problem with Premiere Pro CS5 project files bloating

Report · May 26, 2010

Has anyone had the same problem that we're experiencing? - we have Production Premium CS5 installed on a machine with Win 7 Pro x64. We have three separate edits all of which are experiencing bloating of the .prproj project file. Often this bloating seems to occur when no importing of assets has occured, just changes in the edits. A project which started at 5mb has bloated to 1.5GB and we can no longer save it. Another project has bloated to 200mb and continues to grow in size. We have not brought in any weird assets, although we are using hi-def footage.

We upgrade from CS3 and never had this problem using Premiere CS3.

We can't fix the problem by 'remove unused footage' as this doesn't reduce the project size, although it does remove the unused footage.

We can't fix it by importing the project into a new clean project as the problem and huge file size just comes with

We can't fix it by using the project manager to collect up the project as it requires to save before collecting and the problem files can't be saved.

A couple of points to note - these projects were originally on Premiere CS3 and were upgraded to CS5. The footage is either Sony EX3 or Canon 5D - both HD.

The machine it's running on has 8gb of RAM.

Currently the projects I'm working on are gradually grinding to a hold with no way to make the files usable again.

Any suggestions are greatfully recieved as I'm at a loss. I've reported this to Adobe, and will report back if I get anything useful.

thanks.

Report · May 28, 2010

Has EVERYONE who has experienced this filled out a bug report? The more reports they receive on this bug the higher the priority for a fix.

Report · May 28, 2010

Consider yourselves acknowledged.

We get lots of bug reports. Please don't take it personally if you don't get a direct response from us for each one.

Has anyone seen this same bloating with CS4 projects?

This is definitely not the case:

Has EVERYONE who has experienced this filled out a bug report? The more reports they receive on this bug the higher the priority for a fix.

Dulicate bug reports just get marked as duplicates and closed. Deciding the priority for a fix involves determining the severity of the problem, the impact on the usability of the app, the time involved in making the change, and the risk of those changes to the stability of the app. More bug reports, not so much.

Feature Requests are another thing entirely. Popularity is a factor -- not the only one -- but we definitely notice.

Report · May 28, 2010

Dulicate bug reports just get marked as duplicates and closed.

Sorry, didn't mean to come across that way. I meant that the people who where experiencing this problem should send one report so you could have more information about the bug and know that this is not an isolated problem.

Report · Jun 02, 2010

I just found this thread after sufferingthe same problem. So far it is just the 1 project

, but it takes nearly 10 minutes to load and then will not Save. My project file is quite a bit large

r than the others, but not bloated to the size other people are reporting. I haven't tried Jeremy's workaround yet, but I'll try it next.

One thing though. I started as CS4 project and am opening it in CS4. I don't have CS5 yet.

Report · Jan 22, 2011

This is a remark more about the business (or is it unbuslinesslike) culture that seems to be rather prevalent at Adobe. Adobe, as the business partner to millions of small aeven large business owners, needs to consider the serious business consequences to the business owners who use Premiere Pro, and other Adobe solutions (Sound booth bloat forced me to abandon projects and move over to Sony Sound Forge -- so that was the same but different problem. And the bloating issue has all kinds of business consequences to us that have not been addressed in these posts. It seems to be utterly irrational, and irresponsible, from a business-owners' and users' perspective to be told that Adobe takes ONE bug report and throws out all the others. I'm incredulous!

Whether the tech developers at Adobe like it or not, all of their salaries are PAID by all of us who BUY Adobe products. Adobe needs to become MUCH more sensitive and proactive to OUR business needs. And that comment by the Adobe employee tells me that the guy running that department head has about as much business sense as a kumquat! And has never owned a business of their own. The process to choose which bugs to fix needs to have a business case importance value attached to it and a rating created of how much it would cost a business owner per hour of lost revenue if that problem keeps on being a problem. That way developers can see to it that any bug that really is not particularly negatively impacting our businesses and is only a 'nice to have' gets dropped to the bottom of the development list, and is off the table until the real business solutions that are costing users time and money are actually fixed! That way Adobe becomes our business partners, instead of a source of frustration And nowhere in this thread to I see a post by Adobe saying they fixed the bug!.

I have actually worked with ERP software developers who are directly responsible to their clients and actually have to talk to these clients on the telephone to find out how and what bug to fix. They can't hide behind layers and layers online and telephone insulatio between the developer and the end user. And you can bet the bugs in that ERP solution that cost that business owner money andthose bugs that are negatively impacting that businesses' revenues are solved instantly!

