Audio cutting out in Premiere - it's killing me.

[CCS18]

So this problem has seemed to have ramped up over the past month or so and it's getting increasingly difficult to edit.  I've tons of searching, and there seem to be a lot of people having similar issues - but all have different possible causes.  I'm trying to edit interviews, and basically I can't work.  Some of the obvious questions I know I'll get:

Was happening on the last version of 2018, and I'm now on 2019 - 13.0.3.

System:

I'm on a Mac Trashcan - I know it's getting up there in age, but it's handling the video fine - it's just the audio cutting out.

3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5

64 GB 1866 MHz DDR3

AMD FirePro D700 6 GB

I've had this happen on multiple projects, with multiple types of media and multiple hard drives.  (Predominately Lacie Rugged which we've always used).

In this case files are 4K MXF - although I have proxies attached which seems to have exasperated the audio situation.  Although I rarely have needed to use proxies, so my other projects had problems using the original footage.

I always make my sequences from the clip, so matching settings should not be an issue - except iI guess potentially in this case where I have proxies attached.

I've cleared my cache, I've upped my buffer size to the max, and made sure my sample rate matches. 

I've been editing over 25 years, linear tape to tape, Avid, and I've been using Premiere since 2012 and CS6, and I've never been more frustrated. 

Anyone else?

[Josiah Edwards]

Exactly thank you. And also, to say "You have my sympathy" and follow up with saying that it's your problem, doesn't help at all. And to say "No one else is reporting on this so the problem must not exist" is incredibly frustrating and dismissive. Most people with an issue wont report on it, and will either grit their teeth until an update fixes it, or just leave and use different software. And even so, if it is a minority (Which I don't believe it is, most editors I talk to about this say they've had this issue on and off for years) just saying that because its only a small amount of users at a time so its not our problem is just wrong. We use this product for our jobs, and even you state that this is a post from 2 years ago, and its still an issue today. I've had this issue on personal PC's, Laptop PC's, custom PC's, Mac Mini's, Mac books. And the issue comes and goes, but just because there are points when it doesn't happen, doesn't mean it's fixed. Other editing programs do not have this issue, so why does Premiere? I just want to know we're being heard, and honestly it doesn't sound like it.

[R Neil Haugen]

I'm not a staffer ... nor are most anyone else around here unless they have an official Adobe 'badge'. I'm a user like you.

And this has been a very annoying issue for a certain subset of the several million daily users. Over several years no less. It's always easy to conflate how many users are having the same issue I am ... and not often correct.

There is no question that it happens, and like anything else like this, if you're the one hammered, it's totally maddening. Been there done that. Expressing sympathy isn't demeaning, it's simply reality. Been there.

It is also totally maddening to me, as someone who does love to troubleshoot, that the blasted issue has been caused over the years by so many wildly different things, that tracking it down is a right pain. But over and over, it comes down to some odd interaction on that system with something else that may have an affect on audio production within that system.

And the fix on one system for one user has no effect or assistance for anyone else.

From cache file issues to prefs settings to sound cards, audio drivers loaded by games, OS 'gaming assistent' settings, DropBox/OneDrive issues, to odd OS permissions issues. Totally bizarre.

Neil

[Sean26024155mivc]

Still doesn't fix the problem...

[R Neil Haugen]

As noted, this thing has has so freaking many "causes" ... it's hard to know where to even start.

Maybe @mstegner  might pop in ...

Neil

[mstegner]

@Sean26024155mivc 

Matt from Adobe Engineering here.  I'm just seeing this thread for the first time and read through it. Nothing seems to jump out at me initially (there is a lot to digest though).

Could you, or anyone on this thread, post a video of this issue so I can get a sense of what is happening.  A youtube line will help a bunch, even if it is from a cell phone recording your screen.

Also, if anyone here wants to get on a phone call/Screen share and can show me the issue it would be very helpful, since I’m not seeing any issues like this locally.  Just reply below and I will reach out directly. 

I’m not clairvoyant or omniscient (I wish, it would make my job so much easier), so seeing the bug in action will be about the only way I will be able to help.

