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.

[NoahEdward]

Yes I am definitely going to have to roll back to 7.1 also. Just got *another* new glitch on top of all the other ones. When premiere is open, it blocks all audio from other applications unless premiere is the active window. Then when I close Premiere, audio is not working on my other applications, but miraculously starts up again as soon as I click on Premiere. Playing music from Spotify or a web browser in the background with Premiere the active program is fine, but audio just cuts out when I go to another program. Very very strange. things go back to normal after I restart the computer.

Submitting another bug report, and going back to 7.1 until the next update.

[vahuckster]

1/11

Checking in to see if theres been any luck in recreating the issue/progress on the matter. I have deadlines coming fast and slamming my headphones every 10 seconds because the audio drops and drops and drops isnt getting me anywhere.

I tried rolling back to 7.1 and that didnt fix the cutting out issues either. I recently made the switch to premiere and didnt even think I needed to check the barely competent issues like simple audio playback, but it makes cutting any scene with dialogue almost impossible.

[vahuckster]

Checking again to see if there's how solving this large issue affecting many people is coming along.

I reset where my peak files were placed, taking them from a secondary internal to the boot drive (as well as the drive premiere is installed on) fixing the problem for a day or so, but the problem is now back and worse than before, causing audio dropouts close to every other second. (press play, dropout, press play, dropout, ad infinitum)

Looking forward to the fix.

[Text formatting removed.]

Message was edited by: Jim Simon

[AngelodellaGioJa]

Simple solution my friend and I found: click and play a youtube video in

your browser whenever sound drops out in adobe. For some reason, even just

playing a youtube video for a quick second and then coming back to the

video, the sound is recovered. Ideally, adobe will fix the bug already!

[Jim_Simon]

A simple pause and restart playback is easier and works just fine.

[vahuckster]

Thanks for the editing Jim

But no, a simple stop and start does not work fine. When I cannot play a clip for more than a few seconds I cannot find pacing, I cannot watch a preformance. I can't watch playback to see if everything goes together, I cannot edit audio at all. Was that meant as a joke?

After spending hours on the phone, and turning over my computer with screen sharing programs adobe's only recomendation was to get a new graphics card. The reasoning was since mine was not specifically approved my ram was spending all it's time rendering the video and couldnt handle the audio. (40 gigs isnt enough aparently) After finding a new one off the offical premiere approved list, I installed it with absolutely no change or affect.

Audio still drops.

As Rosco recomended I tried changing

"optimize rendering for:" from performance to memory.

this allows audio to work but the video becomes insanely choppy and unable to watch, even at 1/16th quality (which is too degraded to even work with, but thats beside the point)

Anyway, Adobe. Just checking in to see if you've done any looking into the issue. Its not going away, and telling your customers to waste money on new hardware is not the answer.

[rosco188]

@vahuckster

i had audio drop out on me again today - admittedly i had one other application open - (chrome w/ 2 tabs) i had to restart to get back up and running without audio dropping out.

it's not at all reassuring that this can happen on a whim.

i have submitted a bug but adobe please respond publicly- awknowledging the issue would be a huge start!

vahuckster wrote:

As Rosco recomended I tried changing

"optimize rendering for:" from performance to memory.

this allows audio to work but the video becomes insanely choppy and unable to watch, even at 1/16th quality (which is too degraded to even work with, but thats beside the point)

Anyway, Adobe. Just checking in to see if you've done any looking into the issue. Its not going away, and telling your customers to waste money on new hardware is not the answer.

[Guest]

I seem to have "solved" this problem.  I found a comment on here somewhere.  In which someone suggested installing a plug in called "Memory clean"  which shows how much available memory your computer has in your upper right menu bar.  My memory dips if firefox, or really any other program is open at the same time as premeire.  And if it dips to as low asa couple hundred megabites then premeire WILL NOT play back audio without dropping out.  So before I play my sequence I check and if memory is low I have to quit all other open programs and will sometimes even "clean memory" using memory clean before playing a sequence.  This has totally solved my audio dropping out problem.  But it's still rediculous that I have to do this.  For the amount of money we are all spending on this you would think it would work better or at least as well as FCP 7.  Which hasn't been updated in 5 years.

Anyways just thought I'd share because it was making me want to tear my hair out and now I can at least show my client the sequence, which previously Premiere couldn't get through without the audio dropping out multiple times.  Making it impossible to watch let alone edit.

[footagehead123]

I am having this same problem as well. See my specs below. I have Menu Meters installed, which gives me a 1 second read out of RAM usage. Although I have PPro set to  use 22 GB of RAM (10 left for other) meaning I have 32 GB or RAM installed. This isn't the problem. I've tried everyone's tests such as changing the scratch disks, etc. etc.

