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Preston Herrick
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

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    F
    FamilyLegacyVideo
    Participating Frequently
    October 7, 2014

    I'm experiencing this problem with a comp I've imported from AE. Using CS6. First time I've seen this issue. One thing I just noticed: I re-rendered the comp on the timeline again. I went to the folder where preview file should be and I don't see it there. Don't know where it's going or if a preview is being created temporarily and then dumped when I close Premiere. The empty sequence technique did not work for me. I'm on Windows 7.

    J
    jim247
    Participant
    September 20, 2014

    I am having the same problem with any warp stabilized clips in my timeline.

    Using windows 8.1, premier pro CC. gopro footage. no 3rd party plugins. No NAS just laptop hard drive.

    P
    patrickjmcaneeley
    Participant
    September 16, 2014

    This appears to work, except for Warp Stabilizer effects, which repeatedly become unrendered after restarting application. I am using CC 7.1 and would like to upgrade to 7.2 to see if problem persists, but the company I work for will not allow upgrades until all edit suites and Maya workstations can do it at the same time, so that we are all using compatible software on all systems. Our tech is still evaluating, and we cannot proceed until he gives the OK.

    M
    MarcNew
    Participant
    July 25, 2014

    This is very frustrating.  I've actually had this happen to me on CS5, and it's still a problem on CC. (completely different machines.  Completely different OSes)

    I'm pretty sure that the work around is a red herring.  You'll probably get the same results if you stand up and run around your chair 3 times while patting your head.  The work around "seems" to work because this issue does not happen all the time, nor with every instalation.  Who's to say what circumstances cause the problem?

    This happened to me a couple hours ago, and have been trying to duplicate the issue with another project.  Premiere has some logic that invalidates preview files.  It keeps the files around even if they are deemed invalid for a specific project.  Anyway, this is all happening within the program itself, and it probably happens at load time.

    When I watch my (very large) project load I can see it try to load the preview files, but it skips over them.  Since the project file is unchanged since the last time it worked properly, we can assume that there is another mechanism for determining validity.  I noticed that the modified date and time changes on the preview folder every time the project is loaded.  I suspect that this is a checksum, but I have no idea how it's use (or even if it is used).  Though again, we can assume that changing the date on the folder is important, as Premiere does modify it.

    Anyway, I have no answer.  I am re-rendering my film, which will take several days.  Unless someone comes up with a work around to fix invalidated previews... I'll just have to accept that this can happened every once in a while.

    The biggest thing I've learned from this, and rendering in general, is that pre-comps are your friend.  :-)

    M
    Milan_Michalik
    Participating Frequently
    November 30, 2013

    I have the same issue on Premiere CC, Win7 - previews are lost many times. There is a Premiere CC class on FXPHD and the teacher presents this bug to the audience as a "well known bug" - so I see that there are probably thousands of users who must live with this stupid problem for a long time. Shame on Adobe. Please fix it finally.

    Brit.b
    Brit.b
    Inspiring
    November 30, 2013

    Ironically I spent a good deal of time and money on new larger Raptor hard drives to make Premiere run faster and to make room for more preview drives. Now I have wasted many hours re-rendering the same file trying to solve this problem ...which didn’t exist before I went through his expensive intensive exercise. And I now see that this probelm has existed for years for soem people yet Adobe will not fix it.

    Brit.b
    Brit.b
    Inspiring
    December 1, 2013

    I may have found a solution. I took out the warp stabilizer, and then added it back in on the clips in question, and then re-analysed and re-rendered. So far, so good. It seems that bringing in the warp stabilizer effect in the file into the re-built computer needed re-analysing (as I do after this 2 day exercise.)

    QueenOfCBR
    QueenOfCBR
    Participating Frequently
    August 19, 2013

    Ran into this issue.  In my case, I had done a SAVE AS of the project to a new subdirectory with a new project name. (Archaic attempt at version control. Heh.) Premiere created a Preview Files subdirectory within there, and it was properly saving any new render files to it.  However, it wasn't loading them the next time I launched the project.  I noticed it was still looking for and successfully loading previews I'd done prior to the SAVE AS from the parent directory where the original project was.  I did a SAVE AS back to the parent directory, and now they're saving and loading fine. 

    I did try the solution in the first post here several times, and I also tried copying my newer preview files to the parent directory.  Neither worked.  I also checked in preferences, and they were already set to save in the newly created subdirectory.  If there was some other place I needed to link these, I couldn't find it nor Google it.  I'm pretty sure I've saved a project to a new directory and been just fine in the past, but maybe I'm wrong.


    FWIW, if anyone stumbling across this thread has saved your project outside its original directory.  Put it back and see what happens.

    C
    carlborromao
    Participant
    September 13, 2013

    I have the same problem. It is totally stupid, how can Premiere have such a MAJOR bug? I cannot re-render a complex 30-minute edit each time I am re-opening the project.

      jefbak
      jefbak
      Known Participant
      September 13, 2013

      I still have issues with this as well. Does anyone know if it has been fixed in CC version?

      P
      Preston HerrickAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      February 6, 2013

      And here's my theory as to what might be happening - it is only a theory and I am not a programmer:

      When you launch Premiere to a sequence that has rendered previews, Premiere immediately checks to see if the render files are available. If it doesn't "see" them in those first milliseconds, they are ignored and you get a red bar. (In old versions of Premiere, if renders weren't found when/where expected you were given an opportunity to locate them). The problem is, if you have a lot of media in a project, it can take several seconds for everything to load and the render files are last. By then it's too late. Premiere didn't "see" the files in question, so they were ignored for that sequence.

      I think this is also the reason why the problem seems to be hit and miss. If you have a small project, all the media including the render files load quickly before Premiere has a chance to "ignore" what it thinks might be missing in the way of rendered previews.

        E
        excited_Genie16B8
        Legend
        February 7, 2013

        I'm skeptical of that explanation, if only because opening to an empty sequence won't cause PP to load the media any faster.  The only thing that will do that is less media in the project.

        And PP will still ask you for missing render files.  If you delete them with PP closed and then reopen the project you'll see this.

        P
        Preston HerrickAuthor
        Participating Frequently
        February 7, 2013

        Well, then I haven't been clear in my explanations. I'm not suggesting that opening to an empty sequence loads the media any faster or any less media is loaded for the project. It's all loaded, regardless. But there seems to be some correlation between the speed in which all the media in a project loads and when Premiere decides whether a given render file is available and ready to play. 

        The point of creating an empty sequence and saving/exiting the project from that sequence is precautionary. It avoids having to load preview files for that sequence the next time the project is launched - because there aren't any to load.  All of the media for the project still takes as long to load - which might be extremely quick on smaller projects or take several seconds on large ones (ex: hundreds of clips each with 4 tracks of audio). What is also critical for my workaround, is waiting for the all the media to load.

        I have found this to be true on a recent project with nearly a dozen sequences - all of which were full of rendered previews. If I saved and exited out of one of those sequences, the next time I opened the project (and that sequence by default) most or all of the renders were "gone" while the other sequences were untouched.

        If I saved and exited from an empty sequence, the next time I loaded the project and waited for all the media to load - as reported by Premiere - nothing was "missing" - green bars remained.

        By the same token, even if I saved and exited from an empty sequence, but the next time I loaded the project, forgot to wait for all the media to load, and quickly switched over to one of the sequences I was working in, guess what happened?  I was left with red bars on that sequence even after the render files loaded.

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