Premiere becoming unresponsive unusably after importing a 3rd asset

[defaultgzczrvxr1b3f]

My premiere began acting sluggishly around 5 days ago in the middle of an editing project, directly after importing some new recorded OBS footage. I created a new project, importing the clips back in and a similar thing occured. I did this three times until one project allowed me to work on it and import only a couple of assets without acting sluggishly.  When i tried to import a 4th asset (namely a voice recording), the program instantly slowed down and froze up, the timeline marker was not moving on the timeline, other panels were not responding. Checking task manager i found that Premiere was using the same amount of memory as always, but also taking up 80% of my cpu and maxing it out.  As soon as i deleted this asset from the media browser the program returned to normal, with no freezes or anything. At first i thought it might have been some incompatibility with the file type: m4a, so i changed it to an mp3 file. This still made my premiere break. I tried importing an image, same thing, other images, same thing. Finally i reinstalled creative cloud, premiere, and also updated my gpu drivers. Nothing has worked. Please if anyone has a solution let me know, i literally cannot finish this project, and i have no idea when premiere will stop responding on other new ones i create. 3 months ago i created a project with over 50 assets and 7 minutes long, there were no issues there. Down below i provide a video example of this occuring. When i edited this video to show everyone importing any more than 3 assets killed it again. I plugged in an external usb with a larger old project on it, ran perfectly fine and imported these same new files without slowing down

[Averdahl]

At first i thought it might have been some incompatibility with the file type: m4a, so i changed it to an mp3 file.

By @defaultgzczrvxr1b3f

Avoid mp3 as source files. Open it in Adobe Audition and save it as a wav file. The best is to convert it to 48KHz as well using the Edit > Convert Sample Type feature.

Try that and report back.

[defaultgzczrvxr1b3f]

Thanks for the reply,

This didn't work, my premiere became sluggish when i imported the new file. i don't believe the issue is with the media itself i am importing, as i have tried importing pratically everything, from images, to sounds, and to videos. I also imported the mp3 file into the premeire project on my usb that had 40+ assets imported and it worked perfectly.

[Averdahl]

This didn't work, my premiere became sluggish when i imported the new file. 

By @defaultgzczrvxr1b3f

There was a similar thread with the very same issue yesterday but the TS has not yet replied, but i would try what has been metioned there, resetting the Preferences and deleting the Media Cache/Media Cahce Database/Peak files.

Where do you have your source files, local drive USB drive? Make sure to have at least 10% free space on the source drive. Less free space will cause issues.

FAQ: How to reset (trash) preferences in Premiere

FAQ: How to clear your cache in Premiere Pro

The thread: Premiere Pro Stops working after 3 imports - Adobe Support Community

[defaultgzczrvxr1b3f]

Thanks for the reply,

I tried both deleting the cache files in appdata, and resetting preferences. Neither worked.

[Averdahl]

Thanks for the reply,

I tried both deleting the cache files in appdata, and resetting preferences. Neither worked.

By @defaultgzczrvxr1b3f

What about the hard drives i asked about?

[Michael Grenadier]

Please tell us your system specs: OS version, Premiere version, amount of RAM, Hardware specs including graphics card.  You can also check to see whether your system is up to snuff in terms of minimum hardware requirements

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html

There are very basic troubleshooting steps to take.  From the screen recording, I'm guessing you've got a windows machine.  Although I work on a windows machine, I don't have the depth of troubleshooting experience I have on macs but here are some basic things to try on every system.

Do you have the latest driver for your video card.  Make sure you've got the studio version NOT the game version.

Do you have any other programs running at the same time.  If so, try quitting those and then restarting your computer and see if things work any better.

Try disconnecting any external peripherals from your computer.  

Try disconnecting your computer from the internet/network either by turning of wifi or pulling the ethernet cable

Make sure you have at least 20% free space on your startup drive and a minimum of 10% free space on any other drives.

Try adjusting the memory settings in your preferences

try turning audio input setting in preferences: audio hardware to NONE

Although OBS supposedly records a constant frame rate, we see posts here about problems with OBS recordings.

Here's the way to diagnose and solve the variable frame rate issue

use mediainfo to determine whether your source is variable or constant frame rate

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

if it's variable use handbrake to convert to constant frame rate making sure you've got the quality slider in the video panel set to maximum

https://handbrake.fr
and here's a tutorial on how to use handbrake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=xlvxgVREX-Y

And it might be an idea to try using Adobe Media Encoder to convert your obs material to an i-frame format like prores or the appropriate avid flavor, the name of which I can't remember at the moment...  

Although Premiere is a pretty amazing program and you can throw almost any format into it, I recommend transocding mpeg formats and any other heavily compressed formats (like mp3s) to high quality formats that are more suitable for editing...

[Jim Curtis]

You have answered  your own question.  If Pr stopped acting right up right after you imported something, that something is the problem.

Pr hates compressed formats like Long-GOP, MP3, etc. despite what Adobe claims as being friendly to most types of media.  For best performance, get used to transcoding EVERYTHING you import into a lossless or lightly compressed format.  Either transcode (to ProRes, DNxHR, WAF, AIF, etc.) before importing using AME, or use the Ingest feature to transcode after you import into Pr, although I think doing it beforehand is less likely to cause problems.  Just having bad media in a Pr project is asking for trouble.

[Michael Grenadier]

can't say I agree with you totally.  For the most part Premiere does handle almost anything you can throw at it.  Maybe not perfectly, but pretty well.  And I don't think you can assume that the issues are caused by the mere fact of importing a particular file.  Sometimes, it's a cumulative issue.    What might be a more accurate test is to create a new project and try importing the file whose import caused the issue previously first...  Troubleshooting from a distance is always difficult and asking the ALL the right questions and getting accurate answers doesn't make it any easier.    That said, of course there are best practices and transcoding to ProRes, DNxHR, WAF, AIF, etc. will help you avoid issues down the road...  cause I said, sometimes these issues are cumulative and although premiere may be able to handle them initially as your project and sequences get more complicated, problems can arise.  

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is the issue of hard drive issues.  Using SSD's for your boot and media drives can help preformance enormously.   And even regularly checking drive performance is an important troubleshooting step.   

[Jim Curtis]

OK, don't take my word for it.  After working with Pr since CS5, what I've learned is that as my projects get larger, and more and more assets of different codecs are added, that's when Pr gets extremely unstable, Projects and Sequences become corrupted, and it starts crashing like it's fun and games.

OK, fine if I'm working on a small project with one type of compressed media, I may risk it.  But, I can't recall a project I've cut in Pr that has had compressed sources from several different types of cameras and audio recorders that were trouble free.  Highly compressed Long-GOP video media from still cameras and cheap video cameras are the worst.

I'm in the end stages of a project where I was getting kernel panics from XAVC footage from a Sony A7s.  It would play OK in a Sequence, but several times when I tried scrubbing the CTI, kernel panic.  Bad news - all unsaved changes lost.  They only stopped after I transcoded it to 1.7 TB worth of ProRes.  So much for "native" editing.

Yes, it's possible that the OP's crashes are coincident with adding new media and some other factor (the straw that broke the camel's back), but in my decades of working with computers since the first Mac Plus and many types of software has taught me that if everything was working OK until you added something, that something was the problem.   Think Occam's Razor:  Don't unneccessarily complicate explanations.