Known Participant

Question

Why does Premiere spend so much time "relinking media" when opening a project?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 29, 2024
15 replies
9663 views

When I open a large-ish project, the Progress Dashboard on Premiere spends minutes doing what it say is "relinking media". What is it doing? Why is this necessary? It is technically a "background" process, but nothing really works until it is finished.

After a few mins, or 5-6 mins on really big project, it finishes "relinking" and then I can edit normally. But my question is why can't Premiere just save the state it is when it's done and then just open quickly the next time? Nothing has changed in my media files, why "relink"?

NOTE: I am not talking about when Premiere cannot find the correct location and you have to point it to the right place. I'm talking about normal everyday automated stuff that happens when I open a project.

cendrick1

Known Participant

I was in the same boat as all of you and then I decided to do a new install of Windows which solved the issue. After installing all my plugins the issue came right back and I was able to narrow down the culprit to the Insta360 plugin for premiere. Once I removed that, my relinking only took seconds compared to many minutes before. I hope that helps some of you.

J

jd_9026

Participating Frequently

Good to know about the Insta360 plugin. I’ll definitely avoid that. It might be worth mentioning that I’ve been doing some extensive testing on Premiere “relinking” behaviors between SMB and block level storage on version 26.2.2. And I have come across some interesting findings.

For one project that is running with Camera Raw media actively online (It’s all C500 Mark II footage, but with connected proxies), running everything off SMB shares was resulting in relink times north of 2 min 30 seconds. But what was interesting is that when I moved the Camera Raw media to block level storage (external RAID), but kept the EDIT volume (proxies and other associated media) on the SMB share the relink time plummeted to about 36 seconds. This was in a Premiere Production and the project I was testing with had all the camera media in it -- approximately 2,000 clips totaling 120 hours of footage.

For another project that had no linked Camera Raw media (just proxies), block level storage loaded almost instantly. But when I moved the SMB shares the relink time for a specific project with a lot of media in it took about 15-20 seconds. Overall not terrible, but multiples of the block level storage time. I can tolerate this so I’m sticking with SMB right now so I can work with multiple systems on my NAS.

I'll report back any new findings as I discover them, but I hope this is helpful for anyone out there suffering this awfulness with Premiere + SMB workflows.

K

khadgapa

Participating Frequently

Just another editor experiencing this on a large project. Was taking 30 minutes to relink media EVERY TIME you open the project and then being extremely sluggish, basically unworkable timeline. Rolled the version back to 25.2.0 as per this thread and Premiere now relinks the large volume of media in about 90 seconds and the timeline is singing along. So it certainly seems like some sort of serious bug in recent versions.

RogerAtCat

Known Participant

Add me to the list. If I save a project, close premiere, then reopen, it has to spend 30 minutes “Relinking Media” in the Progress tab. When it does relink, it then builds out new audio waveforms. Very taxing on the system and my workflow. This is costing me time and money now.

polcasalsmedia

Participant

Still happening - since i’ve updated to the last version it spends about 3-4 minutes on an average 80GB project - It is super annoying. Wonder if it is because of the AI implementations and media processing…

Onlyfejmzzz

Participant

This shit i soooo annouying. Im loosing my mind for a year now, im not sure why is that happening but im wasted DAYS just waitiong for it to open and relink stuff ( if were talking about all the waiting needed for the last year xD)

Im really thinking about buying davinci at this point.

theTallest77

Inspiring

Struggling with this issue as well.

We’re a team of nine. I’m the sole video editor, and we have 4 animators and 4 videographers. We all use premiere, but I obviously use it the most. We work with a high volume of content, and have a quick turnaround time. Our projects range in size from 50 to 200 GB of raw studio footage (1080p, high bitrate), AE linked comps, and motion graphic templates, and I can go through as many as 20 in a month. All of our active content is stored on a cloud server powered by AWS that we access remotely via WARP VPN. I don’t have any technical information about the server itself.

Starting with version 25.2, I noticed the same issue OP mentioned, and it got worse when we updated to 26. Our bigger projects can take the better part of a day to fully relink, and even then it’s nearly impossible to scrub through timelines and queue renders. Prior to 25.2, it was still slow, but not nearly as slow as it is now. My boss and I are currently in talks with Shade, which I tried out yesterday and was quite impressed with the performance overall, but even in that environment, the relinking process took some time (only a half hour which for my team would be a huge improvement).

I apologize in advance for not being able to provide tech details about the server, but based on what others have been discussing in this thread, are there any questions I could ask our devs about optimizations that could be made to the server to help with the relinking issue?

