Hang when scrolling clips in Media Browser (Mac OS)

[schmollywood]

After updating Premiere Pro CC 2018 to version 12.0.0 on my iMac 2017 (40GB Ram) I am experiencing a problem with the Media Browser. Scrolling through Media Browser Thumbnails will randomly put Premiere into endless spinning wheel hang and from there I can only force quit. It happens very every few minutes of editing, but never ever happened before this version of Premiere no matter how large the project. The project it occured with has about 150 short clips. The footage is h.264 in UHD 4k straight from my Sony Alpha 7SII

It does'nt matter if I use a fast external SSD with the footage on it or standard drive. No difference whatsoever. Today I had an Adobe support agent reset all permissions etc via remote online session. For a short moment the problem seemed to have disappeared, but it started happening again shortly after. He told me that the CPU usage was peaking when scrolling through the thumbnail files. It makes no difference if I use OPEN CL or METAL, the problem occurs on both. I assume this is another kind of memory leak bug. Ive filed a bug report

[Kevin-Monahan]

Which OS Schmollywood? High Sierra? Was this an updated project? If so, how does a new project behave?

Thanks,
Kevin

[schmollywood]

Latest Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.2 . It happens with new projects also. After the second Adobe online support session I was adviced to do a complete re-intall of all Adobe Cloud apps which I actually did. Unfortunaltely no difference.

So to summarize the problem occurs with Metal and OpenCL, it happens with all kinds of video files (Ive tried h.264 and R3D Red footage) . It happens after I re-intalled all Adobe cloud apps. It happens without ANY 3rd party plug-ins installed. It never happened before this current version of Premiere so I can only assume this is a bug.

Please let me know what you think. Its very very hard to work like this....

[schmollywood]

.... also, since one Adobe support rep suggested it may be related to the number of files viewed in the Media Browser (which once again has never been a problem before this version) , Ive also tried it with just half a dozen files, the same happens. As I mentioned above no matter if its Red footage or h.264, no matter if the render engine is Metal or OpenCL. Very very annoying. Also, after having two online remote support sessions without any solution and even after doing a completely useless re-intallation of CC apps it seems obvious that the problem is not related to my configuration

[schmollywood]

Heres another update. Tonight I did another online remote session with one of your agents and it seems he found what stops this from happening. Sounds good, right , but unfortunatley it isnt. So he checked if I had a second monitor connected which I actually always do. Its my trusted Thunderbolt display.He then asked me to disconnect it and the problem seems to have disappeared. Well, guess what he told me when I asked him why this didnt occur with older versions of Premiere and also does not occur with any other video editing software I use ( FCP and Resolve) He said, and I quote:  "this is software. Requirements , features, compatibilty everything changes all the time" . The agent went on to say  "Your GPU seems to have trouble with the second monitor so its not a Premiere issue" .

Seriously, this is crazy. As I said all other video software works fine. Premiere worked totally fine with this setup for months. Why cant these support agents even admid that its clearly a bug with the latest version ?

Wouldnt you agree that is is cruicial for a lot of pro video editors to work with a second monitor connected ? The guy tried to sell it to me as if its a new feature that it doesnt work anymore now !

I know for a fact that theres been a bug in the previous version of Premiere with external monitors connected to a Macbook pro. Since I also run a Macbook pro with an external monitor Ive been through this issue also. Apparently thats been fixed with the latest version of Premiere I was told previously by Adobe support, but now this new issue related to external monitors is happening.

System: iMac 2017

Processor : 4,2 Ghz Intel Core i7

40GB Ram

High Sierra 10.13.2

GPU Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB Ram

[Kevin-Monahan]

Schmollywood,

Definitely sounds like a bug. Please file one here.
I run dual monitors on Sierra and a MB Pro (NVIDIA). No issues.

I'll keep an eye on this one.

Thanks,

Kevin

[schmollywood]

Done !

[schmollywood]

Also, some keyboard shortcuts in the current version of Premiere Pro CC Version 12.0.0  (Built 244) are acting up for me. When I make a selection in the timline that I want to delete or ripple delete by using the default Premiere Pro keyboard shortcuts Premiere will delete other stuff in the timeline instead (for example just my audio track or so) so I undo and try the same shortcut again. If Im lucky it will work the second time, but often I need to undo twice before the exact same keyboard shortcut does what its supposed to do. Ive tried using the default CS 6 shortcuts instead, same problem. Ive even tried making my own shortcuts, the same thing happens . Ive connected a different keyboard, a different USB port for my keyboard, Ive even tried a wireless keyboard, the problem is still there. Its very annoying. Any suggestions Kevin ?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi,

Is this a US keyboard or a European one?

