Media Pending, Premiere refuses to play/scrub video then crashes

[Jordan808]

I've been having this issue with Premiere Pro CC v13.0 for a while now where I start up the program, load a project and about 2min into editing the video playback will start to lag. It lags for a while then the play button won't work on either the sequence or the source screens and then the program crashes. It seems to be triggered by certain source files since I just did a separate project start to finish no problems. I recorded the issue, link below.

At first I thought it was the HDD so I replaced the HDD but that didn't solve the problem. Then I thought it might be corrupt source files, but the files seem to play fine in windows media player. My next theory is the GPU but games like Overwatch and Diablo II are running just fine and I can render and work on most of my other projects without issue.

I've tried locating a crash log to find an error code but Premiere seems to not be generating crash logs.

I'm fairly certain it's hardware related but I'm just not sure what to replace. I'm going to borrow a GPU this weekend to troubleshoot but I'd like your perspectives on the issue in the meantime. Everything is up to date (drivers, premiere & windows).

[Christian.Z]

Even though you changed your HDD, I still suspect it.
Can you please give me detailed info about your storage configuration?
Have you considered using proxies?

[Jordan808]

So I have 3 hard drives:

♦ My C: drive, all adobe programs installed here - Crucial BX200 SSD (240GB SSD)

♦ Brand new HDD all source files are being read from - WD2003FZEX (WD Black 2TB)

♦ Old HDD (my first suspect) - WD20EZRZ (WD Blue 2TB)

What I did was replace my old WD Blue with a new WD Black hoping it would resolve my issue since all my source files are being read from it but still having same issue. Here's what happens when I try to use proxies.

Issue 2 - YouTube

[Kristian Gabriel]

A number of things can cause this.

• Corruptions in the installed codec - ReinstallingPremiere or 3rd party codec could be the fix (see Bugs in Application below)
• Corruptions in the video itself (and just because it plays in one player does mean anything as some players are more sensitive to corruptions than others).
• Bugs in the application (in this case Premiere--reinstallation using the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool may be necessary)
  
• HDD Corruptions - this would potentially corrupt the video and cause what you are seeing (one test could be to move your footage to a different HDD/SSD and relink in Premiere).
• Video Card issues - You may need to update your video card. If it recently updated, you may need to roll back to an earlier update if there are inconsistencies.

One quick test you can perform is to re-encode just one clip or part of a clip as something simple like H.264 (Match Source - High Bitrate) in Media Encoder to see if the clip will play all the way through in Premiere. This will either confirm or eliminate the codec and/or file corruption. This could also reflect issues with processing based on your hardware. If the re-encoding test works, you may want to adopt a Proxy workflow as stated by Christian or simply re-encode your media as a different codec. Once again, we have had corrupted clips play perfectly in a simple player but fail in professional applications.

[Jordan808]

I tried re-encoding one of the clips that causes this error and it stopped encoding partway through so it looks light it might be a codec/corrupt file issue. Video below.

I'll try reinstalling my Adobe programs and go from there.

Issue 2 - YouTube

[Christian.Z · Accepted solution]

Yup, that's definitely a corrupted file. You need to try different other encoding softwares to try to salvage it.
There is a possibility that the Cache of this file is corrupted. Clear you caches and Also make sure that you Cache folder is not on the C: Drive.

[Jordan808]

Just set my cache preferences and moved it over to my D drive. Thanks for your help, really appreciate it!