Premiere Pro Stuck on “Preparing Audio”

[sophiewillox]

Hi all,

I’m running into a really persistent issue with Premiere Pro: whenever I hit play, it just hangs on “Preparing audio” for a long time and won’t start playback.

Here’s what I’ve already tried (with no success):

• Reinstalled Premiere Pro

• Updated GPU (NVIDIA Studio driver)

• Set Audio Hardware > Default Input = None (helped once, but the problem came back next day and now wont work again)

• Cleared Media Cache (both in Preferences and manually from AppData)

• Moved Media Cache to a fast SSD

• Disabled/uninstalled extra audio devices (Dolby APO, NVIDIA/AMD HDMI drivers) so only Realtek(R) Audio is active

• Reset Preferences and Plugin Cache (Alt + Shift launch)

• Renamed Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\[version] folder to force a new profile

It does it track by track and takes about 20 minutes each, the video is 1 hour 30 with multiple audio tracks, the footage is Proxy. 

Really not sure if its a Premiere issue, or a Windows Issue. Everything is up to date, its just very frustrating as I need it for my job! Any fix or suggestions would be massively appreciate. Thanks so much

Sophie

[jamieclarke]

Hi @sophiewillox -  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 post your system specs from the link above.

What version of Premiere Pro are you using?

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

You say you moved your media cache to a different drive did you delete your old media cache?

Sorry for the frustration.

[sophiewillox]

Following from last message I had Generate waveforms automatically during import ticked but not and Generate waveforms and conform audio using multithreading

[sophiewillox]

For some reason this reply won't send so here's a screenshot instead! 

[jamieclarke]

Hi @sophiewillox - Can you check version 25.5 and let us know if you are still having issues.

[sophiewillox]

Same issue unfortuently

[jamieclarke]

Hi @sophiewillox - Can you navigate to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common and move the folders "Peak Files" and "PTX" folders out of the common folder. same with your external hard drive.