Problem with audio waveforms (bugging while zooming)

[Fabboy]

I recently updated to version 25.4.1 of Premiere Pro, and I’m having an issue with the audio waveforms. It’s a bug that existed in previous versions, but now it’s happening a lot. The problem is that the audio waveform doesn’t generate correctly—when I look at the timeline, it shows an (incorrect) waveform, and only when I zoom in on an audio track does the correct waveform appear. How can I fix this? It’s horrible not being able to properly visualize the real audio waveform.

[Tom_edit]

Yeahhh this was an issue that plagued most of v23->v24, before it was mostly fixed in 25.0

But I also still ocassionally run into it, especially with bars and tone like shown in this video (v25.5). I also sometimes see it in nested audio. It's a shame it seems to be popping back up randomly

[Fabboy]

Yeah, it wasn’t happening that much in 25.0, but I updated to 25.4.1 and I feel like it started happening a lot. I just updated to 25.5.0, hopefully it’ll be a bit better because that issue is really tedious.

[Dirk H.]

I edited a simple video and imported two wave files. Double click on these files opened the files in the source window but did not show the wave forms. I could import and edit both files in Audition, even after this edit the wave form was not shown.

Just before opening these files I opened a quite large video (12 hours timeline). Maybe this file has blocked the creation of the small wave forms.

[tedjo_9860]

Bug when shrinking timeline. Audio waveform changes when it is reduced and returns to its original state when it is enlarged again.

[jamieclarke]

Hi @Fabboy -   Thanks for submitting your bug report. We need a few more details to try to help with the issue.  Please see, How to Report a Problem.

Can you let us know your system specs?

Have you tried clearing your peak files generally located at Users\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common

Sorry for the frustration.

[whamalamaboom]

Windows 10. Against my better judgement, I upgraded PP to ver 25.5. Now waveforms aren't showing for any project. Nothing changed on my end. I still have it checked to display. Yes, I've manually dumped the cache and temp files to rebuild and that did nothing. I didn't even get the usual dialogue at the bottom right of the timeline that it was generating peak files, which seems like a bug in itself. Same with choosing the manual generate option. Closed and restarted multiple times. My graphics drivers are all up to date.

This is a display problem because after upgrading and seeing this, I opened a second project and that one displayed everything except for the lower audio track's waveform until I scrolled to the right (all I did was scroll, I didn't edit anything), which made that disappear too. So all of my projects look like this now. 

I sat with a project open for about 20 minutes and everything started displaying normally again. I opened another project that's a few hours longer and that ones still not showing waveforms. At this point, I don't care if this is just laggy. The previous build wasn't, and I can't wait indefinitely for things to maybe display properly. I'm going back to 25.4.1, but if anyone using 25.5 had this problem and fixed it, I'd still like to know. Thanks!

[jamieclarke]

Hi @whamalamaboom - Generating peak files has been moved to the progress panel.

In your Preferences > Audio do you have "Generate waveforms automatically during import" and "Generated waveforms and conform audio using multithreading" checked?

What type of files are these?  Could you share the media file properties for your proxy file? The easiest way is to download MediaInfo, switch the view mode to Text, and then send us a screenshot of the report. 
 

[whamalamaboom]

Generate waveforms automatically during import is always on. Generated waveforms and conform audio using multithreading is always off because I've never needed it. I don't use proxies for these projects because I've never needed to. They're always the same type of file, MP4 video, recorded from the same source and of similar size (usually under 10gb).

The only thing that changed was going from 25.4.1 to 25.5. If that build means I need to change settings to get it to display properly or change workflow for PP to run as quickly as it does now, I'll stick to the build I'm on until PP is a few versions ahead. Whenever I upgrade to the most recent build available, there are problems that eventually get resolved as more versions come out.

Of course a thing that's always been fast and useful to see directly on the timeline was moved to a panel I never use. Thanks for confirming! I was going to mention that it seemed like a bug unless it was done on purpose, but I took that last part out thinking it wouldn't have been. The Fx badge color removal should've told me there's no wouldn't lol Appreciate it!

[kathraji_1763]

In the Premiere Pro timeline, the audio waveform display behaves inconsistently when zooming in and out. When I’m zoomed out, the waveform shows peaks or visible audio in certain sections. But when I zoom in on the same section, the waveform completely disappears, as if there is no audio at all. This gives a false impression that there is sound when zoomed out and silence when zoomed in.

[jamieclarke]

Hi @kathraji_1763 - what version of premiere pro are you working on?

[Tom_edit]

@jamieclarke The following videos are 25.5 stable - project started in 25.5.
I still occasionally see behaviour like in vid 1 where a cut will randomly cause a part of the waveform to take a new shape (where there literally isn't any audio), which then in turn makes zooming in and out do the same thing to that clip. I wonder if this might be caused by my audio originally being synced using pluraleyes and it potentially not initially aligning the clip to a frame? That's just a wild guess, it might not be related.
But an easier way to see this behaviour I find is by just using the audio track from premiere's "Bars and Tone" (vid 2), in more recent versions of 25 it tends to have absolutely no waveform most of the time and then appears/vanishes depending on zoom level

vid 1 || vid 2

It's not as erronious as it was in the back half of 24.x releases but it's definitely a bug that's still sticking around somehow