Thanks,
Kevin

[schmollywood]

Actually the keyboard thing was sorted out by myself. Had to reset my preferences. BUT as for the spinning wheel / crash problem when scrolling through the media browser in thumbnail view it seemed to be related to having a second monitor connected. Turns out its NOT the problem. Today the same error happened several times without another monitor connected to the iMac. So unfortunately bad news.

[Oh Lord]

I've got this same problem even after reinstalling Mac OS entirely the problem percists...

[Trent Happel]

This Media Browser issue is being investigated. So far, I have seen this issue only occur on Mac OS 10.13 (could not reproduce on Mac 10.12 nor Windows) with the Media Browser set to Thumbnail View and Hover Scrub enabled.

Possible workarounds are to disable Hover Scrub in Thumbnail View (right-click on Media Browser tab and uncheck Hover Scrub) or set the Media Browser to List View.

[schmollywood]

List view is working, but if you are trying to edit a big project its pretty much useless if you cant see a thumbnail of clips you want to find. I hope you will get this sorted asap. Its making my life as an editor hard every day when working on projects

[nomdeploom]

I wish my problems with Premiere were as simple as not being able to scroll the media window.  I tried 6 times yesterday to render a simple 50-minute HD video, and Premiere crashed the computer every time.  I have scores of hours involved in that project, and I will not be able to make my deadline.

My hardware is not a problem - it is a 12-processor Mac Pro with 44GB of memory, 16GB of disk and SSD, running High Sierra.  At the moment, Premiere (and Photoshop, and Media Encoder) are completely useless pieces of software. 

[nomdeploom]

I meant to say "16TB of disk" in the above, not "16MB"

[_jeffersondonald]

Were you ever able to render your project?

[nomdeploom]

Yes, I was eventually able to render this project.  I had no choice but to keep trying, and one time it made it all the way through in about 2.5 hours.  As an experiment, I transferred all the files over to an anemic MacBook Air with only 4GB of memory and a 2010 processor.  It rendered the project the first time, and never crashes.  It took 20 hours to render.  This is a clue that the desktop hardware I have (2 x 3.46GHz 6 core Intel Xeon, mid-2010 with AMD Radeon R9 280X graphics) is somehow not compatible with Adobe software.  (Both my machines are running High Sierra)

I also started several other shorter and much simpler videos, and they do much better.  Fewer crashes while editing, and only a few tries to render.  Sometimes it will run for almost a day without a crash.  Other times it will crash over and over without getting anywhere.  I've learned to keep everything simple, particularly I do not open Photoshop or Bridge if I want to do any editing in Premiere or render.  This seems to help.

[Juan Zabala]

This is probably because you are trying to use Mercury Hardware Acceleration without enough VRAM. The Radeon R9 280x has only 3GB, if I'm not wrong. Try to export using AME but closing Premiere Pro and any other video memory demanding app before to free VRAM. This solved this issue for me when my GTX970 ran out of memory. Ultimately try using Mercury Software Only.  

[schmollywood]

Also, the advice to swith off Hover Scrub seems to work. Ive used it this way now for a couple of hours without any further spinning ball of death. Since I dont use hover over anyway its a solution for me. I just hope it stays that way...Fingers crossed.

One thing that is still quite catastrophic is subtitles. Ive just worked with subs now on a bigger television documentary for the first time and all I can say is the bugs that people reportet on since the new subtitle function has been introduced a while back are still present.

The subs just suddenldy disappear both when previewed and when exported. The only solution is to restart Premiere, but even if the subs show up again in preview they might not export anyway. In the end my only real workaround was to try and export the subs by themselves and use the exported file as a layer. For a pro user software I think this is also quite bad...

[_jeffersondonald]

It happens in Windows 10 also. It's problematic and a real pain. I didn't have the issue in CC or CC2017. It only happens in CC2018, but I didn't realize it might be related to having two external monitors until reading this thread. I will try and disconnect one to see if the issue goes away. Previously, I only had one monitor and didn't experience any problems. I believe I was also running CC2018 then. I'm using an AMD Radeon WX 5100 card. There haven't been any problems using Resolve 14 Studio with the two monitors, however.

Update 2018.03.05

Upon noticing Trent Happel's suggestion to turn off Hover Scrub in the Media Browser menu, I did that rather than unplug the 2nd monitor; it was a faster solution. Media Browser has not crashed since doing this.