Premiere Pro CC Audio Cuts Out

[EndlessParadox]

Okay,

So I've switched to the new Premiere Pro CC and now my audio drops out during playback. Doesn't matter if it's an aiff, mp3, whatever. I never had this problem with Premiere Pro CS6. All files are saved to an XServe Network on OS 10.8.4. I'll have to remain using Premiere CS6 for the time being.

Also, just tested this out. I had a TIFF sequence playing with this audio. It did NOT like that. I can play the audio by itself just fine. So it seems to be a problem with playing the video file WITH the audio.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Ian,

ian nieuwenhuizen wrote:

Having the same issue. Can't believe Adobe wont fix this.

If you have time, please file a bug report: http://adobe.ly

It would be very helpful to us.

Thanks,

Kevin

[tindelvideo]

I have a thing to try which worked for me.

I found that having Audition Open at the same time was causing some conflict with the sound card on a Mac (Yosemite).  Also I've been finding Firefox using a lot of memory recently so switch that off if I can whilst editing.

Playback is very smooth after this.

Hope this helps someone - it's very, very frustrating trying to work when you can't play stuff back!

Lee

[theTallest]

I just forked over 525 dollars for this program after numerous people recommended it, and I get this. Constant audio dropouts. And no, Adobe, You don't get to know my specs. You have more than enough data from the other posters and bug reports. Fix it.

[woodybrando]

Yeah, I just renewed my two old Avid Subscriptions and am moving back to using it instead of Premiere for the tv show I edit. And threads like this one are exactly why. As far as I can tell Adobe provides no deep support for their software. In contrast, check out this thread over on the Avid forums, about a similar situation. A user is frustrated because his new system isn't working like he expected and read through the thread and you'll see 5 different avid support members who really know the software all join in to help. So if you are looking to switch, I'd highly recommend Avid. They stand behind their software. There's a bit of a learning curve but their forums are awesome and that's how I learned to use it in the first place. Here's the thread I mentioned:

MC 8.2 - Rubbish? - Avid Community

[Kevin-Monahan]

Woody,

woodybrando wrote:

you'll see 5 different avid support members who really know the software all join in to help.

FWIW, I see three employees on that thread (BLKDOG, Marianna, and BobRusso). We often have QEs and Engineering involved in these discussions, just so you know. That said, audio dropouts are certainly a pain, but fortunately, we have a fix in the upcoming version of Premiere Pro.

Thanks,

Kevin

[woodybrando]

Hi Kevin,

Yeah you're right it's 3 Avid people in that thread. And I do appreciate your presence on this thread Kevin. I feel like Adobe puts you in a bad place though because your only recourse is to have us file bug reports.

In my years using avid and using premiere there's just a different culture with Avid towards customer support, they actively seek to solve their customers problems.

Adobe lost me after an hour long tech support call where I got passed to four different departments. Got told with a bit of an attitude that re-saving a file isn't a function of a computer and that I should just get used to renaming my file every time I save. After persisting that resaving a file was a function of a computer, I got transferred to another department that had nothing to do with the issue, where I was then asked to go over the problem from scratch, before again being transferred to another department, put on hold for 20 minutes, finally got someone that wanted to help but didn't know how and told me to post to the forums, which I had already done without a response and so got put on hold again and when she finally returned she said my problem was outside of their domain of responsibility. The problem was that creative cloud files refuse to be overwritten, i've seen this on my pc and mac and on many different people's computers on freelance gigs to the point that I just don't use creative cloud either anymore.

So when the premiere bugs started piling up, like this audio bug, I was already primed to find an alternative to Adobe. And I have two weeks in with Avid I'm happy, had one customer support call that resolved my problem. And plenty of help on the forums.

BTW, that creative cloud problem I posted to the Adobe forums has still gone unresolved.

That being said I still use After Effects and Photoshop so I've kept my cloud subscription so I'm still a customer, just not using premiere or the cloud app anymore.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Woody,

woodybrando wrote:

Hi Kevin,

Yeah you're right it's 3 Avid people in that thread. And I do appreciate your presence on this thread Kevin. I feel like Adobe puts you in a bad place though because your only recourse is to have us file bug reports.

It seems like that's the only thing going on, but I do an extensive report for engineering based on forums traffic and verbatim comments. We are always looking for ways to solve customer issues.

woodybrando wrote:

Adobe lost me after an hour long tech support call where I got passed to four different departments...

