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

[alexr83952745]

Currently having this issue. Worked fine yesterday. Today - black window. When I change to Editing Workspace, the whole thing is black. Filed a bug report with Adobe.

[alexr83952745]

Disabled Nvidea driver, restarted Premiere, and image is back.

[FSR_Industries]

I'm having this issue. Mac OSX 10.12.6. Up to date with PP CC and all drivers.

It's random. It works fine then nothing. Some days it's worse than others. Timeline still plays but just nothing happening on the Program monitor. If I save, quit PP and reopen it, it's fixed for the time being, then happens again generally. Often it's after I've had a source clip playing in the source monitor but it's not a pattern that I can really work out. Some times I can open 100 clips as I browse for what I'm looking for and it's fine, other days (like today), it'll have 5 times in an hour. It's not that I can't work, but it's getting pretty damn frustrating when you've got deadlines and you finally get some momentum up, only to find you have to restart and find that momentum again.

I'd love a fix for this.

Cheers, JR

[dyaneg]

I am having a similar issue in the latest version CC2018 and 2017. This seems to be related to the outside display monitor I am using while teaching (which causes lots of problems with demos). I have resorted to making screen casts of the lesson to circumvent the issue but a fix would be great!

[Rich Hall Reps]

I am having the same issue - Windows 10, NVIDIA GTX1060 w/ 6GB, fresh drivers and software.

Just had a lengthy online chat with Adobe representative Pawan, who was nice but blames the issue on my GH5 400mbps original files. I am told that no other camera has this problem. Of interest, I was told that the GH5 codec was included in the Oct2017 release of PPro, that the problem(s) were solved.

Please respond here with the camera and codec you are experiencing this problem with.

[daniellew88151752]

Currently having this issue. Worked fine just the other day. Today opened up the project I've been working on - black window. When I change to Editing Workspace, the whole thing is black. Filed a bug report with Adobe.

[Rich Hall Reps]

I am having the same issue - Windows 10, NVIDIA GTX1060 w/ 6GB, fresh drivers and software.

Just had a lengthy online chat with Adobe representative Pawan, who was nice but blames the issue on my GH5 400mbps original files. I am told that no other camera has this problem. Of interest, I was told that the GH5 codec was included in the Oct2017 release of PPro, that the problem(s) were solved.

Please respond here with the camera and codec you are experiencing this problem with.

[georg_ekg]

I'm having this problem with various type of footage. It is pretty stupid to blame one specific camera model when there are so much people complaining and having the same problem. It seems that all of them (us) using the same camera. According to Adobe representative

[welshonemillion]

Hi Kevin,

I replied to this discussion some years ago - don't know if this is relevant but I hope this info may be useful to you.

A few months ago I was helping one of my students with a problem exporting from Premiere on a 2013 15 inch MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM.

Now in fairness to Premiere, the student had made a long video comprised of many many many high res JPGs - so I felt it was pretty understandable that Premiere would struggle - it was an older computer after all, and the video had been constructed from lots of images, with each one being of a very considerable file size.

I took the file home with me and experimented and experimented on my own 2014 15 inch MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and 2GB Nvidia GPU - now not the newest of Macs.

Premiere kept crashing at the same specific point in the export process.

I thought at the time that the problem was perhaps a corrupt JPG or Premiere may have run out of memory - as I said, there were many many high res JPGs.

I managed to narrow the problem down to somewhere around 3/4 of the way through what as I remember was an approximately 5 minute film but I couldn't get beyond this in terms of figuring out exactly where the problem lay within the student's file.

I tried loads of different ways of exporting, through the standard Premiere export options, and through Media Encoder, lots of different settings / codecs / various GPU settings / switching GPU off etc etc etc. But same result at the same point in the process each time.

Once again, I thought, OK - fair enough, this file has been constructed without converting each JPG to low res, the file must be the problem. It's understandable that Premiere might have a problem with what was a very inefficiently constructed file. And also, my Mac is a bit older.

As a last resort I decided to import the Premiere sequence I was having the problem with as a Dynamic Link into After Effects on my 2014 MacBook Pro 15 inch and tried exporting through the After Effects Render Queue, using very similar settings as I'd been using when in Premiere to do the export.

