Spinning Wheel When Opening Premiere

[emmdaviswilliams]

Every time I try to open a project in Premiere Pro, I just get the spinning wheel until I eventually give up and force quit the application. This is happening with all my Premiere projects and is not exclusive to a single one (and the projects open fine on other computers). I can open Premiere and create a new project, but if I close Premiere and try to reopen the new project, I get the spinning wheel again. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Premiere. Cleared my cache. Restarted the computer multiple times. I even downloaded the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool, which uninstalled and cleared every Adobe product on my machine, then reinstalled Premiere and still got the same wheel issue. I'm not sure what else to try outside of resetting my entire computer... any suggestions?

[emmdaviswilliams]

*Also - I am on Premiere 15.4 on macOS Big Sur Version 11.1*

[Kevin-Monahan]

emm,

Have you deleted Media Cache? Try it. Choose File > Close All Projects. Choose Preferences > Media Cache from the Home screen. Restart Premeire Pro while pressing the Alt or Option key down. Working?

If the project is still misbehaving, you are probably facing a corrupt project file and need to consider your project back ups, as the one you are working on is faulty beyond repair.

If you don't have any expressly saved back ups (personally, I use the File > Save a Copy at intersections of major changes/work), you can check your Auto Save folder for working back up projects. Sort by the newest files and choose that one.

If the back up project from Auto Save doesn't include a lot of recent work, you can try creating a new project and then using the Media Browser to import the sequences into it from the legacy project, which you inspect from the Media Browser. You should be able to salvage your legacy project from this newer project.

Hope the advice helps you.

Thanks,
Kevin

[emmdaviswilliams]

Hi Kevin,

I have already tried clearing my entire media cache both through Premiere and through the Library folder in my computer. That didn't work.

I don't believe that I have a corrupt project file issue because it's happening with every project I try to open on this machine, but all those projects open fine on other machines and are totally operational. 

It must be an issue with my computer or with the way Premiere is interacting with my computer. I detailed all the things I tried already in my first post, but if you have any suggestions for something I haven't tried, I'm open and willing to try whatever may work!

Thanks.

[emmdaviswilliams · Accepted solution]

Update in case anyone else has this same problem: I spoke with Adobe customer service, and, after about six hours of back and forth, they finally figured out that I needed to change two files names:

Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro - change "Premiere Pro" to "Premiere Pro old"

and

Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common - change "Common" to "Common old"

These name changes seem to have fixed the problem, for now. I'm hesitantly hopeful. 

There are also some other folders they had me add "old" to the end of the folder name - these didn't solve the Premiere issue, but it is possible that they factored into it working in the end, so here are those folder paths as well:

Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat DC Helper Frameworks/OOBE

Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions

[Kevin-Monahan]

Glad it's working, emm. Some brute force actions, sounds like. Please let us know if anything is amiss or goes wrong. OK? Thanks for reporting back.

Thanks,
Kevin

[rhysllwyd]

I faced this same problem this week after upgrading to macOS Monterey. Projects just spun forever when trying to open and had to Force Quit after a while. But projects were still opening without a problem on another Mac so the files were sound. I tried the steps outlined here in terms of re-naming those folder with "old" at the end ... and it works! An odd work-around, but I can now open my files. We'll see how the fix holds over the next few days ... working on a few time sensetive projects ... at least I got my other Mac to fall on up the problem comes back.

[duaneconder]

I was blessed with this problem when I upgraded to the M1 macbook. Changing the two folder names solved the problem! I will ad, though that all previous prefs, like workspaces are gone. I guess it's to old prefs that cause the problem. Thanks so much for posting the solution, I know that was frustrating being on the line with them for so long!! //dc

[pyroglyph]

I only added the “_old” suffix to Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common and that seems to have solved it without making me rebuild all my custom prefs, workspaces, templates, etc.

[Eanzproducer229900771j4o]

This worked for me after many hours of problem solving alone. Thanks so much!!

[defaultmyxjbld3i4m1]

I have a Premiere Pro (PP) project that has a lot of special effects. It's crashed twice in the last two hours. Nothing was running on my computer except PP. I was able to complete 4 graphic transistions. When I went to the next graphic, I got the spining wheel of death. Tomorrow, the project gets shown to my boss and the client on Friday. The plan was to hand it off tonight so that someone else can do the end credits.

Questions:
(1) Does this mean that when my collegues get the PP video, it will also crash their computers?
(2) PP seems to react to the trasistions. How can I stop this glitch? Special graphic effects are what I do.

My plan tonight will be not to finish the project with the additional 4 transitions on 3 stacked graphics or the title that needs a vertical crawl. I'll finish it and send it off to the next person ASAP. It won't let me add the transistions this image. (The graphics have three special effects but it's not moving.)

 

Bev

[Madcom Productions]

It also happens in our company when we open a premiere project on an other mac with a different second monitor setup - It happens only if we use a second monitor for playback in the project. (Catalina & Big Sur, Premiere 15.2 and higher) Solution is to start premiere while pressing alt ("option" on mac keyboard) and reset all settings. Very annoying since we pass the project along a lot.

[jm58009424]

We had this problem and it was driving us crazy...Did all the suggested deleting of cache files, reinstalling etc etc etc. Sometimes it would work. Other times we'd be stuck not able to work, losing half days/days way too often.

So one day I decided to try something...I created a brand new project in premiere with nothing inside of it. Then I opened up the project that was giving me trouble. And it worked. And then it worked again and again. So we just keep a blank project on the server called "Tiny Project" (name it whatever you'd like :)...And we always open that first. I'm not sure WHY it works but I'm sure there's some explanation with how Premiere launches and recalls files blah blah. But it works. And I got on this board to tell you bc I know your pain.

[Patrick21778616k0ip]

Hi jm58009424,

I also tried a the 'resolutions' mentioned above but nothing works for me!

ONLY first starting up a new project and when it is opened you start up your old project it works! Same as you do.

Really crazy Adobe doesn't know what the solution is!

 

[elicial11595154]

Had this same trouble with new m1 pro chip with monterey os & premiere pro V22 (also using a second playback monitor). At first I had uninstalled premiere pro and reinstalled and it worked, but the next day it did the same thing.. just tried this fix and it's working so far. Thank you!

[sprocketgirl]

Hi again,

For me this only worked tempoarily and then I was back to the spinning wheel or jerky playback. In early years of computer editing I was quite used to finding work arounds on software, but I never thought I would still be doing it.  I started editing on flat beds long before computers were involved. Anyway I found if I clear my source monitor I can play the timeline without any issues. It is cumbersome but as I am fine cutting it is tolerable. Can't polish a gem with the spinning wheel. I hope this can help someone else, and Adobe...clean up your act! This is BS.

[susana18739536 · Accepted solution]

I tried ALL of the ideas in this thread. None worked for me. It has been behaving on and off for no clear reason for weeks now. I finally opened a new empty project, with my external drive and all the media for the project disconnected, I copied the old project's contents into the new one and then reconnected all the media. So far so good. Thank you everyone who had ideas that worked for some people. Every bit helps. The lack of meaningful support from Adobe has been appalling for years. I really need to move to AVID.