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Participating Frequently
January 30, 2013
Question

My workaround for 'lost' preview files in Premiere

  • January 30, 2013
  • 27 replies
  • 47486 views

So you render preview files in Premiere and the next time you launch the program you're met with red bars in the sequence - indicating the need to re-render (even though those render files are still sitting on the hard drive right where Premiere last left them). While Adobe is purportedly aware of the issue, it's still pretty annoying.

I found a potential workaround which, so far, seems to work - at least for me.

Premiere seems to lose track of rendered preview files on the sequence that was displayed at the time the project was saved before exiting. When Premiere is re-launched, by default, it opens to the last displayed/saved sequence.  

So here's what to do, whether your project consists of a single sequence or several.

1) Create an empty sequence. Leave it empty. Rename it if you like ("Select me before saving and exiting") - or not.

2) Work in your other sequence(s). Render your previews as needed.

3) Before exiting Premiere (this is the important part) switch to the empty sequence and save the project. Then exit.

4) The next time you start Premiere: a) Select the project, b) Wait till all media is loaded (Premiere reports this at bottom). It will open to the empty sequence. When you switch to the work sequences, you should have green bars where the previews were previously rendered.

Try it and let me know if this works for you.

Preston

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27 replies

edm75482302
Participating Frequently
November 1, 2016

So I'm using the latest version 2015.4 on windows 10, and it's still doing it. Nice to see it's still a problem after 3 years......

Bug report submitted.

July 16, 2017

Premiere Pro CC 2017. And this weirdness is still happening.

thomask49286771
Participant
September 2, 2017

Yup. Premiere Pro CC 2017 and it still loses track of render files. Losing too many hours to this problem. I usually work in Premiere or AVID, depending on the nature of the project, but I'm going to have to seriously consider AVID for all projects going forward. Adobe is hot garbage.

Participant
June 19, 2016

Preston:

Have tried the empty sequence routine more than once....no luck...

Bill

Gabe_May_mx
Participant
March 15, 2016

Create an empty sequence works for me, I have premiere pro cc 2015 & windows 10.


Only the clips with warp stabilizer are in RED but the rest is ok.


Thanks so very much.

Participating Frequently
June 17, 2016

SOLUTION:

Exactly, seems just making an empty sequence after seeing previews are gone without reason... I am using PP 2016 and the problem is still here. I can imagine people on deadlines seeing such a thing in the morning.

However, in my case some of random clips were 'offline' too (except missing previews), and I never bothered to check why these and not other. Seems random.

Very scary, indeed. Adobe team, please fix this thing.

ridvanc31331163
Participant
January 28, 2016

Thanks man, it working and saved my day.

slate612
Known Participant
September 3, 2015

I've just been reading this thread because I had the same problem with PP CC15 on  a Mac Pro with 28 gig Ram on Yosemite. This is the first time it had happened to me. It's a 3 minute promo with everything shot green screen. I'd used the dynamic link to treat 39 clips in AE - some very processed  - Magic Bullet, flares lights etc. Rendered everything - took 3 hours - then had to switch out of the project to another edit. When I came back - no renders. Went savage - searched the threads - shouted at the machines etc. Then realised that when I'd switched projects I'd closed down AE to save memory. Re-opened it - boom, up came the renders in PP. All red lights gone green. Not saying it's the whole picture - but it sure has saved my day! Might help others.

Participant
August 23, 2015

Hi Preston - this does NOT work for me - editing on a MacBook Pro w/ external LaCie 4TB raid

May 20, 2015

***FILE PATHS***

Something that may contribute if not be the cause of lost renders is the file path interpretation.

We have a Mac with OSX in Portuguese.

Paths on the command line in OSX Terminal are shown in English...  e.g. /Users/rob/etc/etc...

Paths in Finder on the OSX Desktop are shown in Portuguese...   e.g. /Usuários/rob/etc/etc...

Adobe Premiere (CS5) (which is in English on the Portuguese Mac) uses paths as follows...

Under Preferences > Media, the paths are /Users/rob/...

