Program monitor keeps going black in Premiere Pro CC

[Jon Bradford]

PC - Premiere Pro CC - AMD Fire Pro (13.101-130604a-158071E-ATI)

I'm working on a project and the program monitor keeps going black in Premiere Pro CC while I am working on the timeline. I've got like 28 GB of memory alocated to the program and just updated the latest driver for my video card. No clue why this keeps happening, but the only way I can get around it is to restart. When I go to close down the program freezes and I have to shut it down in the system preferences.

Under a crazy deadline if you can help? Thanks

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jerod,

I'm running the latest software on all fronts. I have OS X 10.11.1 and CC 2015.1.

Can you give us details about your system and media?

Honestly, never had this problem before the second to last CC update.

I'm sure you know this, but as software progresses and becomes more complex, there tends to be more stringent requirements for your hardware. Like a straw that breaks the camel's back, what worked before is not always guaranteed to work in the present. This is somewhat true for my once powerful MacBook Pro. It now should be replaced with a system with a more powerful GPU and more RAM to keep up with 4K workflows and the Lumetri Color panel.

If your system is up to spec, it could be some other anomaly that we haven't uncovered yet, like a problematic GPU or the like. More info would help.

Thanks,

Kevin

[jerodkdunn]

Thanks for the responses Kevin.

I'm running the first gen retina macbook pro with 16GB of RAM. I believe it has a 650M with a gb of memory. I do edit a lot of 4k h.264 files, but the previously mentioned symptoms occur even while messing around with 720p video I've rendered previously in media encoder.

I know my machine isn't the newest thing on the block, but it should be more than capable of running basic tasks in an NLE.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jerod,

I'm running the first gen retina macbook pro with 16GB of RAM. I believe it has a 650M with a gb of memory. I do edit a lot of 4k h.264 files, but the previously mentioned symptoms occur even while messing around with 720p video I've rendered previously in media encoder.

I know my machine isn't the newest thing on the block, but it should be more than capable of running basic tasks in an NLE.

I think I have the same machine as you do. I have no issues running the application. The only difference is that I'm not running OS X 10.11 on this machine yet (working up to it). Were things running better before you updated your OS?

Thanks,

Kevin

[welshonemillion]

Hi Kevin,

Having experienced a bug with the Program Monitor going black in Adobe CC2015.2 I've uploaded the info below as a bug report.

I have a MacBook Pro 2014 (15 inch) with Nvidia GT750m graphics card - not the newest possible hardware but there are people with newer hardware than myself experiencing the same problem.

This would imply that the cause of this problem is not older hardware. I could believe older hardware could create such a problem, but I don't think it's the cause of the issue in my case, or in the cases of those with newer and more powerful hardware than I have and who are experiencing the same or similar problems.

Please can I ask you to ensure the relevant staff within Adobe are aware of this issue so it can be resolved as a matter of priority.

Thanks for your time and assistance and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

John

Steps to Reproduce Bug:

1. MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) running Mac OS 10.11.3 (i.e. latest versions of system software)

Processor 2.8Ghz Intel Core i7

Memory 16GB 1600 Mhz DDR3 (11GB RAM is allocated to Premiere out of 16GB)

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB

CUDA Driver Version: 7.5.25 (i.e. latest version of driver)

GPU Driver Version: 10.8.14 310.42.15f01 (i.e. latest version of driver)

I have also installed all updates to Adobe CC2015.

2. Choose Premiere CC > Preferences > General > Set Image Default Duration to 5 seconds

(set File > Project Settings > General with Renderer set to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (Cuda))

3. Choose File > Import (and import a 6000 x 4000 pixel jpg image straight from a Nikon D5300)

4. JPG is listed as a clip in the Project panel

5. Click the jpg clip

6. Choose File > New Sequence from Clip (clip is automatically added to timeline)

7. Click on clip in timeline

8. Choose Window > Effect Controls

9. Go into the Motion menu

10. Set scale to 50%

11. Drag playhead along the timeline

Results:

Program Monitor goes black

Expected Results:

Program Monitor goes black

Same thing can happen when zoom level in Program monitor is changed. Sometimes 100% zoom level brings back image but not always.

Tried switching between graphics cards via File > Project Settings > General

When Renderer is set to ‘Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (Cuda)’ the problem appears.

When Renderer is then set to ‘Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL) the problem sometimes goes away temporarily but then comes back. Sometimes Program Window goes white.

When Renderer is then set to ‘Mercury Playback Engine Software Only’ problem sometimes goes away although image can also disappear from Program monitor leaving it entirely grey. Very inconsistent. Have also seen strange coloured ‘static’ patterns appearing in Program Monitor.

Have seen a similar problem in Adobe Premiere CS6 installed on same Mac with same hardware.

From my reading, I think the problem is related to similar issues described here.

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1249356?tstart=0

When Premiere is first opened, if Renderer is set to ‘Mercury Playback Engine Software Only’ and I go through the steps above, the problem doesn’t seem to occur. However this is not an appropriate work around in the longer term as GPU acceleration should work properly.

