Premiere keeps “Rendering Required Audio Files” for my entire timeline on every export

[Jeena22389650a1ho]

Hi everyone,

I’m really stuck with something and it’s driving me crazy.

I have a long timeline with all of my dailies for an ongoing project, many hours long. Whenever I try to export even a very small selection (via In/Out), Premiere forces a “Rendering Required Audio Files” process that appears to go through the entire timeline, not just the portion I’m exporting.

It does this every single time I export, even if:

• I made no audio changes

• I already exported the sequence yesterday

• I’m only exporting a few seconds

It looks like Premiere is regenerating audio previews for everything before it will allow the export to start. This adds anywhere from 15–30 minutes (or more) of wasted render time before the export even begins.

Screenshot example attached, showing only a few seconds selected, yet Premiere renders the entire sequence’s audio first.

I do not understand why this is happening:

• Are audio previews being invalidated constantly?

• Is Premiere requiring audio preview renders now?

• Does having a long timeline automatically force this?

• Is something misconfigured in my sequence settings?

Things I’ve already tried:

• Let it finish once (didn’t prevent the issue next export)

• Restarted Premiere

• Restarted computer

Nothing stops it from happening again on the next export.

Setup details:

• Premiere Pro (current version)

• macOS

• Long timeline (many hours)

• Mostly MP4 camera files + recorded audio

Questions:

Why is Premiere re-rendering audio previews every time?

Is there a way to stop this?

What setting or workflow might prevent Premiere from needing full audio preview generation on each export?

This issue is really slowing down my workflow. Any help would be hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Peru Bob]

where are the audio preview files located?

[Jeena22389650a1ho]

I just went to the following location to check:

Premiere Pro > Preferences > Media Cache (i'm on Mac)

Both Media Cache Files and Media Cache database are showing:

/Users/User1/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/

The "Save .cfa and pek media cache files next to original media files when possible" checbox is UNTICKED, and the attached screenshot shows the rest of the settings.

I have never changed any of this, I believe its all been the default settings since day 1

Thank you for any insights you can provide 🙂

[Tom_edit]

do you have any video/audio files in your project that are a different sample rate to the project?

[JonesVid]

As a starter have you tried deleting All Media Cache Files. Just in case there is some corruption in the database ??

Then you will of course need to re-render the whole project - then save it.

Can you tell us a bit more about your sequence settings and the Media you are using - Audio and Video characteristics.

Also is the Mac only using one hard drive?. You are not using an external drive by any chance are you?.

Just a few more details will let the Community Users help you out faster