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

Jeff,

Can I banish you to the corner, behind the plastic plant, just like you always do me?

Hunt

Report · May 28, 2010

Report · May 28, 2010

Jeremy, you've provided the one useful tip that has given me a life saving work around for this problem, but seeing as it would appear not to be a problem relating to upgrading from a previous version of Premiere and also seeing as tclarke is experiencing this on a Mac as well as on PCs, and given the fact that it is making our projects unworkable with repeated instances of project files bloating up to 10GB in size, can I ask what happens now?

I logged a support request with Adobe five days ago but have heard nothing back. In the meantime, this bug is leaving a few of us in a real and ongoing fix.

Would it be helpful if some of us uploaded our bloated project files to Adobe so they can be analysed?

thanks for your input and help with this.

Nat

Report · May 28, 2010

Mister Hunt, is there a mechanism here for uploading files?

Report · May 28, 2010

Jeremy,

Unfortunately, that function has been disabled for some time. Adobe is working on plugging a security hole in it, but nothing has been announced as of yet. I was surprised the other day, as it seemed to come back, at least in this forum, but then disappeared as quickly, as it re-appeared.

The best way to accomplish this now, until the forum feature is re-activated, would be to post to an FTP site, or perhaps to PM a link to a service, like YouSendIt.

We used that feature a lot for log files, and diagnostic text files, but some users seemed to want to upload all sorts of nefarious "stuff."

I just hope that Adobe can fix the security hole and re-institute that feature.

Sorry for the bad news,

Hunt

Report · May 28, 2010

I'm uploading a project file when it was at 180mb and after it had ballooned to 1.5gb.

I'll PM you and Jeremy a download link shortly.

thanks,

N

Report · May 28, 2010

Windows 7 x64, CS5 Production Premium

Intel 58X MB, i7 Core 920, 8 GB RAM, boot from 10K WD Raptor, edit from RAID 0 = 2 Seagate 500GB drives run from a Highpoint RAID controller.

Project created in CS4 and upgraded to CS5, Music videos, 4 camera multi-edit sequences. All cameras are Sony professional or pro-sumer cameras.

At about 8 sequences the project file became bloated (825 MB) and I could no longer save, add or remove sequences from the time line or close the program. Basically it loads as it was, I can play the vdeo in the timeline but anything else locks it up.

I was able to copy and paste a sequence to a new project but lost all my structure, but it does save.

I have submitted a bug report and I started my own thread before this one was pointed out to me.

I have other projects both created in CS5 and upgraded from CS4 but not edited enough to experience this problem yet.

I have thrown the CS5 promo listerature on the floor and am stomping it as I write, I feel better with each heel grind.

Mel

Report · May 28, 2010

I was able to import my base sequence of the band's performance to a new project file. It's 4 cameras in 1920 x 1440 by 83 minutes long. I use it to cut out my indvidual songs. It took almost 1/2 an hour but it worked and my base sequence (minus structure) is now 1.3 MB. A tiny little bugger if ever there was one!

I'm picking the Adobe promo literature up off the floor now....no need to fear, no more stomping today.

Report · Jun 03, 2010

A little info on our project...

Mac Platform

HDV

15 minute timeline.

Titles from the titler in Premiere.

That's it!

This project bloated to 10Gig...

One more thing I forgot...I don't know if it matters but CS4 is still installed next to CS5.

Report · Jun 04, 2010

Importing the timelines worked. Project went from 8GB to 6,2 MB. If you noticed my last post, the file I mentioned just bloated from about 1 GB to about 8 GB. Only change was moving a few keypoints in the the timeline.

If any Adobe employees want to see how a faulty project looks like, I can make it available on my idisc. Just let me know.

Report · Jun 04, 2010

Guess I posted in haste. Thought at first I was suffering from the same issues as the rest of you: large project and cannot save. But although my project was huge, the project file was not nearly as large as these others. Regardless, I tried Jeremy's suggestion and tried importing the sequences into a new project. I first tried several times importing the entire project at once, but it kept freezing up. I thought it still had to do with the size so I tried a few smaller projects, each with only 2 timelines, saving it after each import. This seemed to work until I got to the last sequence. Every previous import took nearly 30 minutes, but this one would "import files" for several hours with no results. I even let it sit over ight and still nothing. There is obviously a glitch with this timeline, but it was identical in nature to the other timelines, just different footage of course. I now know I'm in the wrong thread, but does anyone have any suggestions so I don't have to rebuild this 2 hour video?

Entire project was a 7 day training course. Each timeline was 1 day's worth of video (from 1.5 to 3 hours, 1 video was over 5 hours so I split into 2), about 18 hours total. Added to this was about 400 powerpoint slides and titles. Shot with Canon XH-A1 through OnLocation CS3. I set up HDV 1080p30 sequences as that's what the the Canon shoots and imported the M2T files. Today I found out that these are AVCHD files. Could that be the problem? And how will that affect the video quality? If there's a big difference, I should just be able to use the track select tool and copy the whole timeline into an AVCHD timeline, right?

