Snapping to Guides Does not Work in 4K with Windows 11 Scale

Report · Mar 06, 2024

This issue was previously described in this post:

Issues with positioning and using Rulers & Guides

However, as three years have passed since this post and the issue is still occuring, I feel compelled to share it again. Furthermore, the issue affects not only text, as described in the original post, but videos, photos, color mattes, and any other visual clip.

Guide snapping is important for compositing text over backgrounds, arranging visuals in a frame, keyframe animations, and more. Moreover, as high resolution monitors (4K, 8K, etc.) become more common, display scaling and High DPI functionality is necessary for UI to be properly legible. It is important for snapping to function properly regardless of the UI scale.

I have attached a copy of the Premiere Pro project shown in the screenshots.

1. Version of App:

Adobe Premiere Pro CC 24.2.1

2. Platform and Operating System:

Windows 11 Pro Version 22H2

64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz

Graphics Processing Unit: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 10GB
Installed RAM: 64.0 GB
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

3. Basic Steps to Reproduce the Problem:

Set the Display Resolution of Windows to 3840x2160.
Set the Scale of Windows to 200%
Open Adobe Premiere Pro.
Enable rulers in the Program Monitor.
Make sure "Snap in Program Monitor" is enabled. It can be enabled by clicking the + button under the Program Monitor and clicking and dragging "Snap in Program Monitor" onto the toolbar under the Program Monitor.
Click and Drag from the rulers to create a guide anywhere in your program monitor.
- If the ruler is set to Percent instead of Pixels, you'll notice that the percentage is half of what it should be.
- Example: hovering over a vertical guide at the exact middle of the screen will read 15%, even though it is 30% of the way along the screen.
  Updating Media
Import any visual (video or photo) to the Project.
Drag the visual into the timeline.
Select the visual to display clip effects in the Effects panel.
Select the Motion effect to display the transform gizmo in the Program Monitor.
Click and drag the visual in the Program Monitor to move it around.
When attempting to snap the visual to a guide, the snapping will not work properly.
- Example: If a vertical guide is at 30% of the screen, the visual will snap to an invisible guide at roughly 15% of the screen.

4. Expected Result and Actual Result:

When clicking and dragging a visual inside the Program Monitor using the Motion gizmo, the user should be able to snap the visual to any guides in the Program Monitor.
If Scale is enabled in the Windows Settings (200% in my case), the position of the guide is divided by the scale factor (2 in this case). E.g., a 30% guide acts as a 15% guide.
Thus, the visual snaps to half of the position it is supposed to.

5. Further Notes:

The bug does not occur when the Windows Scale is 100%. However, this makes the Premiere Pro UI too small to read without magnification.
The bug can also be circumvented by right-clicking on Adobe Premiere Pro.exe, going to Properties, entering the Compatibility tab, clicking Change High DPI Settings, checking Override high DPI scaling behavior, and setting the drop-down box to System.
- This essentially causes the program to render internally at 1920x1080p, which is then upscaled by Windows to 4K. The program looks visually pixellated, but snapping to guides works correctly.