WHAT I DID FIND THO, which mirrors a previous poster, is that the audio instability during playback is coming from my AJA Kona LHi card/AJA Adobe Plugins. If I have the audio playback set for AJA Kona LHi card as audio playback, the playback is terrible. I can replicate the problem by scrubbing the playhead to any random place on the timeline, hit space bar, and sometimes it will 1) play fine, or 2) it will play distorted and garbled with hits and dropouts, or 3) it will dropout all together. It randomly cycles between those three outcomes.

Once I set the audio device to Adobe Desktop Audio (playing through the minijack on the computer to my mixer/monitors) I do not have this problem at all. Randomly scrubbing and parking the playhead anywhere on the timeline doesn't replicate the problem, and the audio plays out fine.

I looked on AJA's support and saw that they have new AJA Adobe plugins for install, dated 1/28/2014 "AJA Plugins for Adobe Creative Cloud - MAC v10.5. The release notes say this is for Mac OSX 10.8 and 10.9. Also, you need the AJA Hardware Driver 10.5, but they only have 10.4.9 available. I went ahead and uninstalled my older drivers and plugins, reintstalled the newer ones, but alas I'm stll having the playback issues.

So, my conclusion is that the problem stems from AJA Adobe Plugins which is driving the audio output from PPro. Once I select Adobe Desktop Audio for audio playback, all is fine. This isn't an ideal workaround, as I would like audio to go through the card as it should, but it will be fine for now. I will be contacting AJA support regarding this to see what they say, and I'll report back.

As a note, this problem with PPro and AJA has been a problem for a long time apparently. I've found threads with same exact problem dating back to CS4.

Adobe and AJA, I hope you can fix this, FINALLY. Thanks.

[AJV Media]

I don't have any AJA hardware or software on my computer and still experience this issue, so I don't believe it has to do with that.

[footagehead123]

Yeah, I figured this wouldn't be the case for others because everyone's got different system specs. For me at least, I found that audio playback is stable when I don't play through the AJA card. All I can figure out so far, and I've spent way too much time trying to it's a crime.

Here's my specs as I promised:

Mac Pro 5,1 2012 2.4GHz 12Core

Mac OSX 10.8.5

32GB RAM (With PPro running and on playback, I'm using at most 6 GB)

Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 4GB GPU

SAS RAID 5 8TB external box via RocketRAID 4322

Premiere Pro CC 7.2.1

AJA Kona LHi card

Running FW KONA LHi - 5/21/12

Running AJA KONA LHi Hardware Driver v10.4.9 - Mac (released 11/6/2013)

Running AJA Plug-Ins for Adobe Creative Cloud - Mac v10.5 (released 1/28/2014)

[999jbowdach]

I, too, do not have ANY AJA hardware or software, and still have this issue, so I can confidently state it has nothing to do with AJA drivers or hardware.

This is ridiculous, its absolutely unacceptable that this continues and users toss out random "fixes" that have worked for them, without as much as a response from a Adobe rep.

I am running a VERY standard system, using a freshly installed version of Windows with no additional video hardware besides my Nvidia GFX card (its been posted in several of my previous posts). I've filled three seperate detailed but reports since I discovered this issue back in August 2013, and there has been ZERO progress besides users guessing fixes and 3+ updates to Adobe Premiere (several adding brand new features while ignoring this crucial bug)

I urge Adobe support to get on this issue ASAP before I see anothert update adding new features, while completely ignoreing this issue (to the extent of not even responding to this forum or bug reports). As mch as I'd love to subscribe for the year, I simply cannot  subscribe for a year long product if I cannot get support for a wide spread issue.

[footagehead123]

Maybe it would be helpful if everyone who has been experiencing these issues 1) post their system specs as I and others have, in a list like I did, not scattered through their long paragraphs, and 2) possibly answer some of the questions Adobe has posted, as others have. If you have already done this, great! I don't see nearly enough posts that have a quick outline of their system specs. Some patterns may develop that could help us all see a possible culprit. This was asked back in a very long thread about the serious error issue with PPro, and it proved to be very helpful.

[footagehead123]

And another weird tidbit. I just went into my system prefs in Mac OSX 10.8.5 and realized that in Sound, Input tab, I still had it selected for AJA Kona card (I was recording some VO a while back through my mixer and the AJA card's breakout cable connections). I switched that back to Line In. I've been editing for an hour with the PPro playback settings back on audio hardware as AJA Kona card and not Adobe Desktop Audio. Haven't had the issue yet, fingers crossed.

I don't think this is a fix, but a very vague clue. Could be helpful in trial and error diagnosis.

