Premiere Pro (Beta) 24.2.0 Won't Play Timeline. I've tried every fix imaginable!

[LJJohnno]

Premiere Pro (Beta) 24.2.0 - Play Timeline Will not Function. Urgent deadline!!

I’m now up to my third hour trying to solve this via Adobe Community suggested fixes and YouTube troubleshooting videos.

Below are the specs of my Mac and a list of fixes I have already tried, to no avail.

MacBook Air M1 2020 8gbRAM Sonoma 14.2.1 250gb HD with 46gb free space

File: HD 1920 x 1080 with some 4K footage uploaded for Pan/Zoom effects

Sequence run time 2’52” with a 1 x Adjustment Layer, 1 x Video layer, 1 x Audio Voiceover layer, 1 x Audio Soundtrack backing, 1 x Sound FX at start of sequence

I exported my Premiere Pro (Beta) file to an MP4 according to the instructions and recommended settings in this YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD7oxACUQ_o

For reference, the exported MP4 file size is 347mb.

Straight after the successful export, when I returned to Premiere Pro (Beta) to continue editing my PP file loaded OK, located all its files and I could successfully click different layers to view Effects etc. in the Effects pane.

However, when the Play function would not work.

Before I tried the list of fixes below, the screen in the preview pane went black and I couldn’t use the blue header marker to scrub through my footage visually in the preview pane.

While I eliminated those latter problems of the black screen and failure to visually scrub, I still can’t PLAY my footage. It fails to play at all.

Here are all the fixes I’ve already tried:

1. De-installed and re-installed Premiere Pro (Beta) and Media Encoder (Beta), including the very latest and previous versions
2. Restarted MacBook Air continuously after changes below, including Control/Option/Command restart
3. Deleted unused Applications and Documents on MacBook Air HD to create 50gb of free space. Emptied trash
4. Changed Memory settings to dedicate 7gb out of a total 8gb RAM to Premiere Pro (Beta) and Media Encoder (Beta)
5. Clicked Shift + Premiere Pro to re-open the closed program, with all reset option ticks selected, including Reset App Preferences, Clear Media Cache Files, Reset Plugin Loading Cache, Disable Third-Party Plugins (One-time only)
6. Opened Premiere Pro (Beta) and then Imported my ‘entire project’ freshly (this imports all media, but not the timeline sequence)
7. In Media Encoder, changed renderer Mercury option to Software Only (rather than GPU Acceleration)(noting I can’t change this within PP as the option is greyed out)
8. Ensured Preview Area pane is ON
9. Changed Audio Hardware settings in different combinations
10. Turned VR-De-noise FX OFF (it’s applied to only 6 clips totally around 20 seconds
11. Note: I applied an audio effect of De-esser to around 30 seconds of footage and a De-noise effect to a 6 second clip
    
    Please let me know if you have any other fixes! Thanks in advance 🙂

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello @LJJohnno, 

Thanks for the question. From looking at things at a 20,000 foot level: your system is not meeting system requirements. It might be related to that and the media you are editing with, as well, or  a combination of both of these things. In general, avoid H.264 and 4K media in the future until you can buy a computer that meets spec.

For now, create proxies and see if you can playback the media more easily. Let us know how it goes. Sorry for the hardship.

Thank You,

Kevin

[LJJohnno · Accepted solution]

Thanks Kevin - bizzarely after so many hours of sleuthing, I happened to find a fix you'd discussed with another member.

It seems to have worked (for now anyway!). Thought I would post to share with others.

I created a brand new Sequence in the timeline, then I selected all the content from the Sequence that refused to play, and copied it all into the new Sequence.
I deleted the old Sequence.
It now seems to be playing AOK.

Noting that the 4K footage is a little laggy, as per your comments about my Mac being under-specced as a work horse to handle the load of 4K and the Effects I've applied etc.

But I just need to get one more Export sorted after some minor edits, then I'm done with overloading my little pony Air for this deadline.

Thanks!

[Kevin-Monahan]

So glad you were able to get it solved, @LJJohnno!

Thanks,
Kevin