Not to make excuses, but Adobe is a very large company (compared to Avid) and so you do have the potential to get routed wrongly. My recommendation is that if you need support from the video queue via phone or chat, on first contact, ask to be transferred there immediately.

woodybrando wrote:

The problem was that creative cloud files refuse to be overwritten, i've seen this on my pc and mac and on many different people's computers on freelance gigs to the point that I just don't use creative cloud either anymore.

Something tells me that you've hit a bug caused by OS X 10.9.x, or later. See this article: Premiere Pro CC, CC 2014, or 2014.1 freezing on startup or crashing while working (Mac OS X 10.9, an...

woodybrando wrote:

That being said I still use After Effects and Photoshop so I've kept my cloud subscription so I'm still a customer, just not using premiere or the cloud app anymore.

Very well. If you'd like to give it another go with Premiere Pro and are still having issues, please send me a PM and I'll do what I can to get you going again.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Andre35678]

This is just driving me mad. Trying to finish a dialogue sequence between two actors on a well equipped Windows machine. It doesn't matter if I'm cutting wav, aiff, mp3 or native RED EPIC Sound. The playback always stops and makes it almost impossible to make a cut. In the error log it always says that Premiere noticed audio drop outs almost every few seconds. If this won't stop I'm back on AVID...

[Mark Mapes]

The CC2014.2 update that we released today includes fixes for three separate scenarios that caused audio to drop out. Please let us know whether Premiere's behavior in this regard is improved.

[ActionCamStudio]

Nice try Adobe...it doesn't do nothing to me. I've read the specs of this update. According to me techs are looking absolutely in the wrong way. I speak for myself,i don't want to generalize, but i'm talking about dropouts during common editing and not of "Audio dropouts during shuttling" or "Audio drops out while playing out to tape" or "Audio drop out during loop playback". No loop in my timeline...only dropouts while playing a video. The first picture comes out from a rendered work area of a 30 second editing...this is a bit ridiculous. The second comes out from a 1920x1080 Uncompressed YUV blackmagic converted file from Resolve. Maybe in the 2020 we will not have dropouts anymore. Sorry for the jokingly, but is better than cry...

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi ACS,
Sorry this is still happening. Is this an updated project or a new 8.2 project? If it is updated, can you test with a new project?

Thanks,

Kevin

[ActionCamStudio]

Hello Kevin. They are both "fresh" projects, created for test in the new version. I'll fill another bug report for this...

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi ActionCamStudio,

ActionCamStudio wrote:

Hello Kevin. They are both "fresh" projects, created for test in the new version. I'll fill another bug report for this...

Rats, sorry about that! Perhaps it is specific to this format? Does this happen with other production formats you work with? Thanks for filing the bug. We will continue to hunt down and squash audio bugs with help from folks like you.

Thanks,
Kevin

[ActionCamStudio]

Hi Kevin, it happens almost with every format i put in in Premiere and with almost every type of audio i put in timeline. Just to be clear, this are the video formats that i use a lot:

AVCHD from my 5DMKII - If i need a good audio and not only a reference to sync with an original audio track during editing a videoclip or interviews, i'll use audio from a Zoom H4n;

AVCHD from my hacked GH2 - as before, if i need a good audio i'll use the audio from the H4n;

Uncompressed YUV from Resolve for files from my BMPC 4K - I use to convert files in resolve for 4K into 1080p proxies in YUV uncompressed;

AVCIntra100 from my old Panasonic AG-HPX 301

DVCPROHD from my old AG-HVX 171

For audio usually i work with aif, wav or mp3.

Really don't know why this happens even with a rendered timeline. If i use an external drive, this is normal, but all of my footage are on my 1 TERA sata HD in RAID 0 inside my desktop.

Synchronizing audio when editing a videoclip became impossible. You have to stop and playback again and really often you end with an audio a bit out of sync because you can't have a realtime playback, even with video tracks turned off. When my patience end i usually turn off video, and try to have the audio playback in realtime,but this not happens and a lot of time you have to put the video track "out of sync" because the reverb of the room or the position of the speakers was far from the camera, so you have to do the sync visualizing the video track and the lyp of the singer eliminating the latency.As i said this became impossible when the audio stop randomly during playback.

Thank you for the support Kevin, but this must be addressed really soon...as Woody, i have at office one license to AVID MC, since my Matrox MXO2 works either with Media Composer, we have come to finish the latest works on AVID, because we don't have the time to get rid of this issue. I don't want to use another sw,as i'm a PP user for a long time and the sw that i use the most is AE, but this bug is being a plague for our work since 5.5. Yes, in the past it was random and happens one time on five or six, but now it happens everytime.