If Adobe were actually re-tooled internally to consider what is requierd for us to run our businesses, Adobe may actually have a vested insterest in making their software work much effectively BEFORE they do a release. Some of us have to post files onto file servers and/or live streaming sites, and the bloated files COST US MONEY! And I haven't even gotten into the lost billings that occur and the net loss to us of revenues because we have to mess with files that should have workedproperly in the first place

The bug reports that are marked duplicate and closed don't do either Adobe or the users any real good. I can understand why it's done that way, but it does not serve the ultimate good of both parties that that is the way process is handled.

Report · Jan 22, 2011

onejem,

I think that you misunderstood Jeremy's post.

Note that the bug under discussion on this thread has been fixed. It was fixed several months ago, and the fix was released in a bug-fix update.

Jeremy was just pointing out that once we have the information needed to fix a bug, there's no point in people wasting their time resubmitting the same information.

> And nowhere in this thread to I see a post by Adobe saying they fixed the bug!.

The posts immediately before yours are from people who say that the update fixed the bug for them. Just above that, I announced the bug fix. Here's a direct link to the message:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3102781#3102781

Report · Jan 22, 2011

OneJem,

I (we) feel your monetary loss. My clients were on both my right and left side during my edit session when their very expensive music video projects began to bloat. Needless to say I was in a mild state of shock. But I held it together and work quietly through the problem, very quietly. During the hour or more... it took me to find a work around - we were up and running again. 20 or so music videos were finally edited during this time period of "bloating." I could have died a couple of times, but I didn't. I stuck around and collected my fees at the end of it. And yes I did worry.

I've been editing for over 30 years (OMG! I can't believe I'm admitting that)., but it's true, since 79' beginning on film - shooting 16 mm news in Miami and editing for the 10 o’clock news; then I became an online editor, which really means "Linear" editor, and for all us back then, meant a loss of quality and a lack of ability to change our minds.’ We prayed that someone somewhere would create a system that would allow us to change our minds in an inspirational moment and make duplicates in an instant.

Then came Avid (there were others, but Avid continued to rise above the rest). I worked on Avid for some 15 years, edited lots of wonderful projects on both Mac & Windows (and still do) – Avid wasn’t stable at first, it had its moments, but we stayed with them and there were many, many calls to tech support.

I won’t get into the history of Avid, but it is something to be admired and respected, and so is Adobe. I’ve been on Adobe’s Premiere Pro for over 3 years now and while it’s not as stable as Avid, the interface is remarkable, intuitive and fast - and incorporating other Adobe products into the work flow is a big advantage for me.

What drew me to this company was their vision, beginning with Aftereffects, Photoshop, Illustrator and the purchase/merger of Macromedia (creators of Flash & Dreamweaver). And then creating a suite that would allow us to work with everything! This company has great things to offer and is making it possible for us to accomplish them.

Bugs will come and go (and will ultimately be resolved) we’ve got to have faith that companies like Adobe and Avid are not doing this to personally affect your livelihood or mine. In order to create such groundbreaking applications and to set trends for integration, future design, editing and animation, to name just a few, they gotta love what they’re doing!

OneJem, don’t give up – you know Adobe is going to keep-on creating and fine tuning their applications in the future and we should all be a part of that.

Best regards,

Layne

Report · May 28, 2010

I commented early in this thread.

Have I really been relegated to nobody already?

Yeah...it's really a bummer that no one is acknowledging it. It's pretty serious!
I hope Dennis jumps in soon!

Report · May 28, 2010

Have I really been relegated to nobody already?

No Jeremy. Like Harm, I try to ALWAYS read any of your posts, even it the thread does not affect me - yet.

Please keep up the good work.

Hunt

Report · May 28, 2010

Jeff will tell you, I am emoticonically challenged. I will try to indicate my level of levity in the future.

I was kidding, mostly. I was kind of shocked.

Report · May 28, 2010

We just wanted to convey our respect and appreciation here - you ain't [SIC] chopped liver around these parts!

Hunt

Report · May 28, 2010

Jeff will tell you, I am emoticonically challenged

But you've got a cool avatar. So that kind of makes up for it.

"See if you can guess, what I am now" ----> :-|8

-Jeff

Report · May 28, 2010

Did you really go there?

The answer is, of course, a zit.

