Third Party Audio Plugins working fine BUT not exporting in Premiere 2020

Hey, was having this problem but then finally this worked for me:

I downloaded the Waves Central desktop app from the Waves website. Once installed, I was able to see that I was due for an upgrade on my plugin. I upgraded, restarted. And my audio FINALLY came out with the plugin working. So annoying but grateful to have this worked for me. 

Same problem here, Premiere Pro 23.4.0, Waves Clarity working in Premiere but not in export... since i really needed to render something urgently and all the solutions mentioned here did exactly nothing, i made a copy of the premiere project file and opened it in premiere pro beta. interestingly enough, the export worked there with the vst plugin active... maybe it helps someone 😉

Hi All,

Matt from the Audio team.  I wanted to chime in here to try to help with this issue.  I'm going to post some common trouble shooting issues, and some best practices for the people here, and for anyone that searches for a similar issue and stumbles across this thread.  Remember, this is a general “This is how it works and how to trouble shoot” type of post, not anything more.  I’m just trying to help here and if this is information you already are aware of, please ignore.

Premiere should fully work with all 3rd party audio effects that are VST2.4, VST3, and Audio Units.  We do support Waves, and work with them regularly.  We only test with relatively new versions of the Waves effects though.  Usually the latest 3 major versions.  That said, there should be no real issue with older versions, it just isn’t something that we regularly check on.

On to the helpful bits.  With any 3rd party audio effect, Premiere and Audition, and by proxy AME, need to know about the audio effects on the local machine and that database of effects needs to be updated fairly regularly.  This is updated my running the Audio Plugin Manager from “Preferences>Audio>Audio Plug-in Manager…”.  The Audio Plug-in Manger will run on first launch of Premiere when there are no preference files on disk.  If you see this appear, it is perfectly normal, and I suggest that you let it run.

Occasionally, you should rescan for effects, and rebuild Premieres internal effects database.  If you notice any issues with 3rd party audio effects, or have recently updated to new versions of effects, or even updated the host Operating System, you should re-scan your audio effects.  I’ll detail how to do this below:

• Launch Premiere, go to “Preferences>Audio>Audio Plugin Manager…” button.  This will launch the Audio Plug-in manager dialog.
• Under VST Plug Folders section, press the default button.  Side Note:  This section causes a lot of confusion.  It is for the location on disk of legacy VST2.4 effects.  If you have custom location for your older VST effects this is where you set the location for the scan.  It is NOT the location for newer VST3 type effects, and should not point to the VST3 effects folder location.  Basically, if you know that you have a custom location then you know what this section does.  For most users, there is nothing to alter here and the defaults are correct.  When in doubt, press Default.
• Place a check mark next to “Rescan existing plug-ins”.  This will rescan all effects and completely replace the database.  This preference is off by default but can be critical when trouble shooting.
• Then press the “Scan for Plug-ins” button.  Premiere will now scan for all audio effects and rebuild the database.  It can take quite a bit of time depending on how many effects are on the local machine.  If it appears hung, or Premiere crashes, simple start over and repeat until finished.  Scanning is executing external code so it is an inherently unstable process, just let it get thought the scan completely one time.
• When the scan is complete, you can choose to enable or disable certain effects, or search for effects directly in that dialog.  This functionality is always available in the Plug-in manager even when using older scans.  Press OK to dismiss the dialog.

That is the basics of how to rescan, and what the different sections do.  This would be the first thing you should try when you have any 3rd party audio effect related issues.  The scanner runs as an external executable, so don’t be alarmed if you see a process appear called “dvaaudiofilterscan”, that is the name of the process we use to protect Premiere from hangs and crashes when scanning audio effects.

With Apple’s transition to Apple Silicon, the audio effects scanning was affected.  Due to the ability to run the Premiere Pro executable as either an ARM or Intel, this affects how Audio effects are scanned on handled.  I you have an M1 (or M2 now) based Mac, you will need to scan for audio effects for each required processor architecture.  So, if you run both the ARM and Intel version, you will need to launch Premiere under each and do a separate scan for each Processor type.  Note that AME is affected similarly also, but will use the effects database of the processor architecture version that is currently launched.  So if you Run Premiere under ARM, but AME under Intel, you could potential have a mis-match.  Both sets of effects databases will be retained between launches, but may differ.  Example: If you have an Intel only effects, launching Premiere under ARM may cause the effect to be missing.  This all allies to Audition as well.

One very last thing.  Premiere (and Audition) does not support scanning of legacy Waves VST (VST2.4) effects.  You will only see VST3 and Audio Units effects after scanning.

Please, if you have any questions or feel that I’ve made a mistake here, respond to this post.  I’d love to help.

This is frankly shocking its mid 2022 and this is still a major issue. I have been   trying  for hours to get and export to work to no avail.It's disgusting

Yeah I'm noticing this too.  While working Waves plug-ins work fine, but when QC'ing the export I notice that the audio is not properly exporting.   I especially notice it when tracks are locked.   When I have to unlock the audio tracks for Premiere to properly export with compression etc.   and eventhen its flaky as hell.  Theres nothing worse than having zero confidence in the apps, there is no consistency with this issue.   Sometimes I have to go in and change a parameter to make the plug-in "wake-up" for export.   Just not professional at all.  

At this time The Adobe Creative cloud Suite is not a reliable nor professional set of apps.   Such a shame, all that cash from our subscription... I had high hopes that there would be so much cash flow into Adobe that the apps would just work.   Nope. 

It's been a year and there is still no change. I rely heavily on Waves plugins and they are still not exporting as track effects or clip effects. All that is exported is the raw audio with no effects applied. When I play the timeline, the audio plugins work fine. Would you please fix this already?