For all here...have a great Christmas!

Roberto

[baldinbro11]

Hey Kevin,

I just wanted to add that as a freelance editor who works on dozens of projects a year at dozens of post houses, I'm seeing this issue EVERYWHERE all over NYC edit stations on a variety of machines. Imacs, Towers, with AJA cards, Blackmagic cards... no matter how hard I look there doesn't seem to be a consistent reason for it to happen.

What is consistent is that editors are getting extremely frustrated and fed up all over the city. Almost every freelancer I talk about Premiere with brings it up and we are at the end of our rope. This is seriously plaguing your program. I know you mean well over there, but I'm not sure Adobe gets how widespread and game breaking of a bug this is and how long it's been plaguing their program. Please get on this. It's not just a few people, this bug is screwing up edits all over the country and world and it's a massively edit breaking bug.

I can tell you first hand we're all griping about it and all trying to figure out ways to stop using Premiere. Lucky for you guys, a lot of the smaller post houses are still reluctant to switch to Avid and obviously FCP is dead. The longer Premiere continues to be a bug plagued nightmare, though, and embarrasses studios with clients and big shots in the room the easier it'll be for these companies to switch to Avid. Get on this bug! Please!! It's been over a year and a half now...

[Mark Mapes]

baldinbro11 (and others): Please report exactly which version of PPro you're on. If you're not running the latest, 2014.2, please update and let us know whether that resolves your dropout issues. This recent update includes a change that fixes dropouts in several scenarios.

Since you refer to "this bug," I'd like to call out two points. First, audio dropouts are not a bug but rather a symptom. And second, this particular symptom can be caused by a number of different bugs, just as a variety of different problems can cause a literal headache. Our challenge is to isolate and resolve each cause. Over the past several releases, we have nailed several specific bugs, but we're not claiming to have nailed all of them. So it's critical to know which version you're on--you wouldn't want us burning our time chasing a bug that's already fixed in a release that you have not updated to, right?

@ActionCamStudio: In response to your comment that the bug fixes are narrow special cases whereas you're hitting this problem in mainstream editing, please understand that the list of resolved issues does not necessarily reflect the full scope of the fix. The titles for bug reports are drafted as narrowly as possible to reflect the exact repro case that quality engineer isolated. But that repro case may lead the developer to a bug with far broader ramifications. Unfortunately, the bug title is often not amended to reflect the wider scope. I happen to be the guy who compiles the list of bugs fixed in a release. I do that largely after hours, and I'll confess I don't invest the time to plow through each bug report to determine whether the title accurately reflects the scope of the fix.

Audio features and performance are not my area of expertise, but a couple months ago I hit upon a repro case where audio was dropping out consistently after playing for just a few seconds. I shared my screen with our best developer in this region of the code, who soon determined the nature of the problem--and thereby established that it was a fundamentally different case than a big one he had helped to fix just days earlier. In short, the heavy lifting involved with decoding several tracks of 4K video was effectively blocking audio from getting through; when we disabled all the video tracks, the audio played flawlessly. It seemed like we were 90% of the way toward isolating the bug. But when the developer and I attempted to reproduce the problem on other computers with the exact same project and content, the audio played without a hitch. More frustrating still, after I re-imaged the test system where I had hit this bug, I could no longer reproduce it there, either. We had learned enough that our developers are now on the lookout for conditions that could cause video decoding to preempt audio playback. Meanwhile, I keep trying to get that one test system back into the state where the audio drops out, hoping that if I do we'll be able to identify the trigger.

Because this thread has become so long and includes reports dating back several releases, it's become quite unwieldy to keep track of what's current.  I think it could really help us get a handle on remaining dropout-inducing bugs if someone who's still having this problem in 2014.2 would start a new thread specific to this latest version. Again, I'm not a real authority in this neighborhood, but among the data that could help are the following:

1. system specs -- the basics, plus everything related to audio.
2. Where is your content stored? How about the cache files? Internal drive? External drive? RAID? Network storage? Drive speed? Type of connection?
3. number of monitors. Are you using Transmit out to a monitor?
4. third-party codecs that are installed
5. in Premiere, audio-related preferences [Prefs>Audio & Prefs>Audio Hardware]
6. specs on types of content in use: video & audio codecs, video resolution, etc.
7. Sequence settings, including a breakdown of the audio track types
8. Number of video tracks. Does disabling all the video tracks (via Toggle Track Output, the eyeball) eliminate audio dropouts?
9. do you hit dropouts with all sequences or only some. If only in some, then what distinguishes them from those w/o dropouts? The type of content? The duration of the sequence? The presence of nested sequences or multicam sequences? Different audio track types?

