Preview of sequence timeline in program monitor goes blank

[vanlazarus2013]

This has been happening for months now.... During an edit, the program monitor suddenly goes blank.  Nothing is shown as you scrub through any sequence timeline and the only way to restore it is to save my project and restart Premiere.  And because Premiere is so slow, that is a huge productivity killer.  It takes 2 minutes+ to save, close Premiere, restart it, load the project, and wait for Premiere to load all of the media.

I have noticed no patterns as to why and when this happens.  Sometimes after only a few minutes, and sometimes after an hour.... But in the last 2 days it's happened often.  I do suspect it's related to some interface bug with the CUDA graphics drivers, but I'm editing 5k footage so I can't afford to disable acceleration.

I have the latest Nvidia drivers installed.

My system is Windows 10 64 bit, i7 5960X CPU, 32gb RAM, Nvidia GTX1070, with a project on a 11tb RAID 0 drive, and 2 monitors (1 4k and 1 2.7k).

I called Adobe support (taking about 45 minutes) and the guy was convinced that a reset of my preferences would solve this problem (holding down ALT while restarting Premiere).  I saw no discernible change.  A restart does revive the program monitor, but then it dies at some random time later, regardless of a preference reset.

An alternate version of this problem is to have all effects control keyframes or motion bounding box graphics disappear.  This is equally frustrating when one is trying to use those tools and I'm forced to restart Premiere and reload the project to continue.

Any assistance in how to cure this problem would be greatly appreciated.

[Trevor_Asq]

Is the blank program monitor issue fixed by changing gpu rendering?

For speed issues you might want to look at a proxy workflow.

Also breaking your project into smaller parts might help? Also run speedtest on your disks & see if there’s any problems there (we had a system drive on its last legs that had waveform/conform files on - slowed everything down ).

I don’t experience the problems you are seeing but I do see that PPro is slower/drops frames when dealing with processor & disk intensive footage (4xHD + 1x4K GoPro MP4 stacked as 5 PIP boxes) where Resolve plays back no problem.

[excited_Genie16B8]

Lose one of the monitors.  Work exclusively on the 4K for a bit.  Report back.

[vanlazarus2013]

Ok, I'm doing that.  Also reset my preferences.  Hasn't happened in a few hours of work.  If it does again, I'll turn off gpu rendering and see if it solves it.

[vanlazarus2013]

Since resetting my preferences and going down to one monitor, I haven't had this problem in 2 days of editing. 

Obviously not the solution I'm looking for but at least I can use Premiere without restarting every 30 minutes.

Adobe stock has more than doubled in 2 years, yet viewing the Premiere forums paints a pretty dark picture.  I wish there was a competitor to the Adobe Suite on PCs..... Adobe would really be addressing the thousands of bugs faster when subscribers started dropping like flies.  It should be an 'all hands on deck' kind of emergency right now because the Adobe Suite is not 'professional'.  If Premiere code was running a space shuttle, every astronaut on earth would have been dead 1000x over.

[excited_Genie16B8]

I wish there was a competitor to the Adobe Suite on PCs

Avid Media Composer (Paid and Free versions)

DaVinci Resolve (Paid and Free Versions)  <--- I use this and love it.

Hitfilm (Paid and Free Versions)

Lightworks (Paid only)

Sony Vegas Pro (Paid only)

[vanlazarus2013]

Jim Simon....The key word in my comment is 'suite'.  To my knowledge, none of the NLE's you list have such an extensive suite of tools as Adobe's CC.  Does AVID have tools like After Effects or Photoshop integrated?  Davinci Resolve has long dominated grading, but only recently has added editing.... and I don't think it's reached Premiere's capabilities yet.  Maybe in a few years.  Never heard of Hitfilm and know very little about Lightworks.  I moved from Sony Vegas to Premiere because of Vegas bugs.... only to have the CC development cycle begin to degrade Premiere.   To me, concurrent development of Premiere CC versions is insanity.... and any Adobe engineer who argues otherwise hasn't looked at a graph detailing the numbers in Premiere's bug database.

