Repeated refresh or regeneration of clip thumbnails

[Loveppro11]

When I'm editing in PPRO CC 2014.2 I have noticed now that each time I set a IN AND OUT MARKERS either in the SOURCE WINDOW or do a insert clip onto the SEQUENCE PANE,  all the thumbnails of each clip in the Project window and on the sequence

completely go blank to regenerate or refresh the image of the thumbnail per each clip.

I have to wait until the regeneration is done before I can continue.

I have the Latest desktop MacPro 3.5 GHz 6-Core INtel Xeon with 32 gigs of ram.

[backsilver]

Hi ,i can confirm that it takes an insane amount of time to load the thumbnails and to be able to start working with the clips.

That sucks a lot...

[deeeeeeeee]

for me it's really better now! (PC). it seems it prioritizes PLAY now instead of building thumbnails. also, when it does the thumbnails it's finished in a flash, and not like... tick.. tock.. tick.. tock...

not sure yet if it is up to 2014.1 speed but i enjoy editing a lot more already.

maybe only improved on PC?

david

[WithersDigital]

I am probably shooting myself in the foot but I've edited about 16 hours on El Capitan with 2015.1 and have not had an issue so far. I would see the issue every 20 minutes usually, but we all know how random this can be so I will try to log 40 hours of editing before I call it fixed for me. It is a clean installation of El Capitan 10.11.1 and I'm using the Nvidia Web Driver 346.03.03f02.

Now excuse me while I knock on every wood surface in the house.

[Ben_Walton]

Has there been a fix for this yet?

Had my brand new iMac, top spec, for nearly 6 months now and it's been happening since purchase!

Updated & reinstalled PPCC several times, reinstalled OSX twice, wiped HD's cleared caches...

Please someone tell me Adobe have sorted this by now? It's getting ridiculous.

[WithersDigital]

No fix because it can't be reproduced on command. Submit a bug report: Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Also can you tell us the following to help the community narrow it down:

1) What type of footage are you working with (DSLR h264, ProRes, etc)

2) What are the specs of your iMac (model, ram, cpu, video card and OS version)

3) How are you storing the footage (external vs internal HD)

4) At what point in your process is the problem the worst (as soon as you start a new project, or towards the end doing color correction and finishes)

5) What version of Premiere?

Does the purge command described previously do anything for you?

[Ben_Walton]

Uch.. sucks. Already submitted one.

1) Footage is DSLR & h264

2) 2015 iMac. 32GB RAM, 4GHz Intel Core i7, AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB

3) Footage stored both on the internal HD & external HD's.

4)Usually occurs midway through a project, normally on longer edits of about 20 minutes.

5)Using PPCC 2015.1 - but has been occuring since I installed CC in June.

Hadn't seen the previous comment about purge. Will try it now.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello Ben,

Please someone tell me Adobe have sorted this by now? It's getting ridiculous.

Sorry. We have not fixed the issue as we cannot reproduce the error on our Macs in the lab. Please give us steps on how you get the error in a bug report.

Thanks,
Kevin

[carsonporter]

Sorry to seem so flippant, but the only common symptom that induces the

problem is "using the application to edit footage". Therefore it's hard for

us to tell you what key factor induces the constant refresh of thumbnails.

I'm be happy to bring my iMac (or even laptop) to your lab and show you the

problem firsthand.

Please take me up on this offer as we have been going round and round on

this "users have a problem" > "Adobe can't replicate the problem" loop for

over a year now.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 10:33 AM Kevin-Monahan <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[Ben_Walton]

How frustrating.

As Carosporter said - there are no "steps" its not something that just happens after clicking certain buttons, it seems to be completely spontaneous and unpredictable. Occuring at any given time when simply editing footage.

Sometimes it happens hours into an edit, days even - and sometimes minutes.

There are no step 1, 2 & 3 to make it happen.

This is getting beyond now, please Adobe sort this out! Obviously there are a tonne of people being affected by it.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Ben,

its not something that just happens after clicking certain buttons...

it seems to be completely spontaneous and unpredictable....

Occuring at any given time when simply editing footage...

Sometimes it happens hours into an edit, days even - and sometimes minutes....

There are no step 1, 2 & 3...

While I understand your frustration, the lack of steps to make the issue recur makes it very difficult to fix. Have you filed your bug report yet? If not, please do so.

