Adobe Premiere Pro Crashing / Freezing Constantly

Sorry Pablo,

Not sure why you are experiencing so many problems, but there a few things I can pick out.

Since the beginning, I dealt with slow playback times despite having a brand new Macbook Pro (brand new from 2 years ago). I know at the time I got the Macbook Pro, the specs were great but I'm not sure how good they are now. Here they are:

Processor: 2.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7
Memory: 16GB 2400 MHz DDR4 
Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB 
Storage: 250GB SSD
I'm currently running macOS Big Sur, v11.6

• Apple over the past few years have produced an underpowered option for MacBook Pro. These are not good for editing things like 4K video. Next time, I hope you and others can avoid this temptation to purchase one.
• First thing is that Premiere Pro functions best with a separate CPU and GPU. You have an integrated CPU/GPU. 
• Second thing is that Premiere Pro requires you have 2GB VRAM to meet system requirements, you have 1.536GB VRAM. You are not meeting system requirements in this department.
• Since you are not operating with a computer that meets system requirments, you are going to have problems with performance with certain formats and frame sizes.
• You did not mention a thing about the footage you edit with - and that is crucial to know when troubleshooting for your fellow editors in this community. Possible?

When I'm using Premiere, very often it will just freeze my entire computer and then the only thing I can do is hold the power button until my laptop shuts off and then reboot it.

This is a telltale sign that your footage might be too heavy for your underpowered Mac. Sorry about that. We'd need details about your source footage. You can run the files through the freeware app "MediaInfo" in tree view and post those details here so we can evaluate your footage if you are not sure which camera it came from. Can you provide that?

Did the source files originate from a camera at all? If not, and these are files derived from gaming streams, OBS, or any streaming software, or are 4K above 30fps, you'll need to take action. Likewise if this is drone footage or in the 10-bit 4:2:2 HEVC format. If any of these things are true, the raw files will not be well handled with an underpowered system such as yours.

In this case, you can take action by running your footage through Media Encoder and transcoding to an "edit friendly" codec, like ProRes LT. Likewise, you can create proxies and work with those with the proxy workflow. These files are sure to work great, even in your underpowered machine. They do take extra drive space, but you can delete them after the project is wrapped.

If the files will not be recognized by Media Encoder (and this happens with variable frame rate video that is typical of "streaming media" captures), you can use freeware called Shutter Encoder and create new files. I like ProRes LT, but even H.264 files can work since they will no longer contain variable frame rates contained on those horrible streaming video files.

In FCP X, as I understand it, transcoding footage to an "edit friendly" codec like ProRes is done automatically and in the background. Great for the common editor that is unaware of codecs or formats. One can turn it off, so it acts like Premiere Pro and will handle the raw files, as well. You can have your cake and eat it too with either NLE. With Premiere, you just have to configure it to do so. You can set up something called an "ingest preset" that will automatically change your H.264 files to ProRes LT.

When this happens, I need to look from my external SSD and dig through folders to find my latest auto-save version of the project file, because if I select the one Adobe gives me as a default, it won't be the latest version. This has happeend to me over 20 times in the course of a single project.

So sorry. You really shouldn't be having 20 versions of a project because of crashing, especially if the project is not huge (or is it?). That's rather brutal. Hope my advice helps. You should always sort your Finder by Date when searching for the latest Auto Save. I like to turn on the Preference to save a copy in my Creative Cloud folder too, as that's saved me more than once. Personally, I create my own "versions" besides my Auto Save by choosing File > Save a Copy a few times a day to a folder (My Backups), then upload it to my Creative Cloud folder for safekeeping. A lot of pro editors do that one.

Over the past 2 years of dealing with this, I have tried so many things I have read online and seen in YouTube videos. I tried "Clearing the Cache".

There's an old way and a new way to do this, I prefer the new way. Be sure to Sync Settings before doing these things. Premiere Pro > <your account> > Sync Settings Now. After that is done, from the Home Screen, choose File > Close all Projects, then go to Premiere Pro > Preferences > Media Cache. Click the Delete button. From the dialog box, choose to delete ALL media cache. Do this between every major project and Premiere Pro update, not to mention macOS updates. Usually, after, I like to delete Preferences by pressing the Option key when restarting the application. 

I tried allocating the majority of my RAM to Adobe.

Don't go too overboard with that. The OS needs a fair amount of RAM to function too.

I even got an iPad Pro to start using LumaFusion and in my experience it has been a far better experience for editing than Premiere. Playback almost never has lag or delay. Export times are way quicker. And in the past 3 months of using it, it has not crashed a single time. There are just a few editing features it does not have that I need.

Same files? If so, I wonder what they are doing with your files, but it sounds like they may be transcoding them. Not sure! I don't know how the app works. Sounds cool, though.

I'm on the verge of going back to FCP and using LumaFusion as much as I can because it has gotton to the point where a really basic edit that should take 1 hour on Premiere is taking me 4-5 hours or more simple due to frequent freezing / crashing. 

Time better spent would be preparing your source files before you begin your edit instead of beginning your edit with no media optimization. Again, this can be set up to take place in the background with ingest presets and your editing session would be as smooth as they are on the other tools you are using, I am sure of that.

I hope the advice helps. Please come back with questions.

Thanks,
Kevin 

Update: while working on my current project, my macbook pro has frozen and crashed over 30 times. I had auto-save set to every 15 minutes, and it is crashing so frequently that I've had to redo the same thing 3 times now because it didn't even last 15 minutes without crashing a single time. I thought somebody from Adobe would have responded by now trying to help resolve this and I'm quite dissappointed to see that nobody has. I just re-download FCP and plan to cancel my Adobe membership as soon as I finish this project.