Please can Adobe fix this problem. If there's an issue between Adobe CC2015.2 and the latest version of Mac OS 10.11.3, or between Adobe and Nvidia (although similar problems also occur with other manufacturer's cards from what I've read) please can Adobe liaise with Apple or Nvidia/relevant GPU manufacturer(s) in order to find a solution.

Thanks for your time and assistance.

Kind regards,

John

[evan-g]

Recently working on a i7 3Ghz system with 2 Gpus where this issue occurs.

Read Kevin's post about disabling slower GPU and went to Nvidia control Panel to switch off Cuda from the smaller GPU and also played with mixed GPU acceleration settings from performance, compatibility mode etc. And of course turned off secondary monitor playback preview from PR.

None of these had any positive outcome.

From what I noticed, the blank monitor occurs any time I change the in or out points by either dragging or ripple/rolling edit, not of V1 video track, but from V2 track upwards,  which consist of stills layers composed using the Basic 3D effect which is Cuda accelerated.

When I disable  Mercury acceleration for the project settings, no monitor window black outs occur, BUT all of the layers with the Basic 3D applied onto them are offset left and up into a wrong position, making using just software only mode unusable (unless one by one, all of these layers are re positioned.)

Switching back to Cuda mode, positions them correctly again but with the black outs with any drag in/out of said layers...

[THans]

I'm having a similar problem.  Everything seems to be fine for the most part but my big difference, which I, too believe is a bug in the system.  Every time I click on the Color on the top, next to the editing, my whole program goes black.  I can reopen the project file and get back to where I was but that tab goes black every time.  I'm currently in a class at a college so having a problem like this when a grade depends on it, isn't cool.  Please look into this.  It was working just fine a week ago and now, it's not working fine at all.  Please advise.

[Guest]

Macbook Pro mid 2012 (El Capitan 10.11.1), Core i7 2,6, 16 GB RAM.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

Same problem

Never had an issue with lack of resources with CUDA and Premiere before even working with 4K footage.

Now I just could not edit anything with this black screen.

I doubt it's an issue of my resources, I couldn't go back to previous system (Yosemite), I just want Adobe or Apple to fix the issue or at least to tell us that you know about the issue, that you're trying to fix it and that's it's not someone personal problem of hardware, but a common problem happening with many-many people (most of them also have never used feedback option to tell you about the problem).

[Richard Crook]

I was having the same problem.  I tried everything, but noticed the culprit was images that exceed 1920x1080 (the sequence size).  I resized them externally on a photo editor and boom...no more black screens.

[Keith Moreau]

I actually noticed that placing large pngs did this as well. Or adding effects to those PNGs, for example adding a crop to a PNG caused this problem. Removing it didn't resolve it, I had to restart to resolve the problem. Replacing the PNG with a JPG solved the black screen problem (this time). I cannot scale my images to 1080P, what if I need to add some motion to the image? It has to be larger than 1080P. These are basic problems that should be tested and confirmed by Adobe and fixed, it's very simple stuff. There are so many instances from people in this thread alone to be able to reproduce and fix this problem. I'm imploring Adobe to resolve this asap. In the last couple of days I've had to restart Ppro 2015 about 15 times to reset the problem which can occur in a number of scenarios, many involving still image files but others now.

[blueyedea]

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[GregTR]

Actually for me it seems like if my playback is set to 100% I don't get a blackout but if it's set to 50% or Fit I get a blackout. I have tried everything else that was listed by others to no avail. I'm about to purchase a stronger video card and see if the acceleration support is better with it without blackouts.

[Keith Moreau]

Hi Greg

You can get a better graphics card but I don't think that is the solution to the problem, though it could speed up Premiere Pro. There are people experiencing this problem with the highest end systems. Though Kevin Monahan's list of possible workarounds is helpful, and I applaud Adobe for having a Adobe staff presence in this forum, I feel that Adobe's comment that this problem is due to an inadequate system is a red herring for most people out there. The problem lies, I feel, in Premiere Pro having a bug, and I also feel this should be one of the highest priorities for Adobe engineers to solve this. It has been 6 months since cc2015 was released. As I've mentioned in my podcast, "TechMove" -www.techmovepodcast.com - Adobe needs to stabilize their software first before adding features. A system that needs to be restarted or time consuming workarounds, starts losing it's usefulness, particularly for professionals with deadlines.

-Keith

[MrBarkan]

I've been simply avoiding using CUDA as an accelerator lately, OpenCL has been working quite well since the last update. But when on CUDA what makes it work for me is avoiding to have any other apps open, such as a browser or even a video player like VLC.

[GregTR]

OK. I did bite the bullet and bought a new video card. I replaced my ATI Radeon 5450 with a Gefore GTX 960 as I started doing some linear modifications on some of my clips which could be offloaded to the GPU so it sped up my render times by twofold. A one hour video now only takes 3.5 hours instead of 7, however for all practical intent and purposes 3.5 vs. 7 does not make a difference for me, it's still an overnight render.

The blackouts have improved meaning that I could actually enable CUDA in premiere and have playback work for the most part. However it still breaks down at times in some scenarios which is quite frustrating as I still have to have it disabled for playback due to these scenarios.

