  His solution:  hiring me to provide support...    

I'm no noob myself, and give a huge thumbs down unfortunately.  I only installed it (Beginner trial)  to create a standard mp4  20-min. video of our company holiday party, after pooping around with numerous other so-called Windows editors (that either froze midstream or whatnot).  But sadly discovered that there are just too many complexities to deal with, after painstakingly adding my clips, then trying to finalize.  I was simply looking for a good simple video editor after Microsoft dumped the former Movie Maker (which was awesome AND user friendly)  

Exactly! I have worked with Premiere Pro, Avid, and switching to Final Cut. Avid and FCP are by far less buggy, smoother in how they run, more efficient and provide better results. I’m no noob either. As a post-production editor and videographer/filmmaker since 2009, I have enough on my plate than to spend over 50% of my time trying to troubleshoot. 

Sande,

I've been editing even longer. Though I work here, I also edit all the time and have few stability or performance issues. That said, I have very good project management, mac maintenance, and am aware of Premiere Pro's reliance on certain hardware tech and work around anything I cannot handle natively, usually by optimizing my media to actual editing codecs or by creating proxies, much as other NLEs do. Avid, to my recollection, creates its own media files for editing. Linking to files is a feature, but is more bottlenecked unless you've got fast drives, isn't it?

If you are still editing with H.264 and expecting a highly responsive timeline, I think you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Transcode and all will be much better with your workflow, I'd bet.

Thanks,
Kevin

Premiere is used on by the largest number of users on the widest set of gear/media out there. Most are getting good performance.

But not for everyone. Naturally.

Each NLE has a very different look/feel/process also, and what works for one will NOT be happily appreciated by all. In the end, they are all tools ... fancy hammers.

I work in both Premiere (mostly) and Resolve (some). I like the Premiere UI, cannot stand the way Resolve is locked to a narrow set of user-changes for UI. I don't like the look/feel of the editing page.

And I also get very resentful that BlackMagic in all their wisdom and self-interest (which of course, they're as welcome to as anyone!) lock down any "outside" hardware like my full Elements panel while working in Resolve. At any one time, more than half of my Element's many knobs & buttons are 'blank', not assigned. And they do not allow the users to map anything.

Naturally, they want you to buy BlackMagic gear. But why would I want to buy their kit, which only works with Resolve, when I need kit that works in Premiere and AfterEffects also?

But I put up with it because at times I need the color tools in Resolve. Not very often anymore, with the recent changes in Lumetri and having added in a Red Giant Colorista panel color workspace in Premiere, so I have two full color workspace panel setups. With very different math and results. Yea, don't need Resolve so much now.

But again ... they're all just fancy hammers. Every video-post worker I've ever met whether editing, vfx, or color does their thing different than every other person I've met.

Use what works for your needs ... and get the job out to the nice customers that pay your bills.

And of course, feel free to rant every once in a while ... I certainly do!

Neil

And I started on avid at least 25 years ago, moved to fcp 1-7 and then moved to premiere and find it works great.    so, maybe your hardware's not up to snuff, or there are conflicts with other programs...  haven't had a crash in months.