Major Issues with Adobe Products - Including OneDrive, Rendering and Instability

[Production259595333ptm]

Our team has been using OneDrive for the past three years, and it has been incredibly helpful for collaboration and seamless across many other softwares. However, we've encountered significant issues that are making our workflow less efficient when it comes to Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop.

• Linking Media on Network Drives:

  • When using the built-in browser in Premiere and After Effects to link or import media, the software tries to sync every item in the network folder. This results in unnecessary downloads of our entire network folder causing delays as it attempts to download to read all files within these folders which is not possible since it fills the entire hard disk until it cannot.
  • Pausing OneDrive syncing causes Premiere and After Effects to be unable to read any files from the network drives if they are not already stored on the local hard disk.

• Dynamic Linking Delays:

  • After Effects files that are dynamically linked or even just referenced in Premiere projects cause significant delays, disrupting the workflow, causing lags just moving shapes and graphics around and crashing the application.

• Rendering Performance:

  • When rendering with Premiere or Media Encoder, the AfterFX.exe renderer runs on only one processor, severely limiting performance. This feels like rendering on a Windows XP from the early 2000s. Most times, the renderer will stop at random points in the video, we even left it overnight and it was still at 30%. When we moved the window, it began to render again. Does it fall asleep or something?

• Photoshop Loading Issues:

  • Photoshop launches normally, but when trying to open the editor or load an image, it takes about 10 minutes of freezing before it becomes responsive. This significantly hinders productivity.

• Overall Software Instability:

  • Adobe's software has become increasingly unstable, with frequent crashes, freezes, and slowdowns that disrupt our work. The reliability we've come to expect from Adobe is no longer present, making it challenging to maintain a smooth workflow. They've been built on top of old code and not worth the price they are charging.
    Stop updating AI and start updating our UX!

These issues are not present in other software we use, which makes it clear that the problem lies with Adobe's software. The Adobe product line is in dire need of an upgrade to its core components to provide the seamless experience we expect.

We run 3 computers with 12th Gen i7 CPUs, RTX 3080 and 3080 TI. All PCs have 64GB DDR5 RAM.
All 3 of them have these problems in common specifically with Adobe products.

[R Neil Haugen]

OneDrive as a transport service is OK. For documents and spreadsheets it's awesome. But for video editing and post, it's not that useful except for getting files to other members of a team.

First, if you leave the files in a synced OneDrive folder, that service goes through the files every few minutes, and makes a change in the file header to track whether it needs to resync or not. This messes up Premiere's metadata for the file.

Second, OneDrive doesn't "intelligently" break video files into chunks for transfer as video apps need the files delivered.

This is where LucidLink blows other services away. My partner in Cape Town can call to tell me he's uploading a folder of media. It will already be showing in my LucidLink virtual drive.

As soon as I see files appear, I can go into Premiere, start importing them. Even drop them on sequences. And they haven't finished uploading from Cape Town to the servers in London. I'm in Oregon.

And I'm getting playback in Premiere.

That's a service that's way above most anything else.

[MyerPj]

Nice write-up, but these forums are setup based on the product in question, so the Premiere Pro issues are taken here, and the extra info in your post kinda gets in the way, once you get to the bottom. So, I would suggest breaking off the various products into their own forum.

[Production259595333ptm]

OneDrive has been working fine with every other application. We don't perform heavy tasks on there.
The point is that the media browser by Adobe is not effiecient when it comes to browsing online drives, regardless of what the file is.

It doesn't even optimise for hierarchial folders for image sequences like other applications do.
Premiere cannot read files at all until it downloads every single folder in the network folder i tryto access.

As for editing the post... I don't see an edit button.

[R Neil Haugen]

You don't say what other apps you're working with. Any NLEs, compositors, other pro video?

Because if by that you mean stills, documents, or spreadsheets, then ... your comparison is useless. Nor being rude or dismissive, simply ... directly ... honest.

Video files are used very differently than any other file types. And NLEs are designed around video file usage. OneDrive is most definitely not ... in attempts to use it for video work by thousands of other users.

You can use it to share assets, but realistically, the files must be moved to a 'normal' folder structure, one not touched by OneDrive, or NLEs will have issues. And OneDrive is not successful at online storage/access processes that I've ever heard of. It may seem so, for a bit, but there's always a "but ..." that will hit you hard.

I'm simply a practical user, and use what works. Period.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, none of whom have ever found OneDrive useful for any major work.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @Production259595333ptm,

I'll move this to the discussions forum. This sounds like more of a workflow issue than a bug.

I believe that Neil has outlined the basics of what to expect when working with OneDrive. There are better and more specialized products for shared video workflows that you may want to be aware of.

Neil or other Adobe Experts can share their pro video workflows in a corresponding post.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Production259595333ptm]

Thank you both for your feedback, but I feel that the performance and instability issues I’ve mentioned are being dismissed.
The problems we are experiencing with Adobe Premiere and After Effects, particularly related to rendering and dynamic linking, are significant and are not just a matter of workflow with OneDrive.
These issues need to be addressed as potential software problems.

I would appreciate it if these concerns could be taken more seriously.

Thank you.

[R Neil Haugen]

No dismissing. And the issues with dynamic link are certainly 'normal' to have for most of us.

That said, using OneDrive synced folders leads to issues. It just does. And that also in Resolve, which I work in daily. And as reported on other forums mainly Resolve-based.

So move any media to folders outside of OneDrive linking, and see what you get for render and dynamic link issues.