Timeline cursor stops, video keeps going, then it jumps forward, stops, then jumps forward

[blumooon]

This is never going to be resolved until they actually update what is wrong. So I just ahve this to say:

NEVER EVER EVER EVER UPDATE YOUR ADOBE PRODUCTS WHEN THEY FIRST COME OUT. PERIOD. YOU WILL REGRET IT.

On to the rest of the post:

Having weird, going to call it "lag" issues? I hope I can explain it better below.

When I am editing my videos, for some reason now the time line cursor will stop (I uploaded an image to show below, just in case I am not using the correct terminology). The video keeps playing. Then the cursor will jump to the time on the timeline and then stop again. Then it will continue to do it, it will stop for 3-5 seconds, then jump to the correct location.

It is very difficult to edit when you glance down at the cursor line thing in your timeline only to see it lagged or sitting at the wrong place in the video edit and you have to stop the video for it to "catch up."

Now before you say it is the files and the size, wtc, I wanted to remind you, this never happened before even with much more intense videos, and my rig is not to shabby:

i9-10920x

64GB RAM

RTX3080

WIN 10 Pro

Downgraded Premiere back to 23.6.0

Working in only 1080 60fps.

This only happened after I updated to the latest version. I since downgraded my version to the last working one and it is still doing it. Again never happened before, this week it worked perfectly. Just started yesterday after I updated the app.

Any help please?

I made the mistake of updating my Adobe Products. I will save everyone from the "paying for a product that always has issues" mumbo jumbo that I want to spew, this is not the place to do that.

[blumooon]

Here is a quick Youtube video to show you what is going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqyZ1jaRd1c

PS - I even downloaded that tool and all it said was my preferences might be corrupt. I deleted the preferences, got a new set and same thing. Not the problem.

PSS - Something else I noticed, that when I cut from the timeline, then snap the two clips together, thre is a long delay for it to do that. Like 10 seconds. I can't do anything, the program is frozen.

I know I keep updating this, but I am wasting my time trying to figure out what is happening. I replaced the video files with ones run through Handbrake and also re-rendered through Media encoder and I think it made it worse.

Tried a stand alone and it seemed to work a little better, but still having the same issue. Even with a 480p video.

[blumooon]

Not to be "the guy" that bumps things, but I am still having issues. I guess this means I have to go directly to Adobe support. That is fine. It is just that this place usually can get to the bottom of things fairly quickly.

Would my problem have anything to do with a new Nvidia Driver?

[Stan Jones]

@blumooon,

Frustrating problem to be sure.

I have little to offer, but I'll give you my response.

You described the problem well. Playback of the video itself is smooth, the current time moves forward in small start/stops when it should be constantly changing, and the playhead start/stops in bigger steps. I think it is called the "playhead," but then you'll see references to the CTI - current time indicator as if they are the same thing.

Is the audio smooth?

I finally settled on "premiere pro "playhead" skips -jump" as a google search because "jump" results in MANY problems with the playhead "jumping" to the end, the beginning, etc. Your behavior is more like skipping, but unfortunately there are few hits there. The only match for the problem was on reddit, and I did not find the responses that helpful. https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/comments/zlzzzs/premiere_playhead_issue_choppiness/

This page at least mentioned playhead, but was about "lagging." It did include this: " If the playhead skips or jumps instead of moving smoothly along the timeline, it’s a sign that some frames have been dropped." https://blog.pcrisk.com/windows/13798-premiere-pro-lagging

I'd turn on the dropped frames indicator to see. (Program Monitor wrench -> Show dropped frame indicator. But the playback looks smooth, which makes this so puzzling.

Yes, I'd always consider video driver as an issue, but I'd expect more general problems than just the playhead.

Stan

[blumooon]

First and foremost. Thank you! I will review what you have here and see if any of it can help.

[Stan Jones]

I saw your new post after I posted here.

I see that it may be a more general performance issue and that you improved the playhead performance itself. But far from what your system should be doing.

I like the Puget benchmarks for looking at performance issues and trying to understand what is working well and not.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/pugetbench-for-premiere-pro-1519/

But they do not appear to have a version for PR 24.0 yet.