"See if you can guess, what I am now" ----> :-|8

Report · May 28, 2010

...but we digress.

I'll download your project, Nat, and I'll also look at one that I already have.

Report · Jun 02, 2010

jeremy d. wrote:
...but we digress.
I'll download your project, Nat, and I'll also look at one that I already have.

Jeremy,

Did you get a chance to look at these projects?

Report · Jun 02, 2010

I tried one of my projects first, but the results were inconclusive, so I'll move on to yours next.

tclark513 wrote:
jeremy d. wrote:
...but we digress.
I'll download your project, Nat, and I'll also look at one that I already have.
Jeremy,
Did you get a chance to look at these projects?

Report · Jun 03, 2010

Thanks Jeremy for the update!

I am real curious on what you find.

More and more people are starting to have this problem.

Report · Jun 03, 2010

I'll let you know.

My money's on the media. I bet the three of you have some formats in common.

Report · Jun 03, 2010

Just regular old HDV...

Report · Jun 03, 2010

Here's some info on the media I've been using in the projects which have bloated:

project a)

exclusively footage shot on Canon 5DIIs and Canon 7Ds, and brought straight into Premiere without transcoding, i.e. I'm editing quicktime H264 files as they came out of the camera.

project b)

a mixture of footage, shot on:

Sony EX3

Red One

the footage from the Sony and Red was run through the respective transcoding software that comes with the cameras meaning that I ended up bringing files into the project which are QuickTime ProRes and .mxf MPEG2 files. Having said that, I started off using the .MP4 files that came straight out of the EX3 but had some problems with the audio (this was when I was working in CS3, which I subsequently upgraded to CS5), so I then transcoded them and replaced the footage in my premiere project with the MXF files.

Report · Jun 03, 2010

OK, so we're looking at your projects.

You just mentioned Project A and Project B -- the original file and the bloated file do not have the same media?

- Also, you have several clips which have multiple instances of the Color Key -- why?

- You've got lots of video shoved out of frame, most notably the TC burn. I think there's a more efficient way to get the burn in than by using 1440x1080 black video clip. That's costing you time and performance right there.

- You've also got an effect called PR.Neat_Video that doesn't come with Premiere.

There's a lot going on in there. Man!

Report · Jun 03, 2010

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for looking through the project.

Sorry for the confusion regarding project a) and project b) - what I meant was that this bloating problem has happened on two totally separate projects. Each project is completely self contained, for different clients and happening to be using media shot on different cameras, but still experiencing the bloating problem.

I did mention the Neat video plugin in a previous post when I talked about my hardware and software setup, but I can confirm that the project which used footage that came from Canon 5D and 7Ds bloated but did not have the Neat (grain reduction) plugin used in it.

Infact, that project is a smaller and more simple setup and I will send you a link for the project via PM.

I didn't know that shoving black out of frame cost performance and was a bad idea, but I do now and will do it differently from now on (probably a transparent layer with TC on that (as I've seen in one of the Adobe demos).

Regarding multiple instances of the colour key on a single clip, this will either be because I was toggling between two different grades to see which worked best or because I've screwed up!

thanks for your help with all this,

N

Report · Jun 03, 2010

I didn't know that shoving black out of frame cost performance and was a
bad idea, but I do now and will do it differently from now on (probably
a transparent layer with TC on that (as I've seen in one of the Adobe
demos).

Yeah, you're basically compositing an entire HD clip on top of your timeline when you do that. If it's me, I'm going to wait until the very end of the edit, and then add the burn. I might even nest the sequence into another of the same format, and then add the burn in to the nested sequence (I'd have to play with that, who knows if that would work as you're expecting.) If you use transparent video, You might get what you're looking for without having to shove the clip out of the frame.

Regarding multiple instances of the colour key on a single clip, this
will either be because I was toggling between two different grades to
see which worked best or because I've screwed up!

That's easy enough to fix, either by disabling the unwanted key, or by doing the obvious, delete the extra key.

Somebody here can probably advise you as to the most efficient way to stack the effects on your clips. Lot of things can happen depending on the order of the effects.

I'll let you know what happens.

Report · Jun 03, 2010

thanks for the pointers. i might just have to hang around this forum even after you've fixed premiere or my workflow for me!

Report · May 28, 2010

Yes, I went there. My wife says that I am a P-I-G pig.

(Apologies to all for the OT post(s). I'll crawl back into my cave now.)

-Jeff