In the mean time, I'll see if I can get any traction on this issue. While it seems like I'm the bad guy here, just know that it is me that is advocating for a fix on your behalf and I'm tap dancing as fast as I can to draw more attention to this problem.

Thanks,
Kevin

[deeeeeeeee]

for PC, i can now say it's much better with the new version, maybe completely gone. i enjoy editing again.

to adobe, it doesn't help to keep saying "file a bug report". even after doing that you are completely in the dark what's been done with it. no reply or anything, after a year or so, you don't think it's taken seriously. the problem is not just 'it's someone's system'.. too many people have trouble with it. there is someone in this group offering you to show it personally. if i were adobe i'd think out of the box to nail down the problem and accept this generous offer to help many users.

again, for me it seems good now, but it has taken over a year of frustrated editing, and projects suffering because premiere just resopnded too slowly.

i hope all Mac users can go forward soon too!

d

[Anthony Rizzuto]

After latest update on Mac, it seems the issue has finally been addressed (for me at least).  Although there is some intermittent icon 'flashing/loading' during some scrolling & navigating timeline and after play stops, when actually playing the timeline, the 'loading' seems to pause and playback is smooth.

...although this is by no means a perfect solution.  I still get annoyed by the clip flashing after a while and do s sudo purge anyway

[ppohio]

Been back at work in the New Year and working on trying to get some concrete evidence on how to reproduce this - quick question for folks experiencing the issue: do you use KEM style editing or clip style editing?

I notice that I am able to reproduce this problem much more quickly when I am working in my usual KEM mode of editing. That is, I create string-out sequenes of my media (a day's worth of clips - I do mostly verite doc stuff) and then load that into my source monitor and edit from that down to the timeline. On my current project I am also doing this with a lot of multi-cam footage, putting an hour or two of multi-cam'd stuff into the source monitor and pulling bites from that down into my timeline. I noticed that I don't get the thumbnail refreshing as often when I am just loading clips into the source monitor and pulling from those.

I am curious how others are working with their footage - seeing as many Premiere users don't edit in the KEM style and I am looking for anything that we can send to the engineers to consistently reproduce the issue.

[carsonporter]

Again, I'd say that's pointing toward a RAM issue. I'd think loading 3

hours of dailies into the source monitor as one piece of footage would tax

the RAM more quickly.

Fwiw I use the same style of editing but only work in the timeline rather

than creating a timeline and then loading that into the source monitor. I

drop markers on points of interest and then race through those markers when

looking for broll. Or I copy clips from interview timelines into an edit

sequence. (Hope that makes some sense)

[WithersDigital]

I edit in this same style.

I noticed on a recent project with heavy use of Warp Stabilizer (just removing subtle camera shake, I promise!) I noticed the thumb refresh all the time as the project file grew to >200mb, and the purge command would only work for 1-2 minutes. I ended up having to bake out the clips and re-import them and now have a more normal experience. When this project is over I will blanket warp stabilize a bunch of footage to try to push the project to the point where I can reproduce the thumbnail refresh guaranteed.

[Wes Howell]

Hello Withers,

Re: Warp Stabilizer project.

WithersDigital‌

New to this issue but here to help.

Would you be able to share a project like this with us if I send you a hard drive?

Having a reasonably sized project that does a good job of reproducing the issue would be a great start.  The project with warp stabilizer sounds like a great candidate.

If it's easy to recreate, I'd be happy to work with you directly to do this - however, if sharing the exact project or projects is possible - that would be ideal.

Next,  let's work together to clarify repro steps as closely as possible so we can reproduce it our side.

I would like to get this in this project into the hands of an engineer with a Mac with 32 GB of memory.   I can make that happen.

If others have interest in sharing a project that reproduces this issue feel free to message me directly or post in this thread.

I will be monitoring this issue closely and regularly.

Wes Howell

Premiere Pro Quality Engineer

[carsonporter]

yeah, that sounds good. I can find a couple candidates for projects that

reproduce this issue.

Let me calculate file size for the projects and I'll let you know what size

drive you should send.

Are you here in the Bay Area or located elsewhere?

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 3:41 PM, Wes Howell <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[WithersDigital]

Hi Wes,

That sounds great. This project is about 160GB. Just PM me for details. I have access to another Mac Pro (6,1) and will do some testing on that later this week as well, to see if I can work out some definite steps to reproduce the issue.