[baldinbro11]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for responding. I understand that debugging this has been extremely difficult for ya'lls. Your experience with the 4k footage is exactly the kind of experience us editors are having on a day to day basis dealing with this. It's not something that is consistently reproducible on a day to day or system by system basis, but for the most part if you get it once on a project it'll definitely come back no matter what you do to get rid of it.

And to clarify I've already hard of this bug reproduced on at least 3 different systems with 2014.2. The first thing I always check when I run into or hear about this bug happening is the Premiere version. I think we can say for sure that audio drop out during playback is still very much a problem in 2014.2. I'm seeing it and a bunch of others have already keyed in the thread that they've seen it as well.

I wish I could give you specs on a project this is happening on right at this moment, but I'm not currently editing a project suffering from it. It's not something that effects every project. It does seem to effect the really big projects with lots of media (specifically media with really long takes), and it does seem to be something that effects editing on iMacs more than towers, but I've definitely seen it on towers as well. I will also say that I know of several editors who've not only filed reports with full on specs of what exactly is happening, but they've FTPed reps at Adobe their media and project files to no avail. After a while, this just gets tiring. I know it seems to you guys like these are different bugs than things that were happening at the beginning of this fourm post, but to us editors the bug feels EXACLTY the same as it was a year and a half ago, and it's a simple thing to describe : You'll be working on a project and then out of nowhere the audio on your timeline will cut in and out sporadically as you're playing it. It's not easily reproducible (restarting will sometimes solve it for a day, same with changing systems or media hard drives), but it's something that usually comes back if you're working on the same project for a while. That's the problem. I'm guessing you're having issues reproducing it over there because I've only seen it really effect big projects with lots of media. Projects that have been worked on for quite a while. That's not something that's easy to reproduce on your end.

[TVPRICH]

I first thought that it might be a AJA or BlackMagic issue with Premiere (and it still might be as AJA has just come out with and updated driver for CC a couple of days ago).

That being said, your last post makes me wonder what the difference might be from Adobe's Tech Machines and a typical editors machine out in the "Real" world. Maybe the "Media" drives and all it's contents in the "real" world has lots of fragmentation stuff that Adobe's tech's start from a clean drive?  Might there be an over-sensative -or- not enough "Linking" mechanism on Premiere's Code that seems to not be able to keep up on our Media Drives? Perhaps our particular brands of Hard Drives? or their speed or lack of? Raids? Solid state -vs- combo drives?  There has to be an common denominator out there from most all of us with these problems?  Terribly Frustrating...

[Mark Mapes]

Thanks, baldinbro11. Yes, I've seen that a few others have reported continuing problems in 2014.2--and at least one or two have said that the issue is worse now than before.

You're absolutely correct that it's very challenging to repro and isolate any bug that's limited to large projects with many hours of editing invested. One way around this obstacle is to do a screen-sharing session with a customer who's experiencing dropouts--or better yet, have someone from our team visit your site. Anybody who's interested in working with us in this way can send me a private message. I likely won't be the one to follow up, but I'll at least forward your contact info to my manager as well as colleagues who are better versed in diagnosing audio problems.

As to your your comment: "I know it seems to you guys like these are different bugs than things that were happening at the beginning of this forum post," I would make no such claim, chiefly because I'm not involved in this area, so I really have no clue about how prevalent or long-standing the ones we've fixed are. All I know for sure is that over the past few cycles, we've nailed several bugs that caused dropouts, and we're committed to isolating and resolving those that remain as quickly as possible.

[CJTX]

After watching this thread for over a YEAR and experiencing the same issue on multiple systems I'm fed up.  Adobe is selling defective software (actually leasing it now) and not fixing a BUG like this for years is remarkably poor customer service.  I wouldn't be surprised if it results in discussion of class action... you can't take people money for YEARS and tell them your working to fix an issue that impacts the value of what we bought.  Seriously this is video editing software in the age of 'talkies'.... we need to know WHEN we will have reliable audio playback or we need refunds.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Txzaza,

After watching this thread for over a YEAR and experiencing the same issue on multiple systems I'm fed up. 

