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sonderpoppictures
sonderpoppictures
Participant
October 6, 2019
Question

Black screen on clips UNLESS "Mercury Playback Engine Software Only" is selected

  • October 6, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 1116 views

Hi there,

 

I've been trying to work with footage for my reel & I've had issues with playback on certain clips.

For the most part, a majority of the clips I'm working with play fine whilst Premiere's renderer is set to "Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA)" but there are a few that will ONLY play whilst "Mercury Playback Engine Software Only" is selected. 

 

Is there any reason for this? The files in question are all .mp4's that I've previously rendered out of Premiere before. They playback great on VLC/Windows Video/etc, however when playing them back in Premiere, unless Software Only is selected, I get a black screen. 

 

I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card, so I imagine I'd always want to have GPU acceleration flipped on. Furthermore, "Software Only" is incredibly sluggish by comparison on playback, render, and worse yet, renders some of the animation presets incorrectly.  (At this point, I've tried just rolling with Software Only, but even then, it gives me issues.)

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

James

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Planet Xtreme
    Planet Xtreme
    Participant
    November 16, 2021

    The solution is to never update premiere pro. Roll back to an older version. Some of your projects will not work on them but try and use older versions of premiere for future works. I've had this issue too many times on the newer versions. Never again.

    John T Smith
    Community Expert
    John T SmithCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 6, 2019

    First, use this Free program to get file information for PC/Mac http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download so you may compare exactly what is inside a video that works -vs- one that doesn't

     

    Second, Do not count on Windows to be fully up to date when it comes to device drivers
    Go to the vendor site to be sure you have an updated driver for your graphic adapter
    •nVidia Driver Downloads http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

     

    There are also intermittent reports that the newest driver is not always the best driver due to driver bugs or compatibility issues, so you MAY need to try an earlier driver version

      sonderpoppictures
      sonderpoppicturesAuthor
      Participant
      October 6, 2019

      Thanks John, is MediaInfo something you drop an Adobe Session File into? Or perhaps the problematic video files? Forgive me, I hadn't heard of it before now.

       

      Also I forgot to mention, the problematic clips DO play in the Source Monitor (even whilst GPU Acceleration is enabled) but DON'T play in the program monitor. Hopefully that could help isolate the issue?

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