No yellow in timeline? rendering incomplete?

[jampff]

Windows 10, Premiere Pro 24.6.1

I've been a Pr user for years, so I'm familiar with the yellow/red/green colors above the timeline and what they mean.

But suddenly, in this latest project, I see something new: no color at all above my clips in the timeline. Like zero. ??? Is this the new normal? What did I miss?

If I right click a clip, and choose Replace With After Effects Composition, then the red line appears ONLY over that clip. The rest of the timeline still has no yellow or otherwise.

Then, when I choose Render In To Out, Pr only renders the red part (Ae comp) and stops rendering after that. If I check the Scratch folder on disk, it only has the rendered file for the Ae comp, not the entire timeline.

Then, when I close Pr to come back to it later, once again the Ae comps in the timeline have a red line over them. ??? Even though the Scratch folder has not moved and all the renders are still in it. No changes were made to those Ae comps.

To be clear, if I press Spacebar, Pr does play back the entire timeline in the program monitor, even the regular clips with no color (yellow/red/green) at all above them. As expected, if there happens to be red over an Ae comp, the playback will lag, and if it's green, it plays fine. 

I am using Smart Rendering to speed up export. So, my preview files are Prores 422 LT, if that makes any difference.

Also, all clips in the timeline are Prores 422 LT already as well, except for the parts that I "replaced with Ae comp".

Please help me understand what's going on! Thanks.

[Peru Bob]

It simply means that your computer is able to play those parts of the sequence in real time without needing to render.

[R Neil Haugen]

To add to Peru Bob's accurate comment, Premiere only shows yellow or red 'warning bars' where it thinks it may or will drop frames in playback. It doesn't think it will with most of your sequence.

[jampff]

@Peru Bob @R Neil Haugen Thank you both! I feel like I learned something. 🙂 I've been using Pr and other Adobe products for years now, and I can do a lot, but I'm not a pro. Just a music teacher who makes lots of media for students. This entire time I've assumed that the timeline will ALWAYS have yellow, or red, or green above it... because it always has. But I think I get it now... Even with unedited clips, Pr still has to render the timeline into whatever the preview file format is, at the very least. Hence the yellow. But since I set my preview file format to Prores 422 LT, and the original clips themselves are already Prores 422 LT, no rendering required in order to achieve the preview file format. Pr must change literally nothing about them to make them play back, until they're modified with an effect or something etc. Do I have that right?

[jampff]

... but one more question, why does Pr keep losing the rendered previews? Why does it turn green (over the Ae comps) after I Render In To Out, but then after saving/closing/reopening, the line is red over the Ae comps again? Even though I didn't move the rendered previews and I didn't modify the clips further? This keeps happening on this project. ?

[Peru Bob]

Is the Media Cache on an external drive that doesn't have a fixed drive letter/

[jampff]

No, it's on one of the internal hard drives. Fixed letter D:

[MyerPj]

Check this thread, and add an upvote:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/some-prores-422-video-preview-files-lost-on-closing...

@JonesVid 

[JonesVid]

Thanks @MyerPj  for including the thread I started on lost ProRes rendered previews.

The question from @jampff  ".. but one more question, why does Pr keep losing the rendered previews?" .......... is one I have also been asking for best part of two years !.

I've had Adobe Support do some remote sessions with me and they have seen how rendered previews can be randomly lost on project closure/re-open

I've had a theory all along that there is some form of internal data base corruption which loses where rendered files are indexed. It seems to affect ProRes rendered files as I am using smart rendering too.

Engineering have never jumped in to make any comments whatsoever on these problems. Curious.

If you follow the thread that has been included by MyerPJ you will see Kevin Monahan (Adobe team) confirms the bug is still being worked on, but any sort of resolution has yet to see the light of day.

I keep banging the drum that this is core functionality that affects how Premiere Pro can be used and also slows down workflow as you have to keep re-rendering clips which can take time with ProRes files in 4K 50fps which is my standard editing format.

Keep upvoting here and on the thread posted. This problem is a pain in the neck and needs to be eradicated now ....

[jampff]

Thanks, I certainly will!