Known Participant

Question

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

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 29, 2024
9 replies
8268 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.

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

M

Mathias Wittwer LAAX

New 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.

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nokipowlonski

New 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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Registration5E5A

New Participant

Some of the responses in this thread are extremely frustrating.

This 5 to 20 minutes of 'relinking' Premiere needs to do every time you open a project was not a problem before version 24.0. This is not just some normal operation Premiere did before this that we didn't notice and don't understand because we're luddites. This is new.

It's also absurd to say that we shouldn't expect to be able to work with a NAS anymore, like we've been doing for decades without issue. No other Adobe program behaves like this. None of Adobe's competitor applications in this space behave like this.

We're preparing to dump Adobe for Davinci. Adobe's complete lack of action on this is ridiculous.

J

jd_9026

Participating Frequently

You are completely correct. None of this behavior is normal -- and it's crippling for a professional application to behave this way. I have come back to Premiere for the first time in 5 years after doing several features on Avid Media Composer and there is a lot of new stuff I like. But this kind of thing is enough to decide not to pursue Premiere for the next project. I sincerely hope it gets cured, and soon.

E

Evan5C9C

New Participant

Same here, working with a large project from a NAS drive. Been dealing with this for over a year Adobe. Not holding my breath for this to be fixed anytime soon. Been using Davinci more and more, it has no issues with this.

J

jd_9026

Participating Frequently

I'm having the same issue. My project is not even that big -- maybe 100 hours of Canon C300 MKII footage. But it takes over 10 minutes to "relink" everytime I open. My material is on a NAS -- this should not be happening.

J

jd_9026

Participating Frequently

In my testing, this appears to be an issue exclusively with media over SMB protocol. If you're using iSCSI volumes over your NAS the problem goes away completely.

S

ScottSimmons

Community Expert

This this tip:

Tool Tip Tuesday for Adobe Premiere Pro: Don’t Bury Projects

P

parkerchill

New Participant

This just happened to me and it was because premiere automatically updated on my comp from 25.2 to 25.2.1

I went into creative cloud app and installed the older version and now it's not relinking for over an hour.

....it was premiere that changed. Not an external drive thing....

Peru Bob

Community Expert

premiere automatically updated on my comp from 25.2 to 25.2.1

By @parkerchill

You can disable auto updates in the Creative Cloud app.

R Neil Haugen

Brainiac

I'm surprised you've never had issues with external drives. Yes, they are heavily used. And for many workflows, absolutely necessary. But they come with problems inherent in being external. (And this doesn't include external RAID arrays connected via specific hardware bits.)

1) Data transfer is just never as good as an internal "directly on the motherboard" connection drive. USB and Thunderbolt sustained speeds don't match that with internal SSDs.

2) Drive names are an issue ... sometimes drives have a 'name' that is recognized and used by the OS, but often they get assigned a drive name when connected or the computer is booted again. And that can throw things for a loop.

3) Premiere runs totally on metadata ... that's all Project files are, massive bits of metadata and text information. And if it needs to re-sort the drive name/files used in that project, it will have to do so for every file used. And that process involves replacing the last stored data with the 'new' data for the file, all written in the Project file's metadata ... stored between RAM/cache and data files.

And if you have preview files and such ... as is probable ... it has multiple files per clip to reestablish the link to.

So if Premiere is having to deal with a newly assigned drive name at launch, it will take some time to get all that sorted.

BUT ... if ... the drive has a name that the OS recognizes and uses on launch, much of that time is not necessary.

Now, there is a separate issue where Premiere doesn't remember it already has preview files and such, and recreates those every launch of the project. THAT ... is very annoying, but again, not the same issue as the above.

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

R

Ross3888292368fh

Participating Frequently

The drive is not changing, the media is not changing. My question is: what is it doing when it says "relinking" everytime i open the project.

Other NLEs have no problem working off external drives. Metadata is tiny in terms of bandwidth. My question, again, is why/what is Premiere doing every single time the project starts up? And why can't it save it's "post linking" state, you know what I mean?

R Neil Haugen

Brainiac

I answered that above.

If Premiere sees any part of the "name" as different, it has to rewrite all the internal Premiere metadata to that new name. Because your project is nothing but metadata.

So, as I said, it's not rewriting the original files. It's having to rebuild it's own internal directions ... (file-name locations) to all the original files/previews/whatever. And if you have hundreds of files, that can take awhile.

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

S

Sumeet Kumar Choubey

Community Manager

Hi Ovidius9000,

We're sorry about the poor experience. Where are the media files used in the project saved? Are these saved on an internal drive or external/network drives? Is this happening with any specific project or all of them? We're here to help, just need more info.

Thanks,

Sumeet

O

Ovidius9000Author

Known Participant

External drive. It's about 50TB of footage.

Why would it mattter if it's internal or external? In 25 years working in editing and sound-for-film I have literally never been asked if something is on an "internal drive". In professional settings we all use external drives so projects can be easily moved to a new system, or across the country etc, to fit the needs of the production.

Tool Tip Tuesday for Adobe Premiere Pro: Don’t Bury Projects

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