Adobe Premiere Pro CC Glitches Screen & Crashes Computer

[hearlyfilms]

I have been experiencing this problem for about three weeks now. I am editing on a MacBook Pro with 2.4 GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 250SSD, Thunderbolt to 3TB drive, and a thunderbolt-DVI adapter to Apple Cinema Display. I am editing 4K RED EPIC footage and my computer is wigging out on me.

I have been editing high quality footage on this machine with these drives and settings for a while. I originally thought this was a CUDA issue or graphics card issue. I switched to OpenCL and edited for a while and had the same issue again. I even took my machine to Apple and they put a new logic board and graphics chipset in it because we thought that would solve the issue. Again, same problems. I originally thought this might be just a Premiere Pro issue, however today I was exporting a 10 minute 4K, downgrade to 1080p video in AME and had the same glitch issue. This is what happens when a crash occurs:

1. Slowed perfomance of timeline and video responsiveness
2. Program window goes either Black, White, or Gray (when this happens, I know it's game over... Thank you Auto-Save)
3. Clicking, Moving Mouse, Typing, ANYTHING from there gives me a completely glitching out display for around 1 minute
4. Whole screen goes black, seconds later...
5. Log in screen

The attached pictures give you an idea of what the screen is looking like when the glitch occurs.

Anyone experience this issue? Everything I have is up to date including CUDA, the Apps themselves, everything.

THANKS!

[R Neil Haugen]

"Baking", especially with regard to AE comps, would refer to exporting a full-res high-Q file from AE, then replacing the comp linked to AE with that actual media file. Within PrPro, it can be either rendering that section or at times, selecting a section, exporting again in a very high-Q codec/settings, and then replacing the clip (with all the commands PrPro needs to do every time it plays) with the fully exported clip, where all effects are now "baked in" and PrPro is just playing the clip back while operating.

C100 footage I know has at times been problematic in PrPro, and of course ... the 5DmkIII is typically highly compressed DSLR footage, with all the extra work of de-compressing that media that comes with it. Which codecs are you using, and are they intraframe or long-GOP?

Neil

[nicolag84205871]

Well, it's unbelievable i spent so much money on something that doesn't do what is supposed to do..i'm not even using high quality footage like 10bit or 4k..

on both c100 and 5d i shoot the maximum quality codec available, the footage from the 5d is a bit heavier than the c100.

i once edited a 1 hour talk with prores 422 hq shot with the c100, and that was a real pain, in that case i should have really used proxies. i edited that project on premiere cs6 and i assure you there wasnt a single glitch for the whole process, not even a crash... for my needs cs6 is more than enough, i should probably go back to that ahah.

and i can also assure that none of this glitching happens on FCPX, i wonder why. the workflow is terrible, but it gets the job done.

so i guess the fault here lies on a conjunction of mac,nvidia & adobe?

i was reading that is now possible to create an external graphic card with thunderbolt connection, is it something worth investing in? i mean, i can easily change to a desktop, but it feels like such a waste of a perfectly fine laptop!

Marco Ram & Neil thanks for the replies

[Marco Ram]

You can do proxies at any point, Pr has a super simple and painless way to create proxies and swap/link... extremely simple... do it over night...!

Canon uses a heavy codec, period. it'll be heavy on any system... Learning tricks and best practices it's always king...

Cheers!

Marco Ram

[R Neil Haugen]

You've got a bit of a quandary there. Apple has totally lost interest in "real" computers, note: it's been over three years (closer to 5!) since the mobo for the "big Mac" has been rebuilt. So even the most expensive big Mac's are running on an old (and nearly ancient within computing) basic system. The CEO was very blunt a year ago saying he had no understanding of why anyone would buy a desktop these days. They haven't had anything relating to a desktop in a roll-out ceremony from Cupertino now for three complete cycles.

Even in laptops ... the only thing they upgraded this last roll-out was attachments ... input devices, like the touch bar.

