Premiere Pro stuck on "opening project" loading screen when opening project on Windows

Report · Sep 12, 2023

Hi,

I have a Premiere Pro project, that I've been working on for the last couple of days, which now can no longer be opened. When opening the file premiere is stuck in the "opening project" loading screen at approximately 70%. I've been patient and on my task manager I can see that Premiere Pro is operating at 0% when stuck, so it stops working somehow.

I've tried several solutions/workarounds, including deleting chache, deleting preferences, reinstalling premiere, updating graphic drivers, disabling plugins, creating a new project and importing sequences from old project (stuck at "loading project", no sequences show up), opening old auto-save files (same issue), trying opening in different premiere pro versions (23.0-23.6).

Other projects open fine.

I've recently moved the project over from a NAS to an external hard drive (Seagate Expansion HDD SCSI Disk Device) and since then I've had the problem.

I am somehow able to open the project on a Mac no problem - but all 3 Windows PC's in my office present the same issue, so it seems to be a Win problem and not that I'm working off of a external hard drive. I've held a backup copy of the premiere project on my built-in-SSD but that is also not working.

I'm working in Premiere Pro 23.6 with ARRI footage and use proxies created in Premiere, use Soundly Pro for sound effects but no third party plug-ins are used on the footage, no Dynamic links to AE, no heavy grade (just the built-in Alexa LUT), nothing that would feel like it could 'overload' the project or something - and as mentioned; it opens fine on Mac.

Hope someone can help.

PC specs:

Windows 11 Pro (OS build 22621.2134)

Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor 3.80 GHz
Installed RAM 64,0 GB
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

C-drive: GIGABYTE GP-ASM2NE6100TTTD

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 - Driver version 536.99

Report · Sep 12, 2023

Thank you for reporting this. Let's see if we can get more information about why projects are not opening for you on win.

Did you move the project file AND all media together onto that external drive? Or is the media spread out across locations?
If you copy the project file (rename it!) to a local folders and then disconnect the drive that the media is on, does the project still fail to open? It will prompt to you relink media of course, so just make everything offline and see if the project opens. That way we will know if its the project itself that's the problem or some piece of media inside of it.
Once the project is open, can you use Link and Locate to relink everything? Even if it does not relink everything successfully, this might give you some indication of what sort of media is failing to load on project open.

Thanks in advance for any info you can provide for us.

Report · Sep 12, 2023

Thank you for replying,

Yes, I moved all the footage on to the external hard drive, and I also tried to open just the project locally while the hard drive was disconnected - same result, unfortunately, it never gets to the window that tells me to relink offline media.

Report · Sep 12, 2023

OK thanks for responding That's progress. Can you send me the project file without media using the direct message feature on this forum? If you don't have a virtual drive to share it with I can send you sharing info directly.

Report · Sep 12, 2023

Yes unfortunately this happens a lot with v23.
Hold down the ALT key when you launch Premiere Pro, when the Reset options box appears, tick just the third option 'Reset plugin loading cache', then open your project.

Report · Sep 12, 2023

@Media Mogul Thanks, but I've tried that already, didn't work.

Report · Sep 13, 2023

@Simon28514220gtgc I can repro this on win using the project you sent me (no media needed because it does not get that far). I'll create a bug report for this and try to figure out what the problem is.

Report · Sep 13, 2023

ive been having this same issue for two days now.

Report · Sep 15, 2023

@Simon28514220gtgc After looking at the minidump file that we got when trying to open your test project, we see that you have recently had a next drive and a z drive attached to your systems.

Specifically, it looks like that next drive is beeing used for your Media cache:

<VideoPreviewLocation1>S:\Adobe Cache files\Media Cache Files</VideoPreviewLocation1>
<CapturedVideoLocation1>S:\Adobe Cache files\Media Cache Files</CapturedVideoLocation1>

Besides that, it looks like we're trying to load some assets off of your z:\ drive, which is either very slow or inaccessible.