I record hockey games with 5 cameras. I create a multi camera stream of 4 of these cameras and I have another nested stream with the same camera stream on top of each other three times with different crops to display the clock and the home and visitor penalties. Then my final work stream has the multi camera stream on the bottom and the nested clock stream on top. When there is a goal or a penalty I crop out a small part of the multi-camera stream and repeat it above the other streams and remap its time to 50% for a slow motion replay. If my project has more than 3 of these replays then the replay does no longer work, it just shows a black field as soon as I do the time remap. Now the weird part is that if I flatten this multi-camera stream for the replay (I usually use the same camera angle for the replay period anyway) then everything works and it previews fine with CUDA. However Since I make color/level adjustments to the raw streams but keep them turned off during the camera angle cutting phase it's a pain to flatten the multi camera stream for the replays as I damn better have these adjustments right by then otherwise I have to redo them for each replay.

So as of right now I turned off CUDA once again. It's rather unfortunate that this bug cannot be eliminated with 3+ years of feedback on the issue.

[RagnarUlricson]

I've had this exact problem and it caused a lot of ruckus. Came of course when I least needed it and it took me several days to pinpoint it.

I'm on Windows 10 64 Bit, using a Geforce GTX 970 as graphics card.

What caused it, in the end, was that the program "Sonic Suite 2", which is installed by Asus's mainboard software (and I'm not even completely sure what it does) was running in the background.

As soon as I closed this program (and restarted premiere) everything went normal.

So, I'm pretty sure that this is not really Adobe's fault - it might not be the same program, but it's very likely that some application running in the background is causing this problem for you. So really try and close everything that isn't absolutely needed for Premiere and if it works, you can narrow it down, one by one.

It worked for me, hope it helps you as well.

[Revit]

I now have the same issue. I did not have this issue in the past. I am experiencing this with both my windows PC: (Windows 10, Fast i7 quad core comp with a GTX960 graphics card), and my Macbook Pro Retina 15" (with a 660 graphics card). After editing for a while, my Program monitor will go black. Nothing I do fixes it except closing Premiere and re-opening it. I've tried toggling video layer visibility, changing it from alpha to multi-camera (that occasionally lets me see it in a smaller window), etc. This is absolutely a bug in Premiere.

[raveng]

Same problem here, working on W7 x64 i3 3,10 Ghz w/ 4GB with Premiere CC 2015, but solved as Kevin said, Renderer changed to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only. Now Program screen shows correctly the media of the timeline

[Revit]

Yes that may alleviate the black monitor issue but now you just created a different problem for yourself.

[brendan_carolin]

welshonemillion​ has addressed the issue. Adobe, please fix it.

Had to disable the expensive Quadro card so that this program will run correctly.

[Dave_Lalande]

I'm having this same issue.

Windows 7

Certified Adobe workstation from Dell (factory, no mods) a few months old

AMD FirePro W5100

XEON 10 Core

64 GB RAM

This just started happening.  No videos will play in Premiere Pro.  MP4, MOV or anything, all I get is audio.  Adobe Media Encode and After Effects are having no problems with my clips.  I've been using the software for years and have made hundreds if not a thousand videos and now the software is not usable.  I've uninstalled Pr and reinstalled, still has the same issue.

Not good...

[Dave_Lalande]

I reinstalled my video driver and now Pr can play video.  I can't explain why the other Adobe apps were working but Pr was not?

I'm back in action.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave_Lalande]

Looks like I'm still having this problem.  I was able to better track down where I think it's coming from.  When I open Ae and then open Pr the video is black.  I reload my drivers and the video comes back in Pr.

Adobe please advise.

Thanks,

Dave

[kevinmarchese]

Changing to mercury playback engine software only worked for me. At least for the moment. Thank you. Will report back

Mac (27-inch, Late 2012)

3.2 GHz Intel Core i5,

24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1024 MB

10.11.5 OSX

[jusdog083]

I had this problem since updating from Premiere CC to CC 2014. I thought it might be fixed in 2015 and 2015.3, and 2017 but it never was. In projects with a lot of Lumetri color filters, other filters, image file layers, title layers, or after effects layers on the timeline, I had to keep restarting Premiere in order to keep working without the dreaded black screen in the program monitor. The more layers like those mentioned above I had on the timeline, the more often the problem seemed to occur. The more complex projects became the most frustrating to work with.

I have Nvidia GTX 760, 32GB DDR3 RAM, Intel Core i7-3770K and I'm on Windows 7.

I rolled allllll the way back to Nvidia driver 332.21 (found here) from the latest driver, which is now 378.92.

So far so good! I can scrub through all the different layers quickly and the black screen of death has yet to appear. Seems like an Nvidia problem to me.

I should also mention that I adjusted my System Properties to take strain of my video card. I went to System Properties/Advanced/Performance/Settings/Visual Effects and unchecked just about everything except "Smooth edges of screen fonts". Not sure if this helped or not.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thank you for the update jusdog! Could be the ticket for other users w/ the same issue.

Regards,
Kevin