Apple is all about "devices" now. Even their "pro" NLE has been designed to run on old small-capability gear, so they can keep that and use it with "devices" ... by throwing out a ton of capability, options, and oh yeah, interface.

The colorist community has been even more Macophile than anyone else in graphics/imaging, I think. Even there the leaders are teaching their peers how to migrate away from Mac (crying all the way!) because they just can't get gear that keeps up with the demands of 4k to 8k, RAW, the various Log styles, HDR, all of that stuff ... which throws major demands on the computer.

One of the major builders of systems for colorists did an online 'talk' recently, that I was able to listen to.A double-Xeon with 12 cores and many threads can get brought to it's knees trying to real-time playback 4k long-GOP in Resolve, so even with many-thou desktops he recommends considering a proxy workflow for that sort of media.

Or of course, there is FCPx.

We all get to decide our options, and at times, it seems ... it's a choice where the first question is "which is worse?"

Neil

[tTownTom]

My iMac

iMac 27" (late 2012)

i7 3,4GHz

32GB DDR3

GeForce GTX 680MX

also crashes when using DaVinci Resolve with 3.2K or higher resolution. So I think you're on to it. It's not necessarily 100% an Adobe issue..

[HarleyTDavis]

Nvidia cards crash repeatedly on Apple computers.  You're better off with other manufacturers that base around SLI.  Nvidia cards will often try running through their CUDAcore standard architecture even with Cuda turned off, due to the demands placed on your graphics card.  The data calls are incompatible with mac.

Also, for 3.2k and above you need a faster memory standard.  DDR4 at the very least for your main system to keep from bottlenecking the card out of the data transfer between memory spaces.  Plus, the card should be at least ddr4 or 5 for smooth playback at compressed sizes.  The memory talk language is the key here.  Packet movement speed is a function of the size and structure of the transfer, so a system that can move packets faster will produce better quality video results in playback.  4k needs at least 4gb of memory on a dedicated card with really decent speed to run quickly.  You can process 4k video on 256mb vram and 4gb of system ram, but you'll have to work in really small proxies and wait a week for the finished product to render.  Tried it... ...that was one long week.

[tTownTom]

Indeed, indeed!
At the moment I am shopping for components to build a new rig. Seems I'm off the Apple waggon for now.
-can't be bothered with those long weeks

[Marco Ram]

To work with these machines, yes it might be a maxed out laptop, but it may not be enough for the project.

Bake is a term used by VFX artists, it refers to rendering your work by steps; don't use the AE linked files on your timeline, it's a great option to have linked unrender AE files working into Pr timelines, but sometimes it creates more issues than necessary.

At this point I'm just assuming you have all these things, do anything from your end to minimize the amount of multiplication/work your computer has to do.... another consideration to work with your system: Render HD proxies, it's so easy to do that and lots of people feel like it's a hassle -it's not...

@ZackRosing: your hardware issue is much like the one I had with a Maxed out iMac... the latest info I received was inconclusive and it pertains to replacing the Power module and/or Graphics card. Yes, it is disappointing... Purchased it in 2013 and never fixed; didn't feel comfortable selling it either so it's set aside collecting dust.

Best luck!

Marco Ram

[shonib]

This glitch issue has been unsolved for OVER THREE YEARS. This thread has hundreds of participants, and nearly 700 replies.

Adobe, Apple, and Nvidia have all been passing the buck.

I'm rather pissed off that I bought a $4000 "best in class" laptop, specifically for working with Premiere, and was told by Apple, Adobe, and nvidia that I would get the best possible GPU acceleration. Instead, I've been spending days and days fiddling with drivers, settings, etc., and losing work hours to a buggy system.