To my surprise, the Premiere sequence exported first time when the process was undertaken by After Effects. I repeated the export a few times just to be sure it wasn't by chance and sure enough, After Effects could perform the export of the Premiere sequence. But Premiere itself could not.

After that I had wondered if After Effects was slightly more stable than Premiere when memory intensive files are involved?

Kind regards,

John

[MHP777123]

Adding my two cents here. In my case, the black Program Monitor occurs when I export an Essential Graphics clip as a new Motion Graphics Template in My Library. After two or three such exports, not only does the Program Monitor go black, but the new MGTs refuse to show their Video Thumbnails in the EG panel. All other VTs for the MGTs in My Library, including previous ones I have exported as well as the many built-in Adobe ones, still show just fine. ONLY the VTs for the new ones go black (as well as the Program Monitor), until I quite PR and restart it.

System: Intel i7-6900 (8 cores w/hyperthreading = 16, 3.2GHz), 64G RAM, nVidia GTX1080 (8G), Win 10, all with the very latest drivers.

My system is fast enough that it should have zero issues, unless it actually is an nVidia graphics driver thing as so many respondents seem to imply. However, seeing as the Video Thumbnails still show on all BUT the newly added MGTs, I have to wonder about that. Furthermore, the VT on the video track itself still shows, although the video does not (the Program Monitor is black, so nothing from the Timeline shows).

BTW: Opening Reference Monitor (as mentioned in a previous post) does not help. Nor does turning the track eyeball(s) off and on. And this issue happens on very small projects, for example with only one video clip, two audio clips, and four EG title clips. Only quitting PR and restarting it seems to work. Driver issue or not, PR is the ONLY program I have on my computer, including some rather intense games, with a problem like this. So if it's a driver issue, why don't I have the same problems elsewhere? Why ONLY PR? Logic dictates that the driver is not at fault, and Adobe needs to fix this!

[mihaelap47676769]

PROBLEM SOLVED

I realized that things started to go wrong since my laptop  updated its Windows 10 .Yesterday

Went back to the older version and all is good now

[DHArtDesign]

Hey so I had this black screen problem and the way I fixed it was switch to

1. The GPU is problematic, in general. Choose File > Project Settings > General and set the Renderer to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only

Then I closed premiere, opened it again, started a new project, dragged a clip into it and then onto the timeline. Hit play. It worked. Then closed that and opened my original project. Good as new.

[Leebroath]

I’m getting black screens and have to close PP CC down then load it back up again and the video can be seen in the 2 top panes again. This is pretty bad and has happened a good few times and it’s really doing my head in!

I was getting this on the Tutorials so nothing special and demanding, the panes at the top were the Source and

Program

[Letty2019]

I still can't believe after all these years, the tech gurus at Premiere Pro can not FIX this blank monitor issue. Is there some kind of patent issue on what is compatible and what is not? I have yet to read any real answers about this issue. All I know, is I am again left without any means to edit my project and I'm looking at a lawsuit from the company that hired me because I can not deliver. The "company" doesn't care about GPUs and blank monitors, they just want their video. PPro tech's have really dropped the ball and left hundreds, if not 1000's of editors without a means to earn a living. Why? Why can't they solve a simple issue like 'Being able to see the video clip????" BTW, my specs: PPRo v 13.0.2 AMD Ryzen 1800x 8 core, GTX 1050 Ti 4gb, 32gb ram, 3.9 brain chip...a decent setup that you would think could run PPRo with ease... but doesn't. Why am I subscribing to a product that does not work???

[DHArtDesign]

Hi Letty2109,

I am so sorry about your situation. A couple posts back, I posted a

temporary solution that now makes no sense but worked in the past. Maybe it

can get u through this project. I used my old account name DHArtDesign

Hey so I had this black screen problem and the way I fixed it was switch to

1. The GPU is problematic, in general. Choose File > Project Settings >

General and set the Renderer to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only

Then I closed premiere, opened it again, started a new project, dragged a

clip into it and then onto the timeline. Hit play. It worked. Then closed

that and opened my original project. Good as new.