Stan

[mstegner]

One thing you can try is to set "Preferences>Audio Hardware>Default Input..." dropdown to “No Input”.

[blumooon]

I tried all that you suggested and to no avail. I also did the audio thing with the troubleshoot tech and it did nothing.

Thanks goes out for helping me out on this.

 BUT...

I did more research on the versions I had previous to this debacle. If that combo worked before there should be ZERO reason it wouldn't work again.

Premiere was easy, I rolled it back. Then looking at Nvidia it was NOT easy to find the last driver I had. So after 15 minutes or so I found it. You would think it would be easy to find, but I went to a 3rd party website to get the info. Thanks Nvidia! (Not)

So I rolled the graphics driver back to that version. I am confident enough to say, this was the exact setup I had before.

Guess what.

Now it worked the way it did before. At first it was stuttering again, a little anyways. But I realized it was "generating peak files" - and that is a good thing. Once it stopped. I was back to normal.

I decided I would work on my video a bit, and wouldn't you know it... out of nowhere, it started to happen again. The timeline stuttered. It stopped. But the video was still playing. I would make a cut and the program would freeze and the loading circle. I hoped it wasnt that... but alas, I am back to the same issues I was having before.

Now going on 6 hours of troubleshooting that I will never get back.

Apart from sour grapes, I will just have to say, Premiere is not a good program if I am having all these issues with it. Twice a year I have had altercations with it, and I think I have finally reached the end of my rope.

Yesterday I put everything in Resolve. Though the interface is very clunky, I maneuvered my way through 2-3 minutes of editing and not a stutter, not a stop, not a hesitation. It was smooth and the kicker was? I was on 100% resolution too.

I am in no way trying to promote another product, though it seems it is superior to Premiere right now. This is just to show you Premiere & ADobe has issues, and instead of making the best stable powerful program Adobe can, they put their time into nonsensical new features and design new programs literally no one uses.

Think this might be the last straw. Not what I wanted to be doing the past 2 weeks....

But another hard lesson. One that I want everyone to take away from this.

NEVER EVER EVER EVER UPDATE YOUR ADOBE PRODUCTS WHEN THEY FIRST COME OUT. PERIOD.

Again thank you everyone that helped! But I am off to save 25 dollars a month. Not too happy about it either. 😞

[Stan Jones]

@blumooon,

Painful. Thanks for reporting back in detail.

@mstegner

Stan

[blumooon]

I just wanted to stop by and thank you for giving it a go. It didn't end well this time, I cancelled my subscription, but just wanted to say thank you for helping.

EDIT: Well I didn't "cancel" my subscription, they offered me three free months and I took it just in case I need to export certain things to the "other" program I am using now. But I won't renew. Not that you really wanted to know but I told you anyways... lol.

[blumooon]

One last post.

I have now heard from 3 other editors that they are having issues with speed with Premiere. One said he had the exact same issue as me, and was trying to pick my brain as to what was happening. I shrugged my shoulders and said, don't know and unfortuantely Adobe does not either.

The other two also have issues, but not near as bad. The kicker? They proxie their videos... so that is even worse since they go the extra mile, and they still have speed problems.

Bottomline. Something is going on with Adobe Premiere, especially their last new year update. That is not in question. What IS in question... is it soley Premiere's fault? And when will they acknowledge it and/or fix it?

[R Neil Haugen]

@Kevin-Monahan 

I've seen several posts like this here over the last few months, and the same issue pops up on several non-Adobe forums. While it's probably not a "large" segment, relative to the total user base, it is happening to some users and has been for some time.

Can you communicate with the devs about this? Thanks!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey there @R Neil Haugen, Hi @blumooon,

Thanks @Stan Jones for your great summary of the issue. I appreciate @mstegner for joining the thread too. I really appreicate your video @blumooon, as it really demonstrates the issue.

When updating to major new versions, some have found it important to delete all media cache before beginning new projects or continuing older projects on the new versions (when the project format is "converted"). Press Shift at launch for the "Reset Options" dialog box. That allows you the ability to delete all of the cache, reset preferences, and more.