(Someone on reddit recently posted, "You need to run these older MBP's w/ CUDA cards in OpenCL. CUDA is not recommended in system requirements w/ these GPUs unless you use a previous version of Premiere Pro. The last version of OS X not showing these issues is OS X 10.8.5. It's safe to say that it's time to move on from NVIDIA and MacBook Pro combos." Is this true? Have I been wasting my time? I've not seen that assertion anywhere else.)

Three years later, Apple has moved on to AMD, and there are hundreds of us who spent lots of time trying to "fix" this unfixable problem. I for one feel that I deserve at least an AMD-based machine to fulfill the promise made 3 years ago.

Mod note: Edited for content. It is against community guidelines to discuss legal issues on these forums.

[HarleyTDavis]

Unfortunately the problem goes like this:

Apple made the move to AMD and removed the capability to run open-source drivers like the cuda architecture Nvidia was building on.  Nvidia was using it to run multi-threaded graphics rendering with superior accuracy and quality, also allowing for the simultaneous use of several cards to boost render speeds without varying the quality.

AMD and ATI both took on the OpenGlideLayer architecture which became OPENCL (open class library) which did much the same thing, but kept the multi-threading on the internal processor, and used the SLI architecture, or a more extreme version of it called Crossfire, to combine the power of multiple cards.  These architectures work from the same codebase apple uses for their own proprietary driver, and will work natively on macs.  But because the open-source architecture was locked down to prevent virus attacks, the CUDA enhancements to Nvidia processing that result in speed and quality gains are no longer functional on Macs past 10.8.5 OSX.  If you require CUDA, there are two options.  Go back to 10.8.5  (you may have to p2p in order to get it), or run windows to get the CUDA benefits.

My dream system is one with multiple nvidia cards, 8core zeon, Mac os latest on one partition, Win10 on the other, 4 cores allocated to each running them in parallel side by side, CUDA in windows, OpenGL in Mac, Shared Drive between that's RAID SSD, for rendering.  A 12 core would be even better....  But 8 will do.  Running the latest software would allow me to set the rendering to happen in windows while I work on more in mac.

As for running your Nvidia card with cuda on mac, thanks to Apple, you are SOL.  Cuda is an open source based architecture that was made for being extended by effects developers.  Macs don't like that anymore.  They want you to buy their — or get out.  But hey, windows still works, sometimes...

Mod note: Do not use profanity, even if implied. These forums are read by minors. Thanks.

[tTownTom]

I have to say that I find it amazing we're being told about this from you, and not a Apple/Nvidia/Adobe rep.

Cheers, Harley. Your insights in this matter is, well, clarifying.

[pkirst]

Hi Harley,

CUDA is supported on the newer OSX releases.To use these libraries you need to download them and install them separately. CUDA Drivers for MAC Archive | NVIDIA  

[shonib]

pkirst  wrote

Hi Harley,

CUDA is supported on the newer OSX releases.To use these libraries you need to download them and install them separately. CUDA Drivers for MAC Archive | NVIDIA  

Hi Peter,

Do you recommend using the "NVIDIA Web Driver" (currently version 378.05.05.15f01) on a MacBook Pro with NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M?

Or just the CUDA driver?

Should I even have this thing (and the "NVIDIA Driver Manager") installed?

[shonib]

For what it's worth, I'm still getting glitches as of today.

In Ae, Pr, Finder, Chrome, Desktop...

This is just after Apple replaced my motherboard.

OSX 10.12.5 (16F73) and CUDA Driver Version: 8.0.90

Full res screenshot here: Dropbox - Screen Shot 2017-08-29 at 8.32.26 PM.png

[GarbageMatte]

As I said: it's a problem with hardware. It's faulty, also with FCPX when under heavy load it acts the same.
I had my MBPR replaced with a newer one (with the ATI/AMD), after they replaced 3 logic board...

Mod Note: Warning. Do not use profanity. Thanks.

[shonib]

GarbageMatte 

I had my MBPR replaced with a newer one (with the ATI/AMD), after they replaced 3 logic board...