RogerAtCat

Known Participant

Still no help from Adobe. This is still happening on 26.2.2 (Build 3) for me.

J

jfinlay8

Participating Frequently

Yeah it’s pretty unbearable - Adobe really lost their way. Focused too much on AI and now the basic functionality of the app barely works. Still having the issue as of 2/7/26 and Adobe obviously doesn’t care. Adding non-headline grabbing features and fixes just isn’t worth their time anymore apparently.

RogerAtCat

Known Participant

Clearly there is no cure yet. This is still happening. 26.2.2 (Build 3)

D

dadalavida

Participant

This just started happening to me once I upgraded to 26. M4 Max 64GB RAM, external SSDs over Thunderbolt. Never happened before. Now happens every time I open the project I’m working on.

And while I understand the concept of anything “if Premiere sees any part of the ‘name’ as different”—this will happen if I open a project, wait till Premiere has finished re-linking, close the project, and reopen it immediately afterwards—it starts re-linking all over again. It’s hard to believe that some part of the name of any file has changed.

Disabled plugins at startup—no effect.

Cleared media cache—no effect.

As for everyone else this is happening to, this is extremely frustrating and kills creative momentum.

RogerAtCat

Known Participant

Nothing helps. This is still happening. 26.2.2 (Build 3)

E

Edward Scissors

Participating Frequently

I am having the same problem on my M3 Ultra running 25.6. Media stored on a 40TB QNAP server connecting via TB4. Read speeds of 1700Mbs.Only 1 TB of footage.

Done everything that has been recommended on this thread. Nothing works. Losing a lot of time. Its a new thing as well

RogerAtCat

Known Participant

Any fix yet?

M

Mathias Wittwer LAAX

Participant

I have the same issue, and it’s killing me. Every time I open a project, I need to wait around 10 minutes — depending on the project size — before I can actually start working. Each time Premiere crashes for some unexplainable reason, I have to wait again for it to reopen.

I’ve tried reverting to older versions, but at that point, I couldn’t even open Premiere anymore. I tried completely resetting it, deleting all presets, etc. Still no change.

This is so horrible and annoying. I spend way too much time fighting with Premiere Pro instead of actually editing for my clients. I’m on the verge of completely switching over to DaVinci, since I’m pretty much done with it. Adobe should spend more time creating stable software instead of trying to integrate unusable AI BS.

And please don’t ask me about my machine or hard drives. I work on a highly modern editing setup — the issue, with 100% certainty, is Adobe’s bad software.

Mod note: Please refrain from using profanity. Minors are reading here.

kyle huber

Participating Frequently

Can agree more! Like i mentioned i have Resolved it ( Pun intented ) [fradulent account removed by moderator] what am i paying for? I would expect top support when its costing 50 plus a month. thats alot i can save when other software is free or ALOT cheaper, AND it works/.....

MyerPj

Community Expert

@kyle huber , that's just so cute and adorable, your little pun, I can't wait till you post it a third time or fourth even?

kyle huber

Participating Frequently

@adobe has this been resolved....( pun included ) I am having same issue. costed me days of lost work

D

De Geliefde

Participating Frequently

Dear Kyle,

I found this immediately resolved (on my Mac Mini Pro 4) when I stepped back to 25.2.0. It stopped doing it and I have not gone forward in versions since then. I did notice some odd stuff happening with 'dynamiclinkmanager' with a particular 4k project, going to media encoder v 25.4, which I have yet to resolve and may be to do with the version disparity - Adobe, can you help?

kyle huber

Participating Frequently

I have contacted Adobe but its taking weeks for them to get back to me. Why i "resolved" it my self lol.

Check more issues here after reverting. 25.2
Its clear as its adobe issue.

N

nokipowlonski

Participant

Hello!
I had the same problem. Premiere scans and relinks media every time I open a large project (90 MB) on a 20 TB external hard drive.
Premiere froze at 25% of the relinking process.
I was able to open the project correctly by deactivating the plugin at startup.
I hope this helps some of you!

O

Ovidius9000Author

Known Participant

" by deactivating the plugin at startup."

??

caroline_edits

Community Manager

We can teach you how! With Premiere closed, hold ALT (Windows) or OPTION (Mac) on your keyboard. Keep holding the key down, then launch Premiere. Keep holding the key until a window appears with startup options. Select "Disable third-party plugins" and select OK.

Here's a YouTube video showing you how: https://adobe.ly/45jDU3o

Let us know if that helps,

Caroline

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