Premiere CS4, Windows 7

Report · Jun 04, 2010

I have pre and post bloat/unable to save project files. How would I get them to you?

Report · Jun 05, 2010

PM me with your email address, I'll send you a share link.... thanks!

By the way, we think we have a lead on what's going on. It seems to be a combination of rendering preview files and then duplicating the rendered sequences in your project. Eliminating the previews & resaving should bring it back down to size.

Report · Jun 05, 2010

Wil Renczes wrote:
PM me with your email address, I'll send you a share link.... thanks!
By the way, we think we have a lead on what's going on. It seems to be a combination of rendering preview files and then duplicating the rendered sequences in your project. Eliminating the previews & resaving should bring it back down to size.

Awesome!! Looking forward to the fix!!!

Report · Jun 07, 2010

I have also had this problem of project file bloating so that it takes up to 30 mins to save/load. Running windows 7, Raid 0, ATI 5700,

The suggested fix of deleting render files does seem to work, but obviously project needs to be rendered again once it has reduced in size.

Cannot enter a bug report as program does not actually crash it just takes an unacceptable time and disk space to save. Is there a way of creating a report so issue is logged as problem if the program does not actually crash?

At least we have a workaround just now as I have wasted about 2 days looking for a solution for this before finally finding the answer on here,so thanks to those who investigated and found the work arounds.

Report · Jun 07, 2010

You don't need to log a bug, we have several already.

Cannot enter a bug report as program does not actually crash it just takes an unacceptable time and disk space to save. Is there a way of creating a report so issue is logged as problem if the program does not actually crash?

Report · Jun 07, 2010

weemoo and others who need to know:

You don't need to have a crash to file a bug report. Just go here:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

It's the same form that is used for feature requests.

And (whether it is Todd's new work or somethign old I hadn't notice), look at the "Read this before asking questions on this forum." at the top of every forum page. It has that feature request/bug report link and others, including one I didn't know about - the "Crash Reporter" that does what you were describing. (Todd, that link goes to After Effects titled info - any difference to how it works for CS5? Does it work for older CSx's?)

Jeremy, just one more example of how nice it is for an active Adobe presence here. Nice for weemoo to be told "don't bother to file, we got this one." Nice for all of us to know the problem is being worked on.

Report · Jun 07, 2010

Nice for all of us to know the problem is being worked on.

You can say that again!

Report · Jun 07, 2010

> And (whether it is Todd's new work or somethign old I hadn't notice), look at the "Read this before asking questions on this forum." at the top of every forum page. It has that feature request/bug report link and others, including one I didn't know about - the "Crash Reporter" that does what you were describing. (Todd, that link goes to After Effects titled info - any difference to how it works for CS5? Does it work for older CSx's?)

Yep. That was me.

The crash reporter is built into several (but not all) Adobe applications. I don't know the details of which versions of which applications have it integrated; except that I do know that After Effects has had it since CS4. You'll know that it's built in if your application crashes and the crash reporter dialog box opens.

Report · Aug 25, 2010

Thank you for saving me from throwing the computer out the window. Nothing worse than seeing your 7mb premiere file turn into a 1.3gig monstrosity.

Removing the preview files brought it back down to 7.

Can't wait for the fix so this doesn't continue to happen.

Report · Sep 01, 2010

The wait is over. Please see my forum post on the update. And take a look at the readme - lots of improvements with this release, which is why it took us a while to get it out the door!

Sheri

Report · Sep 01, 2010

As Sheri says, the Premiere Pro CS5 (5.0.2) update fixes the issue with project files growing ("bloating").

When you have updated Premiere Pro CS5, let us know whether your problem is fixed.

See this page for details about the Premiere Pro CS5 (5.0.2) update:

http://bit.ly/djiyh4

Please report bugs that persist after the update here:

http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

Report · Sep 02, 2010

...made the Initial check and downloaded the updated drives from Nvidia (for our Quadra FX 3800) and for the first time it's working (CUDA accelerator) from the loading of the project to the smooth and vibrant playback (very sharp on our computer-preview monitor, best I've seen so far). Bloating has not been thoroughly tested yet, but rendering the sequence in "GPU accelerator mode" is working smoothly for the first time.

that's my initial update for now. Our system (Windows 7, 64 bit - Intel (R) Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz) is running smoothly.

best,

Layne

Report · Oct 10, 2010

Unfortunately the upgrade did not work. The file opens, the clock starts ticking and nothing happens. I have let it run for as long as 30 minutes and nothing happens. I have tried deleting the rendered files. It did not work. I was however able to open a completely new project, but everything related to the old one does not work.

I have to ask what caused this. I had a lot of a lot of green screen generated in After Effects, but I merged it to a background in Premiere instead of After Effects. Could that be part of the problem? The patch also does not seem to work.

Any suggestions about this? I am in a MacBook Pro with 4 G of RAM. Is that too low?

Report · Oct 11, 2010

I've been told that 4 gigs of ram is low, 8 is recommended. I'm not sure why this is happening on your end. this may be better answered by MacBook Pro users and the veterans at Adobe.

Layne