[Michael24201483t0dy]

Since upgrading to v 23.0 of Premiere Pro on my Mac (running Ventura 13.0.1), I've noticed a number of glitches happening quite regularly, the most significant one being that the audio will cut out briefly every 12 seconds during playback, even after rendering. This issue carries across to Media Encoder exports as well. The cutting out during playback is not linked to specific parts of the audio - if I pull the cursor to a random part of the audio and play it back, the audio will drop with the same regularity, regardless of where I start. I'm experiencing this same glitch across all my projects, some of which feature a separately-recorded audio file replacing the original audio from a video file, others of which are videos that feature their original audio untouched.

I can't see anything obvious in the way I'm handling audio, as I'm keeping the sample rate at 32000Hz from import to export. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as I'm running out of time - thanks!

[Jacob27505314m1hq]

Hi @mstegner, thanks for responding to this thread. Here's a video of the same bug that I believe others are experiencing: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Y0BZndBnqOE

Audio play for a few seconds, then cuts out while video continues to play. Any help would be much appreciated.

PC specs if it helps: 

CPU: AMD r5 2600 4ghz 6 cores

GPU: AMD fx6700xt

RAM: 16gb at 2333mhz

[mstegner]

@Jacob27505314m1hq I sent you an email.  Thanks so much for the video.

[mstegner]

Hi All, I wanted to thank @Jacob27505314m1hq  for getting on a video call with me as I tried to figure out what the issue was.  After various debugging/trouble shooting we determined that his render files were causing the audio to stop playing after about 4 seconds (as you can see in the video he posted).  Ultimately we were able to fix his issue by deleting his rendered files (Sequence>Delete Render Files…).  After that, the audio was fine, and new render files were fine. 

I'm still investigating his files as he was nice enough to provide them to me and don't know the root cause quite yet. 

Please, if anyone else wants to do a video call or post a video, it will still be helpful.

[amphibious_burrito]

@mstegner I am dealing with this issue right now after updating to 23.1. Have tried everything but the audio drops out on the simplest timeline and makes editing near-impossible.

It especially can't handle when there's dialogue of any kind (even a few seconds, with just one or two clips stacked) or a single music track. Making proxies or rendering the timeline doesn't make a difference. There are no FX added either. I've tested the project file on multiple computers and clean re-installed my drivers as well. 

The same project was working just fine in 22 on Windows 10. (I updated the project file from 22 to 23.1 as well.) The new desktop has a way nicer graphics card so there should be no issue there at all.

(Running Windows 11, NVIDIA RTX 4090, plenty of RAM; Editing 4k FX6 footage). 

[Michael24201483t0dy]

This will only be relevant for the folks in the comments that have their audio dropping out for a second at regular intervals, but I had this problem and finally worked out that, while all plug-ins in use were active, updating Premiere had somehow unregistered my Izotope plug-ins. This meant that they were still "active", but in a demo mode that meant it deliberately cut out a second of audio every 10 seconds or so. Drove me absolutely crazy for a few days so I was hugely relieved to work it out!

[Michael Grenadier]

without reviewing this entire thread, just a couple of quick ideas.  for amphibious_burrito, just revert to the previous version that was working...   and you might try setting your preferences: audio hardware:  input to none which seems to solve many audio issues...

[mstegner]

@amphibious_burrito  Would you be willing to get on a call with me?

[amphibious_burrito]

@mstegner sure, thanks! I've fixed the immediate issue by rolling back to 22.6.3. But it is still happening aggressively in 23.1. 

[Arthur_AK]

Hey @mstegner, I could use some help, I have this problem, I have an hour long play to edit and deliver in the next 15hours and premiere is unusable with this bug.

[Sami Succar]

Can you please share a screenshot of your Audio Hardware settings?

[Alaric0101]

I've read through all these and it doesn't seem like there's a silver bullet.  I started having this problem on a film with many layers of audio and assumed it was just too much for my computer to handle.  However I just started a new projet there's only one video file and one audio file in there and it keeps cutting out. I tried clearing cache, and made sure sequence matches files.  I have seperate audio files 48000K/24, but even when I just listen to the camera audio it cuts.   Still of audio settings attached.  