[bricriu]

Macbook Pro 15" Retina early 2013 2.8GHz i7

Mac OSX 10.9.1 (but also happened with 10.8 and prob before that too)

16GB RAM

Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 1024mb

Premiere Pro CC 7.2.1 (but problem has been happening in every update since at least the beginning of CS6)

[AJV Media]

MacBook Pro Retina 15" Mid-2012

2.7GHz Intel Core i7

16GB RAM

768GB Flash drive

Mac OSX 10.8.5

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

Apple Thunderbolt Display

4TB external USB3 video storage drive

Premiere Pro CC 7.2.1

[rosco188]

i am on rMBP 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 8gb ram running 10.9.1 GT650 graphics.

i have 6.5GB of ram allocated for premiere and optimized for "MEMORY" not "PERFORMANCE"

for audio hardware settings i leave it on "BUILT IN OUTPUT"

"SYSTEM DEFAULT..." seems to crash my system everytime...

i have mostly resovlved my issue by managing RAM - nothing else can be open while editing.

using the Memory Clean app to keep track of this.

i will continue to follow this thread.

good luck everyone.

footagehead123 wrote:

Maybe it would be helpful if everyone who has been experiencing these issues 1) post their system specs as I and others have, in a list like I did, not scattered through their long paragraphs, and 2) possibly answer some of the questions Adobe has posted, as others have. If you have already done this, great! I don't see nearly enough posts that have a quick outline of their system specs. Some patterns may develop that could help us all see a possible culprit. This was asked back in a very long thread about the serious error issue with PPro, and it proved to be very helpful.

[Guest]

MAC OSX 10.8.5

2.9 GHz Intel Core i5

16 GB Memory

1600 MHz DDR3

Premeire Pro 7.2.1

So far I've fixed my problem with the memory clean program that someone else mentioned.  I check to be sure I have a healthy amount of free memory before playing back any sequences.  Anything above 100 megs seems to work ok.  So far no export problems. 

The worst I had this problem was on a sequence using mixed formats, HD, MP4 etc.  THe audio dropped out the most when I had inserted a particularly intence piece of music below a montage with chanting protesters audio over layed.  There was NO peaking just a lot of audio data going on.

Also I always quit all other programs when trying to play back.  That alos helped.  If Firefox is running there are audio drop out problems. 

HOpe this helps somebody. 

[999jbowdach]

I'll add 3) PLEASE fill a bug report, even if you feel there are enough people who have filed them. THe more people who file them with detailed info, the more info they have to diagnose the problem.

I;ve been extremely active on this forum as I want thois solvedf but most people do NOT have time to BEG you to fix your own software. Its clearly an issue and to hunt around to answer questios that Ive already provided in my bug reports is unacceptable customer support. Despite that, Ive porived them below in hopes to expedite this issue.

Footage is all Canon H264 DSLR footage 1080p 2398 or 720p 60p. No GH3 or GH2 footage.

System (all drivers have been updated: mobo, video card, chipset, etc)

Windows 7 x64

i5 Quad 3.7Ghz

16GB RAM

256GB Samsung SSD (OS\APPS)

2x 2TB 7200RPM (MEDIA)

Nvidia 660 Boost 2GB

Adobe CC with latests updates for all applications (as of 1/30/14)

Realtek on-board audio (latest drivers)

SB Audigy 2 Plat (not being used)

Adobe Questions:

1. audio drops out during playback. Scrubbing can fix it for one spot, but then it will just drop out somewhere else. Question: Does this happen even if you've allowed plenty of time for all the imported clips to be conformed?
   1. All clips have had hours, if not days to be conformed. Several different formats were tried from native h264 to transcoded cineform andf DNxHD. No difference was seen, even when switcheing sequence type.
2. audio missing from the beginning and end of some imported clips (mostly from Panasonic GH3 cameras, apparently)
   1. N/A, All footage is from Canon DSLRs. Audio randomly drops, never missing from the beginning or end.
3. does the audio drop out when playing a single clip in the Source Monitor or only when playing a sequence in the Program Monitor?
   • Appears to be only in the sequence. Havent had source monitor audio dropout
4. does this happen with projects that were created in CC or only with projects initiated in CS6 (or earlier).
   • UnKnown, I;ve only had this occur in CC in MY usage.
5. are the clips stored locally or on a network? If local, internal drive or external? (the O.P. specified that the content was stored on an XServe Network).
   • All media is stored locally, accesible on internal SATA drives.
6. What are your system specs?
   • below
7. Are any system resource (RAM, CPU, ...) maxed out during playback?
   • No, only CPU is maxed out while rendering. Memory is no where near maxed out and HDD has plenty of headroom according to system performance monitors.
8. Are you running 7.0 or 7.0.1?
   • Latest as of 1/30/14, I believe its one version later but not at edit rig atm.
9. A single clip on a timeline
   • No, it occurs throughout the entire sequence. The "dropout" can continue to more than one clip, it will only come back if I stop playback and scrub, and playback again.
10. A series of clips on the same track
    • Nope, seems to drop our all tracks as my dialogue, music and effects all drop out and they are all different tracks
11. Clips of the same audio type (e.g., all stereo) layered on multiple tracks
    • Different, some are mono, some stereo. Some sound effects from a linrary, some stereo music, some mono dialogue, some stereo camera audio.
12. Clips of different types (e.g. mix of stereo, 5.1, & multichannel) layered on mult tracks.
    • Yes, no 5.1 but mix of mono and stereo tracks on several different tracks.
13. nested sequences and multicam sequences
    • Not that I've tried.

