Premiere Pro keeps crashing when I playback a video. I've tried everything

[smikis]

Hey,

So I've been facing this issue for a while now. However, I cannot understand what is the reason for it to occur.

When I edit my video and load a playback it crashes by freezing the app but leaving the sound of the playback. Only thing I can do is Force Quit. The weirdest part that it sometimes does happen and sometimes, even when you expect it to happen it doesn't.

I've went through all forum posts and tried everything:

- I've changed video rendering and playback to Metal;

- I've updated my NVIDIA drivers;

- I've updated to the latest OS Mojave (it did the same on Maveric);

- I've applied Adobe folders to enclosed items (not actually sure what I did there, but I did it and it did not stop the issue).

Could you help to solve it?

My mac:

2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

16 gb 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

Premiere Pro CC 2019 (latest)

Please, help. Or I'll have to finish my work on iMovie and nobody wants that.

[David Arbor]

Have you tried clearing your media cache (with Premiere closed) so it can rebuild? Also, just FYI, since you updated to Mojave, CUDA is no longer an option, as Apple hasn't allowed support for it, so definitely stick with Metal. Additionally, please specify which version of Premiere you're on in case it helps others later. Today, saying "latest" makes sense, as it means 13.0.1, but if someone stumbles across this thread it will be harder to keep tabs on what version you were running into this problem on.

FAQ: How to clean (delete or trash) media cache files?

Also, can you be more specific about the steps that cause this issue? What do you mean when you "load a playback?" Do you mean any time you start playing back your timeline?

Other things to consider:

What format is your footage?

Have you tried other clips?

Is it just on this project or all projects?

What happens if you import this project into a clean project and try playback?

[smikis]

Thank you for your reply.

It is true, my Adobe Premiere Pro version is 13.0.1

I've just tried to clear my media cache, but it did not work, the result is the same.

How everything works. I started a project and worked on it for a while. Everything worked fine. And one day I turned the project on and as I started to play back my timeline after few seconds the cursor starts to show that loading type of circle the timeline stops moving, for few more seconds video is responding, but stops moving after that. The only thing that seems to work is sound. Sound of the timeline is playing, but I connot stop and basically click anything. Only thing is left - force quit, no matter how much I wait.

Format is not issue specific I think, because it did the same with .mov and .mp4 files from different cameras or even phone.

It is not the first time this issue occurred. But the algorithm of the crash is the same.

How to import a project into another project?

[jphilip75]

PPro v13 seems unstable for the moment. In my system, the new version can crash randomly at any time by doing any action. It's like now i use CTRL-S almost every single action I make and I'm tired of it . And it's like the crashes are chasing me by happening most of the time when I have forget CTRL-S after several actions.

the last v12 was working fine before.

[David Arbor]

If you’re getting regular crashes you can both try to trash your preferences. Instability like that is often localized to the machine and something like corrupted cache or preferences could be the culprit.

As for importing a project into a new one, it’s very easy. Just create a new project and choose File>Import and choose your project. You can also drag it into a new project from the Media Browser.

[smikis]

What does "trash you preferences" mean?

[juanmario]

When installed the program I had connected some sound equipment ?.

Please, I could put a screenshot of the audio hardware preferences, to see if there are any anomalies.

[David Arbor]

juanmario​ Please create a new post with your issue, and yes, please post a screenshot as well your app version and computer information

[juanmario]

I have no problems, I assisted in the help.

[David Arbor]

smikis​ you can follow these steps to reset your preferences: FAQ: How to reset (trash) preferences in Premiere Pro?

[Richard G Elen]

I don't know if this observation is of any help, because I didn't experience the problem's onset until I upgraded to Mojave and you had it on the previous OS. However...

I am running Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019 13.0.1 Build 13, on a mid-2012 MacPro 5,1 "cheesegrater" with 28GB RAM, MacOS Mojave 10.14.1 installed and a Sapphire Radeon RX 580 8GB video card.

I found that video playback of a project from the timeline was stalling, every time I tried to play something - even the simplest timeline element. The audio continued to be output but the indicator stopped. You could not stop playback by clicking stop or pressing the spacebar, although the transport symbol would change between play and stop when you tried. All other application functionality was suspended - you could not get out of this mode. At the natural end of the "hidden" audio-only timeline, playback stopped and the program functionality became available again. Thus the application had not "crashed" as such but was busied out at some level.

I do occasionally experience something like this where I have multiple effects on a section of the timeline (eg legacy scrolling credits with an alpha mask and keying), which is presumably this (rather old) system running out of steam, but the problem described in this thread appeared in the simplest of situations, eg a single clip on a native (source spec same as project) timeline with no modifications.

I noted that when opening the application for the first time after the OS upgrade to Mojave (10.14.1), I had received a dialog asking me if Premiere should be allowed to access the microphone. Well, there isn't a mic as such on this machine so I said "no". I wondered if this might be it, and this was boosted by a report elsewhere in this forum suggesting it as a solution to a similar issue. So I tried giving Premiere access to the mic - and it worked. I have no idea why Premiere thinks it needs to access the mic: perhaps it's a bug.

