Participating Frequently

Question

CFA files too large

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
October 7, 2025
5 replies
141 views

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a Productions project for a while now. It consists of several projects files. It's a documentary with over 100 multicam interviews. I noticed the generated .cfa files are massive. In one single day, it created some 40 files ranging from 9GBs to 77Gbs. Is that normal? Just the .prv folder where those files are stored "weights" 1.1TB and it took up 1/3 of my server.

I'm not 100% sure but I believe those files were generated the day after I updated to Premiere 25.5.

Thanks.

Marcos H.

Performance

S

stevejohnsk

Participating Frequently

Hey Kevin,

I also have the same issue. We work with podcasts (Multicam) and in the latest update or at least I’d say like in the last 3 - the audio waveforms are disappearing and render audio is taking a large chunk of the space like 100s of GBs. Unused media cache has no effect.

If I cancel render audio and try to save the project - the entire thing crashes.

K

Kevin-Monahan

Community Manager

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the additional details. Large CFA files can actually be expected with long-form, multichannel audio workflows like podcasts and multicam.

Premiere Pro conforms audio to 32-bit floating-point at the sequence sample rate, so long recordings with multiple audio channels can generate surprisingly large files across a large project, adding up to hundreds of GB.

The disappearing waveforms are interesting, though, especially if you're seeing different behavior than you did in previous versions. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but it sounds like the waveforms used to remain available are now disappearing in more recent versions.

Does choosing Render audio restore the waveforms? Also, let us know the exact Premiere Pro version you're currently using and the last version where you remember the waveforms behaving normally.

The crash after canceling Render Audio and then saving also sounds like something we should take a closer look at.

Thanks,
Kevin

B

Ben Clayton

Participant

Hi all,

I'm getting this issue since updating to v25.5 too. All my Multicam clips are losing their waveforms when edited into sequences. The only work around is to 'Render Audio' which is creating enormous GB size .cfa files - which I don't understand as it's just audio. And this wasn't happening before updating. Although I have had issues with no waveforms when editing Mutlicam clips into sequences, before. But this is usually caused by adding audio effects to the master Multicam clips themselves.

Please fix this as it's now very annoying to have to waste time rendering the audio and also takes up precious hard drive space for that rendered audio.

Thanks,

Ben

Kevin J. Monahan Jr.

Legend

Hey there,

Thanks for the message. This does not sound typical. You may want to head to Preferences > Media and choose to delete unused media cache. See if that helps. We have seen some complaints about cache handling with this version. I will ask the team to take a closer look at it.

Thanks,

Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio

K

Kevin-Monahan

Community Manager

Hi,

Large .cfa files can be expected in Premiere Pro, particularly with long-form, multichannel audio such as multicam interviews, podcasts, and documentary workflows.

Premiere conforms certain audio sources for editing and creates CFA files in the Audio Previews location. These files are processed as 32-bit floating-point audio at the sequence sample rate, so they can be considerably larger than the compressed audio in the original media. File size also increases with the duration of the source and the number of audio channels.

With long recordings, multiple audio channels, and a large number of multicam sources, the Audio Previews folder can therefore grow quite large.

If you'd like to verify the size you're seeing, check the duration, audio codec, sample rate, and number of channels in the source media associated with the largest CFA files. Those factors can help explain why a particular conform file is so large.

You can also manage old or unused files using Premiere Pro's Media Cache settings. Keep in mind that CFA files Premiere still needs may be generated again.

I hope that helps explain where all that disk space is going.

Thanks,
Kevin

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.