[bricriu]

A bug report doesn't really do much because Adobe want you to tell them how to reproduce the problem.... That's not something we can tell them if it isn't already happening for them. That's the whole point here, we don't know what's causing it. It's seemingly random so there's no possible way to tell them how to reproduce it except "try playing ANYTHING back in your timeline"....

but of course the big guys at Adobe are somehow lucky enough to have NEVER encountered this problem on their computers haha. Just ridiculous.

[footagehead123]

I've been editing steadily for about 3 hours now, since my last post where I switched input in system prefs ffrom AJA to Line In. I've been scrubbing like a scallywag on the ship's deck and I have not been able to replicate the problem thus far. I'm not sure if what I changed worked or not, or if it was the updated drivers, etc., or both or neither. Just got a little lucky? We'll see as the days go by.

It seems some of you who have posted with laptops, are you keeping the scratch on an external array or drive? How are you connecting it? What is the datarate of your drive/array and connection? This could be a factor. However, some have posted some pretty fast systems too, so I'm not sure this is THE problem, but could be a factor.

[footagehead123]

Well this confirms it for me, and possibly others who are using AJA products... it was #5 in their response, and so far so good. Can I just say AJA is a crazy good company? Their customer service is impeccable.

We apologize for you any trouble you're experiencing. It is likely the solution is a matter of making the correct settings for the Mac, and within Premiere.

In general, settings for successful playback in Adobe Premiere are proving to be quite a bit more complex than some of the previous versions. I'll make a list below of the considerations that we have seen, which can help to get functionality stable.

The computer processor is a factor, as well. The faster the machine, the better the performance.

1. AJA Control Panel should be set to YUV-8 for pixel format under the format tab

2. In Premiere, the Zoom Level selection for image in the viewer should be on a setting that does not require processing to scale the image to fit the screen. For example, set this to 50%

3. Playback resolution, for the viewer, should be at FULL (for the same reason as above)

4. Generally, setting the Playback to "match control panel" is the preferred mode. This is set by going into the Prefs > Playback, then hitting "setup" for the Io. There you have 2 options, Match Sequence and Match Control Panel. Either might work, but or product manager said he prefers Match Control Panel.

5. Mac's System Prefs > SOUND--must NOT be set to AJA (note: we receive numerous incidents whereby the correction of these settings solves audio issues)

6. The Premiere codec preset used can be a factor: We had some test footage and a project file that a customer provided, which was having similar issues. The properties of the footage showed MXF wrapper, and the sequence preset was XDCAM. When we created an AVCHD sequence and dropped those clips in, playback was normal. This brings us to the conclusion that some footage compression types and sequence presets are more compatible than others.

[Grizzly]

I have 49gigs of RAM reserved for Premiere Pro CC on a Intel Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz(2 processors) and I have the same problem, the audio will cut out in the middle of playing a timeline or it will not play at all.

I ususally have to either restart Premiere Pro or restart the computer. So I don't think it has anything to do with the RAM or the CPU

[Long T.]

I am confirming what xosheisge43 suggested as this has helped me temporarily work around my audio drop out problem. In my case, I didn't use the plugin but used MacOSX's Terminal with the "sudo purge" command to clear my memory. When opening my Activity Monitor, I noticed that the "File Cache" is always high when the audio playback issue happens in Adobe Premiere. By clearing the memory with the "sudo purge" command in Terminal, the memory File Cache drops down to a few hundred MB and the audio will play smoothly again. Somehow, the memory will saturate again after a while and I always need to keep an eye on my Activity Monitor whenever the audio drop out issue occurs.

I hope Adobe can now focus their investigation on how to automatically clear the computer's memory so we don't have to manually do it every time.

My computer's spec:

2013 MacBook Pro 15' with Retina

2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

16GB Memory 1600 MHz DDR3

512GB SSD

[bricriu]

Yeah this is absurd.

And this thread has almost 11,000 views. 11,000. Most people don't take the time to create an account and write a post about it, but the view count of this thread is pretty indicative of how widespread an issue this is.