Premiere won't open project or takes forever on 1 of 2 identical machines
We have two identically configured custom build machines, less than 1 month old.
AMD Ryzen 3950 16 Cores
128 GB RAM
GeForce RTX2080 SUPER
10G direct network connection to file server for project files
2x 1 TB SSDs NVMe / M.2 for boot and cache drives
They have been working great, when all of a sudden, one of the machines stopped opening Premiere Pro files reliably.
One file in particular, we'll call "DRS", seems to have initiated this trouble.
There is not problem opening this project or any other project on machine "A", but machine "B" hangs at 75%.
After machine B had this problem with the "DRS" project file, it started being unable to open / work on any other Premiere project files.
Premiere opens quickly, but loading a file hangs at 75%. We've waited an hour, no significant CPU (<2%) usage, nor network/drive usage, no indication that it's doing anything.
No logs for Premiere in the Roaming/AppData folder.
No events in Windows Event Viewer other than "App Hang" and "Cross Thread" as the reason.
--------=========== THINGS WE HAVE TRIED ===========--------
Copying/opening the project file locally
4 hours of Adobe remote support doing all their normal stuff.
Resetting preferences
Clearing caches
Uninstalling/reinstalling Premiere
Uninstalling/reinstalling entire Adobe Suite
Uninstalling recent windows updates
Nothing changed.
Complete reinstallation of Windows, including wipe of boot disk.
Reinstall CC / Premiere Pro, etc.
Now, we were able to open projects again.... until we re-opened that DRS project.
Then, we were back to square one.
Interesting things to note:
Opening really, really, really simple projects (10 minutes of footage, no effects, super simple cuts, no dynamic links, etc.) can work. Where it takes less than 60 seconds on machine A, machine B will take 5-10 minutes, and it will ask again for the links to the medias.
We have three editing machines on the same network/connecting to the server, each connects to the server using a different server IP address. Any chance that causes a problem if passing a file around? Relative file paths are identical, it's just the absolute filepath that is different.
Suspicions / misc. info:
1. The CRS project was initially started by a third party freelancer, and we took it over. Any chance opening a Premiere project can cause settings changes / workspace issues / whatever that can cause other projects to fail?
2. We suspect dynamic links are part of the problem.
3. Again, the machines are identical. When premiere hangs, no sign of any use of system resources beyond idle. the progress bar stops at 75% when loading the project and stays there. The cancel button is still responsive (flashes white on mouseover). Machine A loads this and any other project perfectly.
4. I've opened up the .prproj itself, it's about 650k lines / 50 Mb unzipped. 16 Mb zipped.
Please help. I'm at my wits end with Adobe software that defies logic of how programs should behave. Thank you.