I teach basic editing at a film school. I'd love to have an answer if students have this issue.

[Alaric0101]

Update: I fixed it!  copies files to my computer so they're not reading from an external drive.  Looking into a faster drive, but concerned becuae I thought I had the fastest one out there.  Also stranger audio files would drop out.  I have 4K video files so I get those would need lots of speed, but the audio?

[Alaric0101]

OK put the footage on the fastest drive avalible and it still cuts out.  So the only soution is to have the files ON my computer.  It's a work around for a small project, but how are we supposed to work on big projects that NEED an external hard drive?

[Michael Grenadier]

Alaric0101 explore a proxy workflow.  should solve all your problems.   If you need help with it, post back.  

[toonlab]

Well, I know  a of time passed by since this questtion, anyway, I was having the same issue and after a few tryings, I discovered that my preview codec was set as Animation, I really don´t know why, but after changing it to Apple ProRes, worked fine.

[Michael Grenadier]

thanks for posting your solution...   Not everyone does...

[Frank268047922ojx]

Hi!

I know I'm a little late to the party, however I have this same issue.  I have tried everything.  To start from the beginning:

I am working on updated an old project from my work.  I opened the project file (that was Premiere Pro 22 file) into Premiere 23.  I converted it, and began working on it.  There's no crazy effects, just simple animation for titles and key words that pop up on screen. (Scale, positioning, Rotate), so theres no heavy load on my computer.

I had begun to add in the new narration audio into it, but I noticed that during the playbacks, that the audio would cut out.  Levels dropped to 0, then the audio would come back maybe a few seconds later, before dropping out again.  The video would play fine, however occassionally it started to lag as well, it is primarily an audio issue with me.  And it wasn't the entire audio that dropped out.  Sometimes it would be the background music that dropped out, or the narration audio, and sometimes the ambient camera audio, and occassionally all the audio.  There doesn't seem to be a rythm or rhyme to it.  The project will work for about 45 minutes to an hour, then it'll start happening again.

Our workflow is that we have a server where we store the footage, music, and any stills/graphics.  The project file is on my computer, and the narration is also on my computer.

I have done nearly everything to address this issue.  I have updated every driver on my computer.  I have made sure Premiere is completely updated.  I have reverted back to an older version of premiere, and used an XML file to revert the project to be compatible with 22.  But the issue persisted.

I have deleted the media cache for my project, as well as the entire media cache.  I have moved the location of my media cache.  I have deleted render files.  I have turned my Audio Input to "No Input", I have the renderer on "Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA).  The sequence settings match the video format.  The Sample rate is consistent between the sequence and the audio.

I read somewhere that having a workspace that goes on two screens can affect the audio playback, so I reverted from two screens to one, and its still an issue.

The only thing that I think I could do, is move all the footage from the server onto my computer.  But considering there are a lot of people with this same issue, that don't edit off of an external driver or server, I don't think this would have much effect.

Computer:

Windows 11
Processor 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700 2.1GHz
RAM: 32gb (I use 29 for Premiere)
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3060
Windows and Premiere are on an m.2 drive, along with my project files.

I have had control Panel open while editing and while the issue happens.  CPU, Network, GPU, and Memory all run normally.  There are no spikes.  My drives all run the same too.  This leads me to believe this is strictly a Premiere issue.  The network that connects to the drive doesn't seem to throttle or anything while accessing the footage.

I am thinking about pulling the footage from the server and putting it on my computer, to test that out.  But before I do that, I just want to confirm that it is under "Project Manager" then select the sequences that I want the footage for, and select the destination path to be where the new project and footage will be, correct?  This won't affect my original project that I've already been editing in, correct?

I am also happy to have a call next week if that would help.

Thanks,

Frank.

[mstegner]

@Frank268047922ojx 
I sent you an email to try to set up a meeting.

[Frank268047922ojx]

I just wanted to give an update.

Moving all the footage off the server, onto my computer seemed to have fixed the issue for me.  I haven't been in the project too much the last two days, but in the short time I have been in there, there has been no lag.

I will be sure to update this thread if the issue comes back.