Maybe I will try to edit the next large project in Resolve.... but it would be really nice to remain in the Adobe CC suite if they can return some stability.  Is it too much to ask after investing significant time learning Adobe software and spending thousands on a subscription?

To be honest, Vegas was the most enjoyable editing experience for me... truly a pleasure to edit in.... quick intuitive controls.... until it became unreliable.... which is where Premiere is now.   I don't think I've sworn so much at a program in my entire life as I have at Premiere in the past months.  I can't even close Premiere sometimes without it crashing or hanging for silly-long delays.

Kevin Monahan... I don't like having to limit use of my hardware and limit the scope of my project to use Premiere.  Maybe my expectations are unrealistic if big budget films have to split up their films in order to use Premiere.  I just don't understand why media management has to be so cumbersome in Premiere.  It would be really interesting to see exactly how the large films organize their films when using Premiere.

[Trevor_Asq]

vanlazarus2013  wrote

I just don't understand why media management has to be so cumbersome in Premiere.  It would be really interesting to see exactly how the large films organize their films when using Premiere.

Kevin has explained they use seperate projects to emulate working Avid bin style. But they mostly use Avid. Which is best tool for media management and turnover and also the best tool (IMO) for editing.

VFX & audio done seperately On suitable tools with suitable operators.

Adobe gives us powerful tools to do everything in one box with one operator. Which is great. It’s editor is very good. Blackmagic are trying, with some success, to do the same in one app. Avid had a similar app in Avid DS but it didn’t get used on features. (Other than conform/grade/finish on some?)

PP will further improve its media management (close all products but active please) I’m sure. They have the revenue stream to fund it

[Trevor_Asq]

But reading your OP again - you really need to try out Proxies. They are well implemented in Premiere & will get you editing with 5K images - renders & exports are done with the native media so you only see lower res whilst making editorial decisions.

[excited_Genie16B8]

I don't think [Resolve has] reached Premiere's capabilities yet.

I disagree.  With Resolve version 12 I would have said Premiere Pro has the edge as an NLE.  But BMD has been very hard at at work, and very responsive to customer input.  With the current Resolve version 15.2, I believe Resolve has caught up with PP as an NLE.

[Kevin-Monahan]

vanlazarus,

Sorry about this.

• During an edit, the program monitor suddenly goes blank. 
• It takes 2 minutes+ to save, close Premiere, restart it, load the project, and wait for Premiere to load all of the media.
• I'm editing 5k footage so I can't afford to disable acceleration.
• Windows 10 64 bit, i7 5960X CPU, 32gb RAM, Nvidia GTX1070, with a project on a 11tb RAID 0 drive, and 2 monitors (1 4k and 1 2.7k).

It sounds like everything runs a lot better with the demands of your system pared down a little. You have a lot going on here with your large formats and other demands. What this tells me is that you may be a candidate for updating some hardware.

Since you are editing 5K footage and getting "black screens," you are likely are at least doing some GPU accelerated effects, and wish to drive a second monitor, you may be running out of VRAM. I suggest a heftier, more performant GPU.

Editing large formats, you may want more CPU power. Get one that's in the sweet spot for your demands. See this white paper from Puget: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2019-CPU-Roundup-Intel-vs-AMD-vs-Mac-1320...

64 GB RAM would be better.

Get a few spare high-speed drives for media cache and other supporting media.

We will have a new set of "recommended system requirements" coming out soon for 4K editing, so once that comes out, you can probably get a better baseline. That said, those Puget white papers are gold for seeing how others are configured for a reasonably outfitted Premiere Pro workstation for the types of productions you work with.

For large projects that open and close faster, consider placing your stock footage in a separate project, your SFX in another project, sequences you aren't needing to work on right now in another project, sequences in projects put together from your collaborators, etc. Mount these projects only when you need them, using them in the same fashion as Avid bins. Keeping your main project lean and mean can really help with open, close, and save times. This is the method that "Hollywood" style productions (Coen Bros.) are using.

Hope this advice helps.

Thanks,
Kevin