Program monitor will not show footage

[Stephen Barrante]

We've run into a very strange problem that we've only encountered in CC 2019. Any projects created natively on our machines playback footage just fine. We can scrub the clips in the Source monitor, and they playback great in the Program monitor.

Where we are seeing a bizarre issue is anytime we go to open up the project on someone elses machine, we can see the footage play back in the Bin and Source monitor, but can not see the footage in our sequence in the Program monitor. It happens inversely on everyones machines. E.g. original project created on machine A, loaded up on B, won't play back. And likewise on machine B, trying to view on A, doesn't show up..

Attached is a screen shot of what we see.

Clearing caches, quitting, restarting, etc with no luck.

[caroline_edits]

Hi Stephen!

Do you have any overlays turned on? Let's try changing your renderer under File>Project Settings>General.

If it's on OpenCL, change it to Metal, and vice versa.

Let me know!

Caroline

[Stephen Barrante]

Hi Caroline -

Appreciate the quick response to this. Had not been using overlays in this project, but had been turning them on and off recently. I did check to see they are "off".

Oddly enough, I had cycled through those Render settings, and the problem persisted on Open CL and Metal, and software gave me a checkerboard.

I tried it again just now, and it seams to be working on Open CL!

Will test on other machines and report back.

[Christian.Z]

Currently there is a bug with Premiere where Safe margins and Metal don't work well together and causes the issue you are having.

Please check answer above.

[Christian.Z · Accepted solution]

This issue has been proven common for Premiere 13.0.2 and 13.0.3
When safe margins are turned on, the program monitor will show a black/blank screen (sometimes with a white line on the bottom)

I have seen many users complaining about program monitor not playing anything. If you have safe margins on, turn it off.

A bug report has been filed: BUG - 13.0.2 Safe margins disables video output – Adobe video & audio apps

Also, as a workaround, change the renderer from Metal to OpenCL or CUDA

Go to File menu > Project Settings > General > Video Rendering and Playback > Renderer: set to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL)

[CalOES Producer]

I've just run into a very similar problem. Here's my situation:

Editing in PP v14.0. using a new maxed-out MacBook Pro (Mojave 10.14.6, NOT Catalina yet.)

I'm editing 4K video using proxies in multi-cam mode:

MXF File details:

Type: MXF
File Size: 31.94 GB
Image Size: 3840 x 2160
Frame Rate: 25.00
Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 24 bit - 4 channels
Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - 4 channels
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Long GOP High Profile 4:2:0 Unconstrained Coding

Proxy Media:

Type: QuickTime Movie
File Size: 6.72 GB
Image Size: 1024 x 540
Frame Rate: 25.00

4 cameras

Using imac as monitor connected with Thunderbolt 2

More often than not, my video on the program side won't show the video, but i can see the 4 cameras in the multi-cam view. When I click on one of those cameras I CAN see the program, but when I stop and then just hit play I can't see it.

I tried all renderers but no changes help.

I do not have safe margins showing.

Restarting the program or the computer DOES NOT HELP.

Any others with this problem and any potential solutions?

Thank you in advance.

Shawn

[dd-b]

Been struggling with this on my laptop off and on for years. Just now, looking for where to turn off "safe margins" (which I never found; they're on, I see the lines displayed in program monitor), I did find Edit / Preferences / Playback has a checkbox "Disable video output when in background", which was checked. I unchecked it -- and suddenly my program monitor playback started working, and the previews appeared in the timeline.

Premiere Pro (v23.4.0) was not in any way in the background; it was full-screen on my main/only monitor (laptop) and there was nothing on top of it. Could the taskbar being in auto-hide mode make Premiere think it was in the background even when the taskbar isn't showing? I can't think of anything else.

[foxetown · Accepted solution]

I encountered this today for the first time in using Premiere for 15 years.  None of the recommendations here worked, but when I opened an older project the footage displayed properly.  This project used still JPGs from my phone that were uploaded to dropbox and then downloaded to my PC workstation.  These JPGs displayed in the source monitor but not when you dragged them to the sequence.  For some reason, Premiere doesn't like whatever dropbox does to the JPG format.  When I used Photoshop to re-size and re-save the jpgs, it worked.