Premiere freezes during autosave

[jarrettb]

Hey group, I have an incredibly frustrating issue that's been occurring on some of my projects.

I have autosaves set for every 5 minutes. If the autosave window pops up while I'm mid-task, like pressing the space bar to play back, clicking to make a cut, or doing any sort of navigation, Premiere will instantly lock up. I'm on a Mac, so I get the spinning wheel, the autosave never completes, and Premiere hangs indefinitely.

I'm regularly editing in a crunch with a need to move quickly, and I find that this happens incredibly often -- currently occurring once or twice an hour while working, and as the project size increases, this gets worse. The only solution is a force quit, praying that the previous autosave was recent (I find that the autosaves are often not truly saving every 5 minutes) or that I manually saved not long ago. Between this current project and other projects, I've lost hours of work.

Why not just turn off autosaves and save manually, you ask? I've also experienced such freezes when I'm saving manually. For some reason, I find that deselecting all assets on my timeline seems to lessen the likelihood of a crash during manual saves. But who knows, this could also be superstition.

Context:

• I'm working on a project that's referencing about 250 GB of content.
• My machine is an iMac Pro, running Mojave, with 32 GB 2666 MhZ DDR4 ram.
• I'm using proxies. And my playback is at 1/2 quality.
• I'm referencing about 20 simple AE comps through dynamic link.
• I have some audio effects applied to clean up interview audio, including compressors and Izotope tools. Problems began not long after beginning to apply, but I'm not sure if it's related.
• I have also done some color correction to the assets using Lumetri.
• The sequences I'm playing back are no longer than 4 minutes.
• I've reset permissions on all Adobe folders, and applied those changes to all enclosed items.
• I've tried migrating to a fresh project.

Perhaps unrelated?

• I've also had an issue with crashing during timeline playback, unprompted by anything. The timeline audio will continue to play, and if I have loop playback enabled, it will loop indefinitely, spinning wheel spinning away, and Premiere will not unlock without a forced quit.
• Projects that show these symptoms also tend to take a long time to open. Once I click a project to open it, the loading project status window will pause when the status bar is at about 75%, and take 5+ minutes to open from there for this particular project. On a previous project, where I was referencing a substantial amount of content (2+ TB), this stage would take 20 minutes.

In conclusion, I'm on my 20th version of this particular project. Each copy has been created because of a crash where I've lost work, and each one gets me closer to flipping my desk and tossing my machine out the window. If anyone has ideas, I'm all ears.

[Peru Bob]

Try resetting the preferences:

FAQ: How to reset preferences in Premiere Pro?

If that doesn't work, try resetting the Workspaces:

Reset a workspace

Reset the current workspace to return to its original, saved layout of panels.

1. Do one of the following:
   • Click the Workspace menu icon and select Reset to Saved Layout.
   • Choose Window > Workspace > Reset to Saved Layout.

from here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/workspaces.html

[jarrettb]

Thanks for the response, Peru Bob. I've tried both resetting preferences and resetting the workspace.

I've also tried trashing Media Cache and Media Cache Files contents.

[Peru Bob]

Are you using any third party effects or transitions?

[jarrettb]

Hi Bob, thanks for checking back. Yes, I'm using Izotope RX 6 for audio corrections. However, it's typical for me to use this, and I haven't had the same issue on each project in which it was used.

[Peru Bob]

Try creating a new project and import the old project into it.

[jarrettb]

Unfortunately I've already attempted this as well. I've also tried migrating only the media referenced by my picture-locked sequence, but I'm still experiencing the issue.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi,

Sorry. Has this always happened? There must be something going on with the disk that is saving your AutoSave project files as I have no such issues with AutoSave freezing Premiere Pro. Can you try setting your AutoSaves to another disk? Let me know the results.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi JarrettB,

Sorry for your autosave woes. I have heard of this complaint before. I think adding your upvote might be the best way forward: Let me edit during auto save – Adobe video & audio apps

In the mean time, you could Auto Save less frequently and perform a Save As every few hours or so—building up your own "archive". I prefer making additional backups, actually. Auto Saves are great, but they have let me down before on many different NLEs.

As far as your project problems go, I think you have tried most of these things: Basic Troubleshooting & Maintenance for Premiere Pro on macOS

What kind of media are you operating with? Have you tried transcoding it?

Thanks!
Kevin

[mtoimedia]

I am experiencing the same issue, autosave freezing PrPro. It happens to me only when I am cutting a multicam sequence that includes seven cameras. This issue started a couple of releases back.

My system is iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020), 3.8 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i7, 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4.

I've attached a screenshot of what I've been looking at for the last 15 minutes.

[mobiuscube]

Exact same experience as JarretB.

It's a truly great way to destroy concentration and workflow

I have this issue constantly! Every time I hit a key as the autosave pops up it CRASHESSSSS#$%! FFS!

That happens about every 2or3 autosaves... And I have it set to 5 mins because of all the other random crashes that are bundled in with the software..... I don't trust the software past that length of time.

NOTHING else crashes this much. NOTHING! 

Really starting to hate opening the program. Due to this BUG.

How can they call this professional software with such a fundamental BUG? 

[Avid & Davinci are starting to look pretty sweet right now.]

For now the best solution might be to turn F%&#*&N autosave off and set myself a recurring 5 min alarm to remind myself to save manually...

Probably a good habit if I ever have to do a job in 1980.

So much time wasted. Can I get a reduced rate until this program works?

