Some ProRes 422 Video Preview Files lost on closing and re-opening project

[JonesVid]

Kevin Monahan has suggested I post this for investigation by Engineering

I am getting a random loss of rendered video preview files on Premiere 23.5 well.

Hardware : PC Windows 11 (also does it on my back up Windows 10Pro Intel 9900K machine as well)

• Intel 13900K
• 64GB RAM
• System C drive NVMe 2TB
• Media Cache on Export NVMe Drive 2TB
• Project Drive NVMe Drive 1TB
• Media Drive SATA 2TB SSD
• Nvidia 2070 Super GPU

I'm using Quicktime Hybrid method to create a video master in ProRes 422.

Editing Video on timeline mix of H264 and H265 4KUHD.

Majority of footage recently is H265 10bit.

All previews generated in ProRes 422 4K

Pro Res422 Preview files are big as they are used to speed up export considerably by Ticking Use Previews on Export (in General Tab)

Once you are working on the project and everything is fine in Timeline  you can see the rendered files on my NVMe SSD Project disc in Video Previews Folder.

No red bars on Timeline after render and project save.

Then shut down machine come back next day and Premiere is randomly losing them - not all.

This happens on my Intel 9900K machine as well.

This appears to be a database issue? (or other gremlin) which Premiere uses to locate the rendered files as the files are still there in Previews Folder and you can play them. Files are not lost.

To recover the previews you have to re-render yet again even no changes are made to the project/files.

I am meticulous about making sure before a major project I clear Media Cache etc which are located on a separate internal NVMe fast drive (not the System C drive) but I did try the C drive as a test which makes no difference.

The drive is correctly defined in Edit Preferences Media Cache.

Is there a bug in code somewhere that is not locating the Rendered files once done - so get lost on power down and power up.

When you are working with ProRes 422 files having consitent Preview files available that are pre-rendered is a must for Export to save time.

[JonesVid]

Just to add a bit more on this after doing some search on threads in the Community Forum on similar topics

It seems Premiere Pro also still uses some Media Cache files on the system disc Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common even though you have Media Cache location defined on an entirely different disc.

So deleting Media Cache in Edit Preferences does not clear everything - loads of .ims  files remain in Media Cache Files on the System Disc which I understand to be describing the Properties of Files so Premiere does not have to scan each Media file on re-opening.

None of my reading revealed anything about how Rendered Files are tracked. The only thing I came across was how some other  'none H264/H265' format files  had the same problem as ProRes Rendered files being lost (BRAW). That was quite a few versions of Premiere Pro back though and due to a plug in I believe.

So I'm still none the wiser how these 'ProRes rendered files' are tracked by Premiere Pro and how it might be randomly losing them.

So any help appreciated on this. I don't see anyone else reporting the issue (yet) which is a bit concerning.

[JonesVid]

Just to illustrate an example today see attached pdf.

I opened the latest Premiere project I am working on and guess what - the dreaded Red Line on timeline which means Premiere cannot locate the ProRes preview file already created.

I had to create yet again the same file to fix this.

It is becoming annoying.

Hopefully someone from Engineering will respond ?

[JonesVid]

Aggghh

Is there anyone out there?

This problem of losing indexes for rendered files is driving me nuts

The project I am working on had bloated the Video Preview Files Folder to over 100GB as there were so many duplicates I had to delete the lot and re-render the entire project - long time waiting !!!

Also deleted Media Cache yet again

Start up again. All good. Now after closing down project and going back in again it is STILL LOSING THESE DAMN FILES.

Its Random which ones.

I need help .....please

[Kevin-Monahan]

HI JonesVid,

Thanks for the updates. Sorry for the frustration on this one. I tried to replicate the issue and did find one glitch the first time I tried simply closing and reopening the project. The only thing I noticed is that it was a clip that was underneath an extended marker (red in color). I also had a caption over the clip. The video preview (render) file got unlinked. After re-rendering, I did not see the problem.

I'll keep trying to isolate this issue on my systems over the holiday. I have a couple of project I can test on with similar footage and systems.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Tony Zed]

The latest update to Premiere appears to have arrived with some pre-render issues associated with the ProRes codec. I believe this issue is solely effecting Windows users and so probably the transalation of an Apple native codec on Windows OS has some bugginess happening for whatever reason. My experience has been that I will attempt a pre-render across my entire timeline, and it will render perhaps a few seconds, and then close as if it completed it's render, with the rest of my timeline unrendered. When going from "render in to out" over to "render effects into to out" it seems to have made more progress, but the issue still remains.