I see the issue was seen back in 23.1 on that Reddit thread. That tells me that something else besides your update to 24.0 is afoot. That's why trying some basic troubleshooting and maintenance during an update is always called for. FWIW, I've never seen this issue but I'm primarily editing on Mac. This also is a hint that it's a Windows only issue and might have more to do with the OS or Windows hardware. I have raised the issue to the staff and Matt is already here.

Normally, I would mention that Long GOP, variable frame rate stuff should be converted (or use proxies). However, if it worked before, it should work better now.

I am so sorry this was such a frustration to you, @blumooon. I hope we can at least get you up and running again in case you want or need to edit upcoming projects using Premiere Pro. I'm glad we were able to extend your subscription. We really appreicate your feedback. If you could upload your project file somewhere (Google Drive, Dropbox, or Creative Cloud) for engineers to inspect that would be great. A couple of pieces of sample media you used would also be key for finding a fix from our end. Feel free to PM me links to those items. Thanks!

I sincerely hope we can help you.

Thanks,
Kevin

[blumooon]

Thank you @Kevin-Monahan & @R Neil Haugen - I do appreciate you taking the time to help out.

This is the reason I do come here for issues. Even if they don’t get resolved there is a good attempt to figure out what IS going on.

In regards to the Media cache, I have completely, 100% uninstalled Premiere, meaning I went through the computer and deleted anything Premiere, plus ran register checks and any associating files types with it. It was sans-premiere at one point. Then I reinstalled it.  There was no media cache left. Plus I beleive in my workings with the CSR's I did that a couple times too.

The only difference was, after the purge, the video playback was then stuttering more instead. It was like they took turns. One time the video playback lagged and stopped, the next the timeline head would stop and jump. At the time I was using 1 game play video, 1 face cam and the audio that went with it. No extra’s, heck no color corrections or anything. Just straight footage and I still had issues.

With the WIN and Mac thing, you maybe right I know that the one having the same issue as me is using WIN and I am pretty sure one of the other guys is WIN too.

“Normally, I would mention that Long GOP, variable frame rate stuff should be converted (or use proxies). However, if it worked before, it should work better now.”

Thank you. Actually thank you very much. That was my biggest issue with this troubleshoot. It always ended on that, (not that I am opposed to it, just didn’t need it before). I call it the, "I don't know whats going on so it's teh easiest thing I can point at then," syndrome. heh heh.

It was working fine and when I say fine, it was long term fine. It was running great for at least a year or more.

I am holding out hope in the next month or so something changes. But I am gearing my time now to learn the “other” program now. If I didn’t waste hours upon hours on this issue already I would take you up on your offer to screen share, etc.

Maybe I still will if this other program doesn’t pan out; it’s interface seems to be put together by a drunk guy with bad vision. But if I can figure that out I might permenantly switch over. 😞

Thank you again for the assist! Who knows maybe Adobe will update the program before 3 months and it will work again?! Or maybe I will take you up on the fofer if the other program falls through.

Best and have a great weekend!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks for the reply. If you have time, please send me a link to your project file so we can put this investigation into high gear. I hope we can help you, @blumooon!

Kevin

[mstegner]

@blumooon I sent you an email yesterday trying to follow up.  Did you get it?  It might be filtered as spam since it is an Adobe.com email address.

[blumooon]

@mstegner 

I did. Thank you for reaching out.

But I am going to give this other program a shot before rehashing Premiere again. Been through it, wasted a lot of time on it already. This is not an isolated incident with Premiere either, have had my fair share of issues before.

Lastly a small side note

Talking with my other editors at work, and I told them what was happening...

"Wait, didn't you build that computer FOR Premiere?" When talking about my computer in my home office.

I just shook my head and said "yup."

[Nitrovium]

Old post but replying for those still having this issue, as I am.
10+ years using PPro so I'm fully aware of all the things that can cause problems, and how to fix it.
Changing any settings, clearing cache, adding more memory, does not fix this issue. My PC is also pretty hefty and capable.
To be clear, the video playback is program window is flawless, only the timeline cursor/playhead stutters.

The only solution that works for me is to undock the timeline and place it separately to the other windows.
There is no reason this should fix the issue, clearly a bug that still needs to be addressed.