Could you elaborate why you said "s•••y" ATI/AMD? I was kinda hoping they would replace my machine ... is it slower than the last gen?

Thanks

[GarbageMatte]

"s•••y" ATI/AMD because it's like not having a GPU compared to Nvidia in Adobe suite... All the work is on the CPUs.

[shonib]

GarbageMatte  wrote

"s•••y" ATI/AMD because it's like not having a GPU compared to Nvidia in Adobe suite... All the work is on the CPUs.

Did you run any tests of renders, or is this just a feeling?

I found this thread from 2015 where he compares NVIDIA vs AMD for editing (there's a great video and this spreadsheet) and his results show about 20% better performance with CUDA. (Ironically he shows that FCP X blows Pr away in terms of speed.)

I ask because I'm debating whether to keep going back to Apple until they give me a new machine with AMD. But the cost in terms of downtime while they examine/repair is very high.

[GarbageMatte]

I tried with some projects, sometimes it was faster with the old MBPR, sometimes it was faster with the new one, depending on the effects used... but, you know, it's a shame that a laptop whit older hardware sometimes performs better than the newer one...

[R Neil Haugen]

All these problems in the Mac are why so many of the colorists that teach & such are migrating to dual-boot PC/Linux machines. They can't get enough horsepower & support on any Mac being sold. To run Resolve well with new machine, that can be modded to add capability, the what ... five year old Mac mobo isn't it.

Which, even as a PC user, I find rather sad.

Neil

[HarleyTDavis]

NVIDIA reports it as supported in their archived page.  However, it still produces glitches.  If you are working with it, great.  But AFAIK, which is with recent i7 cores and the latest osX and huge amounts of ram, it produces glitches due to the fact that the system will do one of two things:

A.  It will default to using the primary processing, and the switchover isn't seamless, producing memory read errors

B. It will force some operations that the card cannot handle (if a new version of the driver works, older cards are not compatible; even if they are reported compatible, they do not have the same capability, which causes memory leaks and other issues where the driver assumes locations that don't exist or calls the data in a way the card doesn't understand).

Without CUDA, OPENCL still works pretty well.

It's not just the manufacturer, fellas.  It's the chips flop speed.  AMD has been putting out some good gfx cards for OPENCL and if you get a tower (even the new ones) and combine several of them in crossfire mode, you can vastly improve performance much faster than trying to get NVIDIA to work.  I've reverted to using OPENCL, and I've tied my machines together in AE for renders.  It works fine, and I've got CUDA on my PC for fast and short edits.

[nicolag84205871]

just to let everyone know, ive been using openCL as the renderer for my mbp late 2013 with nvidia card. it might have dropped the speed slightly, but i never had a glitch again. would highly recommend using this setting as it is much more stable for this kind of machines.

[ppohio]

Yup me too - OpenCL works pretty well, although I have noticed that when I have the CUDA kext installed it will cause random crashes when I am exporting, even when I choose OpenCl as my renderer. DaVinci Resolve needs CUDA to run, so my solution - stupid as it is - has been to just manually load the CUDA.kext when I need it for DaVinci Resolve and keep it unloaded the rest of the time while working with Premiere. It is frustrating, but hopefully with Apple's new machines and decision to open up the iMac Pro to aftermarket graphics cards (through Thunderbolt 3), we can start to see a better working relationship between nVidia and Apple in the coming year and these headaches might go away.

[R Neil Haugen]

Apple is going to allow aftermarket parts in their gear? Wow ... stunning, and good to hear!

Neil

[ppohio]

Yeah I guess don't quote me on that - but I thought I remembered them talking about it with the iMac Pro as the "upgrade path" for that machine. And hopefully right after they announced that they were working on a new Mac Pro, nVidia actually got around to releasing drivers for the Mac that supported their latest cards, so hopefully not just a coincidence and good things are on their way.

In the meantime, it is all about that OpenCL over here in Premiereland