THE SOLUTION as for now at least, to simply get us Windows users by until the issue can be pinpointed and resolved, is to go into sequence settings, and under "Video Previews", change it from ProRes to "I-Frame Only MPEG". Fair warning, it generates a ton of tiny files. Alerted our admin when I was working on a cloud project and she asked why I suddenly deleted 600 files off the server at once, having had to explain that I had completed my project and was simply deleting the preview files files. BUT, I gotta say, pre-renders were running smooth with no issues! So it's what works until we get our next update!

[Tony Zed]

P.S. whilst my fellow editor on that project was on a Mac computer and had reported that she experienced no such issues. So... yeah... be on the lookout for Apples new "make my pre-renders work again" dongle from apple, for the low prince for $499.99 (JOKES, I'm kidding! I'm kidding! but in all seriousness it's definitely ProRes not playing nice with Windows right now)

[JonesVid]

Kevin noted above he is losing pre-rendered Pro_Res 422 preview files with captions above.

On my windows machine - this makes no difference as I'm not using captions.

Any pre-rendered preview to use during export can be lost on closing the project powering down the machine and re-opening again.

Smart rendering is a waste of time for me.

'10th Element' thx for comments - you do say use iFrame previews, but then you don't benefit from the faster exports by Exporting in same format as your previews.

...btw - I'll skip on the Apple dongle to calm down Windows when using Pro Res codecs 🙂 🙂

Keep us posted please Kevin on your internal push on this one.

It would be good for Engineering to take a quick look at this.

They might fix it before Santa arrives ?

[MyerPj]

I've been watching a project for this. So far it has worked OK. I was using Cineform previews for this project originally, but I changed them the ProRes LT and rerendered. I've in and out of that half dozen times so far and it has held up. I'll keep an eye on it.

[JonesVid]

Thanks Myer PJ for that.

I was thinking of trying Cineform but not done that yet, but if ProRes LT stops losing rendered files that would be good to know.

I'll try it myself and post result !

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi! Have you tried a different codec yet? If so, is it working @JonesVid?

Thanks,
Kevin

[JonesVid]

Not had time Kevin as have been diverted on other things and finishing off another project where I used ProRes and would have not been practical to change mid workflow.

Now complete,  I was going to try some ProRes LT tests (as MyerPJ suggested above).

I did see CineForm is an alternative - BUT - I have just invested in Topaz Video Ai for processing some occasional clips and use Pro Res for that. They don't support CineForm codec I don't think.

Will post any results soon.

[JonesVid]

Update on Loss of ProRes422 Rendered files

Having completed my last project 35 mins Timeline 4KUHD 50fps I was constantly re-rendering existing clips when I had re-opened the Project after closing down for the evening, then re-opening the next day.

This was with my existing 2070 Super GPU and latest 551.23 studio driver.

This was the combination where I lost Pro Res422 renders regularly on recent projects.

I have to Pause here though to highlight this   !!!

All the above about losing Pro Res renders is now a 'non issue' until the problem of 'Use Previews' on export is also solved.

Premiere 24.1 renders everything again on Export regardless - so you are waiting longer even if you have all your renders there on your timeline with Green./Yellow lines above. It ignores your precious Renders stored in Video Previews.

The only thing you gain about not losing previews is a smoother timeline playback of course - so when you close a project / power down then back up the next day you still have ALL your renders available.

Conclusion - we are tackling two headaches here.

The Hybrid Smart-Rendering Workflow oulined by @Kevin-Monahan is now completely broken in Premiere Pro V23.x and V24.x

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/faq-what-is-smart-rendering/td-p/10648488

So ...back to Losing Renders - I will now copy the last project and use ProRes LT renders , close PC down and back up again a few times to see what happens

I have to apologies for delay in testing this for you as last week I also upgraded my GPU to a new 4080 Super so that has diverted my attention a bit.

System Details (for reference)

Windows 11Pro - 22H2 All updates - Build 22621.3007

ASUS 690 A Prime Motherboard

Intel 13900K CPU

128GB RAM

GPU was 2070 Super now 4080 Super. Intel GPU Quicksync enabled for decoding

System Drive C - NVMe 2TB

Projects Drive and Video Previews etc - NVMe 1TB Internal

Media Drive - SATA 2TB

Export Files drive and Media Cache (Internal) NVMe 2TB

plus Hard Disk Media Archive Drives

[JonesVid]

Results -

After taking my 35 minute project creating a copy then re-rendering Previews in ProRes LT I have found the following :

On reboot/close down and power up 4 times, on the first two tests all Previews were retained, on the third one ProResLT preview was lost and required re-render to put right.

On the fourth load this was OK.