I did incidentally try switching between Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration with OpenCL and Metal to see if one behaved better than the other regarding this issue, but this setting appears to have no bearing on the application's performance of any kind.

To give Premiere access to the microphone under MacOS 10.14.x:

Select System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy

Select "Microphone" in the left pane

In the right pane, locate the entry for "Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019" (in my case)

Check the box

You may need to unlock the panel to make changes

Hope this helps!

--Richard E

[smikis]

I actually hoped it would. This was one of those "Out of the box" solutions that tend to work for no reason at all. However, there is no selection of Premiere Pro in my preferences.

Still crashing.

[AlanGilbertson]

It's not just Mojave, or even Mac OS. I found the exact same (mis)behavior occurring with a fresh install of Windows 10 and a fresh install of PP 13.01 on my desktop (Dell XPS 8920, 24GB, AMD Radeon), but not on my Dell XPS 15 laptop (32GB, Nvidia GTX1050). CUDA is enabled on the laptop. All drivers are up to date. The entire CC install on the desktop machine was onto an essentially virgin system following a clean install of the current version of Windows 10.

On the desktop system, the longest I got between crashes was about 2 or 3 minutes. Dragging a clip from the bin: crash. Double-click on the project panel to import assets: crash. If PPro didn't crash, I could play the timeline maybe once or twice, but after a couple of minutes and a very few edits the spacebar was no longer operative, the program panel blank. Audio might or might not play, but the CTI did not move. Attempting to save the project at that point generally, not always, resulted in a crash.

Trashing preferences did not affect the behavior whatsoever. Unchecking Import Workspace with Project didn't help either. Uninstall/reinstall did not affect the problem. After running into this on some legacy footage, I tried a fresh project using the tutorial clips and audio---assuming, perhaps naively, that these have been thoroughly tested---and if anything the situation was worse, even to the point that bizarre glitches showed up randomly in some clips (added single frames, one per clip: some red frames, some a duplicate of an earlier frame in the clip giving the appearance of a bad jump cut) after they were added to the timeline.

[smikis]

So, after a while. I had one rather obvious solution in my mind. I did not notice that working from an external HDD could be a reason of these crashes. (I'm an ignorant man, what can I say...)

However, I transferred all the project to my computer and for some time it worked. Yet I thought it did. But apparently after some time it started crashing again.

So once again. I still don't have a solution and it is starting to make me furious. Maybe there is a way to diagnose it?

[David Arbor]

In situations like these, sometimes the only option is the nuclear one. You can try uninstalling all of your Adobe apps, then running the Adobe Cleaner Tool, which will wipe everything out. I can't guarantee it'll work, but if it's not an issue with your project, footage, permissions, or user account, this this could solve it. Use the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems

[smikis · Accepted solution]

So after few months apparently it's the issue of font in captions. It seems that when you use random font (not sure which work properly which don't) it triggers something in the program to crash. I've changed font to Adobe something... and it seems to work.

I've googled A LOT and found that there are bunch of people facing the same issue and there's no normal solution.

Not even sure weather software update fixed it.

However, little issues like these makes you wander about other programs. How to inform developers if there is such problem?

[Stan Jones]

Before I test this: what captions in PR: caption tool, graphics text, or legacy text?

What fonts failed?

Thanks.

[SKLR]

Wow. Thank you so much I was racking my brain trying to fix this. Always crashed when using Segoe UI. Swapped it to Arial and I haven't had it crash on me yet

(9.0.0 (247) build)

[Kevin-Monahan]

smikis,

I would try two things:

1) Adjust folder permissions.

2) Transcode to ProRes LT or use proxies.

Report back after trying these things with a brand new project.

Thanks,
Kevin

[ajn86134869]

Hey,

Something that worked for me was when i had mine crash it was always when placing footage on the time line. Turns out a simple reset was the solution for me.

One of the most efficient ways to fix this is to reset Premiere Pro preference files. Trashing preferences resets the program to its factory defaults.

Resetting preferences will undo most of your customization such as length of your default transitions, brightness of the user interface, labels colors, audio hardware settings and more. Some changes won't be affected though, such as changes that you've made to memory allocation for Premiere Pro and other Adobe apps, new workspaces that you've created and some other stuff. It's worth noting that changes that you've made to existing workspaces (changes such as resizing panels and moving them) will be reset to defaults.

Preferences that you set for scratch disks, however, are saved with your projects. Whenever you open a project, it automatically defaults to the scratch disks you selected for it when you set up that project.

To reset preferences, follow this step:

• Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while launching Premiere Pro. You can release the Alt key or Option key when the splash screen appears.
• To reset preferences and plug-in cache at the same time, hold down Shift-Alt (Windows) or Shift-Option (Mac OS) while the application is starting. Release the Shift-Alt keys or Shift-Option keys when the splash screen appears.

You won't see the list of your recent projects on the Welcome Screen the next time you launch Premiere Pro, if the preferences were reset correctly.