[ppohio]

Awesome, thanks for the update Carson. That is exactly what I am thinking - that loading tons of clips in the timeline is taxing the RAM. I have been working the past couple days with my Activity Monitor open and I've noticed that Premiere doesn't keep eating RAM (it tends to cap out around 4gb on my system, despite the settings), but loading tons of clips into the timeline causes the "Cached Files" to rapidly balloon. As I understand it, "cached files" are Mavericks/Yosemite/El Capitan's name for files that were in RAM but have been "let go" and are sitting waiting to be accessed again. I notice that on my system, with some consistency, when I get over ~14gb of "Cached Files" the timeline starts a-blinking. Sudo purge clears out those "cached files" back down to about 200mb so that is the why I started looking at that number.

I also put a lot of markers on my string-outs, and last night when I was going through interviews I noticed that the markers started making the timeline flash (this was coincidentally around the time I hit that 14gb Cached Files mark). Probably not related, but just something I noticed.

Withers, just saw your response, so maybe we are on to something - it would explain why every Premiere user isn't having this problem, because they aren't dealing with tons of clips most of the time. Even in complicated projects, they only have one sequence with a lot of clips, and otherwise edit by just loading single clips into the source monitor. I know a lot of folks don't edit in the string-out mode (but they should! )

[WithersDigital]

Nice detective work! I can confirm the "Cached Files" in activity monitor correlates to the issue. I am fine until it hits ~8GB (I have 32GB Ram and Prem is set to use 26), then the blinking/refresh begins. The purge command brings it down to around 200mb.

I wonder if there's a way we can artificially stress/inflate the Cached Files on OS X so we can reproduce the issue on command?

Also I wonder if there's some difference with how "Cached Files" are handled on Macbook Pros that don't see this issue (so far from the thread it's only iMacs and Mac Pros, and one PC -- I think).

[desublimation]

The more I read about this the more it starts to happen...Just manually cleaned 14 GB out of the Media Cached Folder, seemed to fix thing, for a moment. Blinking thumbnails started right back up as it rebuilt the cache.

The one interesting thing I did notice is that, after the thumbnails stop blinking (usually by minimizing them) I could get them to start right up again (blinking) by switching desk tops (mouse swipe or command+tab). No clue what this means.

It does seem tied to the size of the Media Cache Files though, because it dosen't start until that gets over 6 GB for me. Literally watched it rebuild a large project cache and after a certain point the blinking thumbnails began.

(iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015 4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon R9 M390 2048 MB, OSX 10.11.2 Premiere CC 2015.1)

[WithersDigital]

Hey desublimation,

Are you able to get the blinking thumbnails guaranteed every time you switch desktops (I assume you mean Spaces?) 

If you open activity monitor, go to the Memory tab and watch the "Cached Files" at the bottom, do you notice that number getting to a certain point before the thumbnail blinking starts? For instance, mine has to get to 8GB before I encounter the problem.

[desublimation]

Hello Withers,

Once the blinking has started, yes, but it seems like it has to be triggered by scrubbing/zooming/scaling the thumbnails. (I can get the blinking to stop by hiding the thumbnails)

From what I can tell after doing a few tests, the blinking starts whenever my used memory + cached files get close to the full 32 GB of ram. For instance, it just started at 22 GB cached files with close to 10 gb of Memory Used... and earlier started at 24 GB cached around 8 GB Memory used...

Another fun fact: When the blinking starts, the fan in my imac starts revving up and CPU load goes from user 7% to around 80%

I am at a total loss... (yes adobe I filed a bug report)

[ppohio]

Interesting - this is almost exactly the behavior I am experiencing. Very similar numbers in terms of Cached Files and RAM, as well as the CPU load firing up if I leave them blinking. So, maybe we are getting somewhere in terms of submitting another bug report.

[dennisv2476103]

Hi all, i also filed a bug report.

I just got my brand new iMac 5k with maxed out specs and the editing is still horrible. I thought on my older 2011 iMac the problem was it's age, but now i found out it's still there with the new iMac.

Exactly as described earlier. Thumbnails load randomly and slow, i have to scroll down to load the rest of the thumbnail. Editing experience is slow and horrible.

I did the purge Ram sudo but no improvement there.

I hope there will be a solution for this soon cuz the idea of going to FCX horrifies me.