Or send Adobe a bill?

ADOBE, Please do something about it ASAP. 

[Traviajando]

Having the same p´roblem, now on all of my machines since mid this year...

[Akagami5C97]

I've been pulling my hair because of this, It was so annoying to the point I go to a bar to refresh myself and beat someone and had to set in prison for a full day.  I am quite savvy when it comes to fixing this from preferences, to %appdata%, deleting the "common folder" but this auto save that freezes and keeps crashing is one annoying nutbag. I hope they (ADOBE) Implement an Auto-save features like Davinci Resolve does where it doesn't need a modal dialog pop-up to let the user know its auto saving, I think that's the disadvantage of NODE.JS as serverside it can't do Multi async task like Postgresssql does, that's why Davinci resolve is saving in the background without showing modal dialog and ruining someone's day.

[edwardopdebeeck]

Hi all,

I have had this issue for a long time as well. Has anyone found a fix on this topic? Was about to throw my laptop out the window today.

[jeneva]

I was having this problem and going insane as well. This might not be your problem, but I *think* this helped me:

I have my cache, previews and autosaves on an external solid state drive. I discovered when the drive is full, Premiere loves to crash a lot.

After I cleared out most of the cache, autosave was still crashing. Finally I thought to run disk repair on the external drive. And now PPro is autosaving without crashing. So. Far.

Maybe this will help some other poor soul. I feel your pain.

[AlexClaude]

3 years later, with a bran new killer PC machine, I'm experiencing the same issue...!!!! It's catch 22, because Premiere crashes SO—OFTEN i have to set auto-save every 2 minutes...but if the auto-save dialog box appears at the same time I'm in a middle of a task (SO THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME), it maked premiere freeze and crash..!!!!!

What the hell?

Mod note: No profanity, please.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Alex,

Sorry. It sounds like you should address your crashing issue because that's not normal. I don't crash all the time like that. Have you done any troubleshooting? Dump media cache from the Home Screen with all projects closed. Delete preferences. See if those things help.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Lookwell Media]

I have the same problems and frustrations as Alex. Crashes like once out of every 8 auto-saves and totally screws up my projects. I'd say I experience this problem 2-3 times a day. It's not his computer, it's premiere. That's why the "Premiere has crashed" warning is now a meme and people (including myself) are starting to switch to resolve. If 5 munites of work is erased and I have to re-open the project over and over, it doesn't matter how cool the tool is. I'll switch it for one that stays running. Unless they finally solve this issue, but Adobe doesn't seem to mind being a meme about software crashing.

[Martin_Ommering]

Same here.
In the latest version of Premiere Pro (22.2.0) the system freezes during an autosave when I'm adding text tot subtitles. It would be nice to solve this.

[roedolfs97088506]

Yup, getting this issue. When I'm busy dragging something and the autosave hits while I'm doing it, the autosave box just gets stuck forever and I have to force quit. I'm able to click cancel on the dialogue box, which removes it, but everything else becomes unclickable and it eventually freezes and crashes.

I've had to recover the same project from a previous autosave over 40 times in one day.

But if I disable auto-save, I'm risking losing a LOT more work because there are like 60 other reasons it also randomly crashes. This is by far the most unstable piece of software I've ever had the displeasure of using.

[Keith Moreau]

Wow, even in 2022 (cc2021 Macos) we're still experiencing random and unavoildable crashes and freezes with this software. I'm doing big project, lots of files 4k, multicam, etc. Seemed fairly stable, but no, for whatever reason I can save a file quickly at any time. But as soon as autosave kicks in, forever spinning beachball. I have autosave on because you never know when Premiere Pro is going to freeze or crash.

Watchout Adobe, with other NLE options out there that are faster and more stable, you might eventually lose market share unless you stabilize your software.

Guess I'll have to keep that command-s muscle memory going.

[Stan Jones]

All, it would help if you indicate what specific version of PR you are running.

Roedolphs,

Yup, getting this issue. When I'm busy dragging something and the autosave hits while I'm doing it, the autosave box just gets stuck forever and I have to force quit.

Most reports are about keyboard entry triggering the problem. I tested the drag issue and did not get a problem. (Set autosave to 2 minutes. Make a change. Time the next autosave and start a drag operation just before. Autosave won't trigger until the drag is released. No hang/freeze.)

Some users are reporting many crashes for other reasons. I'm getting no crashes. Win 10, PR 2022.2.0.

I'm not saying there is no problem; I just can't replicate it.

Stan

[roedolfs97088506]

Hi, I'm on Win 11 and the problem was happening in 22.2.

I've been using the Beta (22.4) for the entire day and the auto-save freeze has yet to happen. So I'm hoping that the problem has been fixed in that version.

[zerofksgvn69]

I'm experiencing the exact same autosave crash! Took me awhile to figure out what was happening. Mid edit, mid space bar press, mid ANYTHING... auto-save window pops up and then I get the spinning wheel of death and have to force close. This is ridiculous. I'm running the latest Windows 10 with a Ryzen 9 3900X and Radeon 6900XT GPU, 128GB or RAM. This crap "should" be stable. I pay over $50 a month for inexcusable unstable software. Get it together Adobe....

[MMMNNN]

I have the same issue and actually came around here to post about this. 

It's happened twice this month. Both times when subtitling a film I hit a key (not sure which) at the same moment autosave pops up and it's crash time. I've lost a bit of work each time.