Under Project Settings > Scratch Disks, the paths are /Usuários/rob...

(Same on a Windows system in Portuguese using Adobe CS6)

Different parts of Premiere therefore interpret paths differently - this may also be the problem with Third party add-ons.

What I have done on the Mac is to change the Preferences and Project Settings to a simple path of, for example "/Adobe/Temp" which cannot be interpreted by OSX or Premiere in any other way than "/Adobe/Temp".

I've made sure that the path is short (to avoid truncation of the path + render file name. Some older office software for example, couldn't open files with

a path name longer than 256 characters). Maybe Render files are saved OK but can't be opened by another part of Premiere / Third Party software??

I removed special characters e.g. ã à í ô ü @ from this path (I had a media file fail to open on the Windows system until I changed á to a).

Once I changed all the paths under....

Preferences > Media

and   

Project Settings > Scratch Disks

I let Premiere index / conform all the media again before running a full render again. Yep again !!

I'm following Preston Herrick's step by step advice (30/01/13) (Thanks Preston!!) by saving and closing the project with a blank sequence selected.

When I open the project, I wait for all the media to load and the External Disk light to stop flashing.

(I've had to save capture files on an external disk because of disk space).

IMPORTANT

(and this helps if you have an External Disk)...

Premiere reports what Media it has LOADED - NOT what it is LOADING (You may think Premiere has finished because there is nothing written at the bottom. Because of this I wait for the External Disk light to stop flashing.


(My External Disk is only used with Premiere).

Once all is done, I click on the Main sequence tab.

GREEN !!!


I hope this helps and explains why the problem occurs with some projects and in some folder locations...


Rob

Participant
December 10, 2014

Can't believe this is still a problem.  I chose Premiere to cut my feature film on 5K Red Epic files and it now takes 24 hours every time I lose preview files.  And yes, I'm using the empty sequence workaround with preview files rendered to my hard drive.

It definitely has something to do with the auto backup / recovery.  When I pull up the recovery file, links to all the preview files are gone.  But if I pull up a previous version, they're all there.

This can totally sink Premiere as a NLE.  Hope someone from Adobe is actually reading this stuff.

Bob

Finnball
Participant
December 19, 2014

Still no fix? Mine was fine till recently,  I got an update from nvidia,  and had an update for premiere,  now it will not render at all. Also if I use AE and create dynamic link to premiere, it will not export the project at all. It will freeze or just simply lose the media. Any thoughts?

Nabucodonosor
Participant
December 3, 2014

Believe or not , it is december 2014!

I am having this problem right now withAdobe  Premiere CC2014.

I can't believe that I am spending more time re-rendering my lost previews

than editing ,and  it is making my work harder and taking me hours of leisure..

   I also have another bug , buttons not working, playback only possible with space bar

and suddenly all viewers get black and only sound playback is possible.

  Playback issues can be due to old fashioned video Board.

     I am using a Mac pro dual Xeon 24 gig ram and Yosemite.

  Yosemite can be trouble as well, never thougth I could  have this kind of trouble,

paying the full Adobe Cloud and using a high end system for Editing, I am miserable !

florianlippke.tv
Participant
December 3, 2014

My solution for the problem with render files is to put always the render files and cache files on the system harddrive.

If the folder is located there you have much less trouble with dynamic link and all adobe programs.

I'm working on a mac pro 5.1 with osx 10.10.1 and Geforce 680 GTX.

Hope this helps...

Nabucodonosor
Participant
December 4, 2014

Thank you , my render files are in an internal ssd drive, maybe this didn't

help.

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 2:55 AM, florianlippke.tv <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

Participant
October 17, 2014

I'm new to Premiere Pro CC coming from Avid.  I'm on Windows 7 Pro and I'm losing my renders every time I close and open the app or duplicate the seq.  I see through the forums that this has been a problem for a long time.  I tried the idea of closing the seq and loading an empty seq to no avail.  I trashed my preferences and it still happens.  This is crazy.  Please let me know if there are any real fixes.  Thanks.