Sorry that you're experiencing this problem. Have you filed a bug report? Very few people on this thread and others mention that they have. It would be helpful if everyone on this post filed one: http://adobe.ly/ReportBug

BTW, the issue may have something to do with H.264 (DSLR) footage. Have you ever tried transcoding the files that are dropping audio frames? It may reduce overhead on your system and provide better performance.

Thanks,

Kevin

[daxmacrog]

Whether or not you categorize the audio dropouts as a bug or a symptom of a bug, the problem has not been solved in 2014.2.

In fact, it doesn’t look like it has been addressed. The list of fixes (http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2014/12/premiere-pro-cc-2014-2-release.html) includes dropouts during loop playback and shuttling, but those are minor nuisances compared to this.

I realize that in a thread this long, not everyone is experiencing the exact same issue, but the primary concern is about audio dropping out during regular speed playback, even when video has been fully rendered. (Rendering audio along with video doesn't help either.)

I can only imagine how difficult it is to squash bugs across so many versions, hardware systems, and two different operating systems, but here’s the thing: I’ve yet to run Premiere CC on a computer that DOESN’T have this problem. (In my case, every computer has been a Mac. I can’t speak to Windows configurations.) It just seems strange that Macs running in San Jose are immune from such a major nuisance that is common everywhere else.

[TVPRICH]

Hi. I hope I'm not completely "Black Listed" from Adobe, as I'm not upset at Adobe's Tech Team, but rather Corporate, for not providing adequate resources to our ongoing problem(s).

I am offering my system in Aliso Viejo, CA. (just in case you have any tech-personnel in my area) and need access to a typical customer with ongoing audio issues.

Rich Tamayo, TVP Studios/TVPLIVE 

(818) 843-3188   (714) 888-4376

27 Larkspur Dr. Aliso Viejo, CA 92656

[nthompson-lakeside]

I have had issues in the past where audio would dropout randomly, and it was annoying, but it never got to be work prohibitive. Well, since the update on 12/16/2014, it has become work prohibitive. Here's what I have, One video track, with 3 audio tracks, two audio tracks are muted, so essentially, I'm playing the video file (which is uncompressed YUV out of Resolve) with edited audio (a wav file). I make it maybe 5 seconds, and it just cuts out. Completely. Happens every time I try to play. I have even switched video to play at 1/4 resolution, and it makes no difference. I am at the point where I cannot get any work done now, what's the deal??

I have a very well equipped windows box and I have reboot the program, the computer, I imported everything over 2 hours ago, so all peak files have been generated, and it still won't play. This needs fixed, a basic function isn't even happening on what is supposed to be a very professional video editing platform.

Specs:

Adobe Pr Pro CC 2014.2 Release; 8.2.0 (65) Build

Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit

Intel Core i7-4930K 3.40GHz

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770

IDT High Definition Audio

-----

OS on SSD

Apps and Cache located on second SSD

Scratch Disk space on 2 2TB 7200RPM Disks set up in RAID 0

[getho]

Your hardware setup is more recent than mine, so it cant be related to hardware requirements. My software is last gen and from this thread it's affecting all versions, and is hardware agnostic - both macs and PCs suffer.

Adobe why dont you grab a project from one of the people having problems here and look at that?

I just loaded one of my problem projects - its very big, very old, but I frequently copy what I need from the old project to a new one.  it took about 3 minutes of playing before the audio cut out for the first time.  Now its started it will cut out on a regular basis - and gradually get worse.

I checked my logs.  There were no events listed that coincided even vaguely with the point the audio cut out. 

It appears that if you let the program stand for a minute the bug goes away  - like there is a background process that is responsible.

I checked my resource manager, and whilst the playback stresses memory and cpu the cutouts do not seem to be related: CPU mostly at 10% but spikes to 100 every now and them, memory 67% used - 8/12gb

Playback at 1/4 res reduced cpu load but cutouts continue - certain shots trigger the cutouts more than others.  One is a cpu intesive jpeg sequence resized on the fly by premiere.  However at 1/4 res the sound still cuts out at this point even though the cpu is showing 40%.  Other times it will playback through this shot at full res with no issues.  Theres is nothing else going on on the PC thats different, and the resource monitor shows similar levels to when it does cut out.

I thought I might have seen a correlation with the read B/s in disk activity in resource monitor.  I took a screen grab every time it cut out. ~60M B/s being read from my media drive from 10 files.  Its a 5x2tb raid 5.