So although the loss of ProRes422 previews was random using ProResLT does seem better as @MyerPj suggested.

Not perfect but better.

As we are working blind here it takes Adobe Engineering to get stuck into this and try to replicate for themselves - some feedback would also be useful to know. Being able to link up previews again would be good but there seems no mechanism to do this as you can with Media.

There seems enough users with this problem of losing Pro Res 422 Previews

The other major issue is not Using Previews during export.

I have tested the integrity of my NVMe Project Drive where Previews reside and there are no issues.

We will leave it there and hope this gets resolved as it is slowing down productivity - for all types of users.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @JonesVid,

I have been experiencing lost render files with no way to reconnect existing files in a recent project (these are two different bugs, I'd say).

My reproducible case is: ProRes LT files with baked in effects and captions, 4K timeline. Only captions needed render files, and they held for two or three project restarts; however, eventually failed. Do you have captions? Let me know. We have a bug filed internally and a reproducible case in-house for the bug. I will continue to advocate for a fix.

I will also make sure a bug is filed for a more robust way to reconnect video preview (render) files. I do get a dialog box sometimes, but not every time. Usually, the files that turn up in the Link Media dialog box do not match the ones in my current timeline and fail. Please let me know if you have a similar experience on your PC. I am reporting my experience with a MacBook Pro M1.

Thanks for your continued feedback. I hope the team can fix these issues for the community shortly.

All the Best,

Kevin

[JonesVid]

Thank you for following this one Kevin

As mentioned the loss of Preview files can be random and not always the same ones.

I've had issues with some nested clips and also with Transitions effects - this is a third party package which overlays the effect between the two clips and then needs rendering. They are short but it is common for these to get lost. Once rendered they work OK.

I'm sure this is not an issue with the Transitions Pack as they worked fine in older releases of Premiere Pro 2019/2020 timeframe approx, when not any ProRes previews were lost.

I don't have any specific issues with loss of previews with captions as far as I recall but I will keep a watch on that one as I might have missed them.

I hope you manage to make some progress in escalating the bug reports you raised. Keep us posted on this thread.

[JonesVid]

I have been working on a new 4K project over the  last 3 days and still seeing random loss of previews. Plus no use of previews on export. 
Has ANYONE from engineering looked at this at all after all these bug reports ?

[Anibal_VEC]

Que tal, tengo instalada la ultima version de Premiere Pro 24.1.0 y estoy teniendo el siguiente problema; una vez que cierro el proyecto y lo vuelvo a abrir todas mis previsualizaciones de video se borran, obligandome a volver a renderizar todo el timeline (a veces pueden ser renders muy largos) lo que conlleva en una gran perdida de tiempo para mi trabajo. Probe en cambiar el codec de preview pero el problema persiste.

Alguna sugerencia?
Uso PC (W11) y tengo una NVIDIA RTX 3070 con la compilacion 551.52

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community">

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @Anibal_VEC,

Thanks for the message. I'll move your post into an existing bug report. Please upvote the bug in the upper left of the post. Sorry for the issue.

Thanks,

Kevin

[JonesVid]

I still wait in hope that a Premiere Pro update might address these two problems namely -

1. Loss of Rendered Preview Files

2. Not using Peview Files during Export

So far - ZERO 😞

Kevin - have these bug reports gained any tractionat all within the Engineering team?.

Its not as though they are trivial issues are they ?

Thanks

[JonesVid]

I don't make any apology at making myself a nuisance on this one - but still zero response from Adobe Premiere Pro Engineering.

@Kevin-Monahan  surely you must agree this bug is not acceptable and some form of response would be expected by users.

Have you had any feedback yourself on this ?.

I'll continue to make myself a nuisance until we receive a professional response from Adobe on a fix for these core functionality issues :

1. Random loss of Pro Res Rendered files

2. Not using Pro Res Previews anymore on export

Not too much to ask is it?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey there @JonesVid,

I got your note. Sorry that I have not found the bandwidth to really dig in further than I've already done. I will see what I can do to find the current status of the internal bug. I'll update the status of the bug here after I investigate further.

Thanks,
Kevin

[JonesVid]

Appreciate the input here.

The ProRes Hybrid workflow you described way back worked really well and I think this now needs fixing.

Any influence you can get to drive this forward would be great as I think this really is core functionality that has been lost.

Happy to provide any further testing or input required on a Windows 11 platform. Just say the word. 
Will keep a watch on this one. 
Many thanks. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello, @JonesVid,

I located the bug report. I am watching it. I will continue campaigning for a fix on this issue. More to come.

Thanks,
Kevin

[JonesVid]

Excellent 👍