Best,

Dani

[Letty2019]

Thanks, but I've tried that a few days ago, didn't work for me. 

I think when Windows updated, it now doesn't play well with the GPU drivers and screws up the CUDA.  The only change made to my computer was the random Windows updates, so I feel the culprit lies there.

Opened a case with Adobe and maybe tomorrow I will have some real answers.

I'm still shocked and disturbed that the PPro techs can't stay on top of this problem before it hits consumers in the face. 

I must spend 3 hours of killing software bugs in PPro for every hour editing I do.  It's such a waste of energy I'm starting to hate editing again.

[DHArtDesign]

I see, I have experienced some bugs with windows 10 and my CS6 versions of

some of the software. There is a way to open a program in an earlier

version of windows. I do that and my programs work fine (you can even save

the setting so every time it opens it will open with that earlier version

of windows.

To do this, you right click the software icon (I do this to the shortcut on

my desktop), then click troubleshoot compatability and open it with an

earlier version of windows.

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/set-compatibility-mode-windows-10

Just follow the top part of the link. Please let us know how it goes.

Best,

Dani

[Letty2019]

That was a great tip..... but.... sadly, it didn't work.  I opened it up in win8  and had same problem.

There must be elements in win10 that are affecting the gpu and opening it up in 8 won't change things.

I am going to start removing win10 updates, and bring it down to where PPro was working last. I found 2 updates since the date the program stopped working right.

I'm going to let Adobe techs take a crack at it before I start peeling away layers of win10. 

Thanks again,

Letty

[DHArtDesign]

Awesome! My prayers are with you for quick and smooth resolution of this

problem. Please let us know what you find out.

[Letty2019]

Spent 90 mins with Adobe in India, and nothing so far. 

He did all the usual tricks, clear cache, check the drivers, open new projects.... the whole time I kept asking him, "do you have experience with this problem?"  and he said "of course, it's easy to fix."  (his exact words)

after 30 mins, I knew he was trouble shooting... then after an hour I knew he didn't know what he was doing.

After 90 mins I got the impressions that he would've trouble shoot'd for another hour if I let him.

I had to finally draw the line and I fell into the same old Adobe Tech Support trap of asking to "escalate" my case.

It will be a miracle if I get a call back from a higher up tech.   I am expecting to be ignored, then when I call them back, have to start the whole process over again with a new tech and a new session of inane trouble shooting.

I purposely purchased high end computer stuff to deal with PPro.  For God's sakes I'm only editing DV video.  I figure a 4 gb video card w/cuda, 32 gb of ram, 4 hard drives, Asus Rog motherboard, 3.9 processor with 8 cores would be sufficient to run PPro. 

But, what do I know? I'm just an idiot that purchased an editing program I used over 10 years ago, and figured after 10 years they would've killed all the bugs in this piece of sh*t program by now     I was wrong.

[DHArtDesign]

I am so sorry, that is awful. I really hope they get u in touch with

the higher up soon. Make sure u know exactly how to duplicate the problem

for when they call.

[JBPDW]

Hi Letty2019,

I feel your frustration as I still have not resolved this issue after all this time. I have now given up on PremPro and use FCPX exclusively and despite it's shortcomings it is editing heaven in comparison.

I sincerely hope you manage to get this issue resolved and are able to complete your project on time for your client.

[shifrak91846360]

this tip worked perfectly for me

thank you so much

[Aseem00753]

hi.

i recently updated my NVIDIA drivers, and now the program monitor goes black whenever i pause the playback or if i am working with graphics.

I am using Premiere Pro V13.1.5 (Build 47)

System specs:

Intel i7-8750H

16GB RAM

GPU: nVidia GTX1060 6GB

GPU driver: v445.87 (15th april 2020)

Which driver version should i roll back to?

since this problem clearly has arisen with the update of my GPU driver.

[Guest]

Hi, 

iam having the same issue since a half year now. Contacted Adobe Support many times, but they couldnt help. The good old " I have to escalate this case to my supervisor, he will get back to you " nothing ever happened, or they will tell you to contact NVIDIA to get help there. 

Its pretty crazy that this been around for years now and they cant fix this. 

It is super depressing.