If you can make sure that those drives are active before launching the project on win, that should speed up the open project and allow you to get Pr back into a usable state.

Report · Sep 18, 2023

@jstrawn The S drive is my local SSD Hard drive and the Z drive is the NAS with all the footage and the project (I've moved it over on the external hard drive from the NAS - that's when the problem arose - and moved it back to the NAS afterwards). Even with the S drive and the Z drive connected the problem persists, sorry (and a slow NAS connection is not the issue). I've tried several times to open the project with cache files disabled, so I don't really see how that can be the problem - isn't there a way to reset the project, so it doesn't try to relink files automatically?

Report · Sep 18, 2023

@Simon28514220gtgc Thanks for the added info. We're still trying to debug the project to see what's making it hang. On Win, holding down Ctrl + Alt (or Shift) on startup is the easiease way to get to your reset options, but there is nothing in there specifcally for bypassing relink. If Pr is not finding all your Media when trying to open a project, the Link and Locate dialog will need to appear. The only way around that is if you could open it on some other system and get as far as the Link Media dialog and then make everything offline. But that you'd still have to Link and Locate everything as soon as you got into the project. I can try to get a project version like that for you. It's worth a try, but I doubt it will get everything working again.

Report · Sep 19, 2023

its been a week of not being able to work because if this problem, i have clients asking everyday for the edits and i cant give them a answer because PP wont work. ive tried all your work arounds and nothing works. when will we get a fix for this? is it time to move to davinci after all these years with adobe ...... this is crazy

Report · Sep 19, 2023

We are working on Simon's bug now but I can't accurately say when a fix might come. Also, I can't guarantee that the fix for Simon's bug will fix your project open problems as well. They may not be the same thing at all.

I know that's not great news and I'm trying to think about a workaround for you. If your bug IS related to Simon's, it might worth checking where all your media is at, including things that might not be in a sequence (like a text file). Move all your media into one online drive if possible and that might allow the media link check to succeed and your project to open.

Report · Sep 20, 2023

Yup, same thing has been happening to me....

All my files are in an external SSD, so I transfered everything to a local drive within the PC.

Still stuck at 70% opening project...... ADOBE... please fix this, this isn't a remove situation, my friends who use it also reported it just recently...

Report · Apr 16, 2024

This issue poped up agin in v24.
Projects get stuck opening while loading Boris FX.
The correct fix was to reinstall the 3rd party effect plugins after upgrading Premiere.

Report · May 02, 2024

I'm also having this issue, did you get anywhere with the fix?

Report · May 02, 2024

@samjackgilmore
It's a problem with 3rd party plugins like Boris FX after upgrading to a new version of Premiere Pro.
If you need to get a job out quickly the temporary workaround is to launch Premiere Pro and immediately hold down the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key until the reset preferences dialog appears. Select just the 'Reset plugin loading cache' tick box. If that doesn't work, do it again and select just the 'Disable third-party plugins' tick box - but be warned that if you have a IO card or control surface it will disable these as well.
The only true fix is to reinstall your third party plugins after upgrading Premiere Pro.
It's a good idea to completely uninstall all of your Adobe software and clean up all of the old folders that may still be hanging around. On my workstation I had folders for previous versions going back to 2019.
Plugins live in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins

Report · Oct 17, 2024

I wanted to ping this because I was having the same issue where projects were only opening on a one computer connected to a NAS but freezing at 70% on another computer connected to the same NAS. I ended up offlining all material on the computer that I was able to open the project on and finally got the project to open on the other one. Then just had to relink all material.

It looked like Premiere may have been trying to relink the footage from a mapped z drive that didn't exist on that computer so that was causing it to stall before it even reached the relink dialogue. Hope this is helpful to anyone else having this issue that also tried all other solutions.

Report · Nov 25, 2024

HI, I have the same problem, after the version 24.3 all my old project stop to open and Premiere keep making a flash start and close, I am using a MacBook Pro M2 with 32 GB Ram SSD nmve, and an external drive SSD 4TB