Two Premiere Pro 2022 Bugs: Audio Not Loading + Won't Close Until I Force Quit After Effects

Report · Mar 13, 2022

Greetings all,

I was hesitant to upgrade to CC 2022 at all after the rather rude awakening we got at first, what with Dynamic Link not working between Premiere and AfterFX...but, once they figured that out, I reluctantly went ahead and took the leap of faith.

As it turns out, my skepticism seems to have been justified. Two issues seem to have emerged that won't go away and are beginning to interfere with my workflow.

Issue #1 is fairly minor, but it is an annoyance nonetheless because I never had to do this with Premiere 2021: a lot of times when I bring an audio file into Premiere, the file will appear on the timeline where it's supposed to, but the waveform doesn't load, so if it's a 2:21 music file, what I wind up with is a file that's 2:21 in length on the timeline but which is completely silent. Double click it in the project window and I just get a blank screen, as if the file doesn't actually contain audio.

Fortunately fixing it seems to be as simple as closing Premiere and re-launching it and reloading the project. Sounds simple enough, right? But that leads us to Issue #2...

Issue #2 is a tad more serious because it seems to affect both Premiere and Media Encoder. Issue #2 is that when I go to close Premiere, instead it just freezes, and stays that way until I either force close Premiere or force close After Effects (I've actually got a BAT file specific to the purpose of closing After Effects so this one's fairly easy). The curious thing is, when that happens there seem to be two instances of the AfterFX process running, and my BAT file closes them both.

Where this becomes a problem is if I have Premiere open, then queue something to export through Media Encoder, those two instances of AfterEffects remain open, and Media Encoder does a terrific imitation of molasses. If I use my BAT and force all AfterEffects processes to close, it runs a lot faster, but it's adding time to my workflow where it shouldn't be necessary and I'm a little annoyed.

Has anyone else run into these problems? (And more importantly, do you know what to do about it other than suffer in silence?)

Report · Mar 13, 2022

You have clips in Pr that are dynamically linked to Ae compositions, correct?

If so, an instance of Ae will start when Pr opens that project because it needs the information from Ae. Ditto for the AME. Hence the 2 Ae instances.

Dynamic link can be very slow, so if you have a complex comp in Ae that you are trying to export as part of your Pr project, you will experience longer than average wait times. Unfortunately, unlike your bank, you can't set AME to call you back and not lose your place in the queue.

If you haven't dynamically linked anything in your Pr project to Ae, then something else is going on that needs investigation.

The audio stuff may be as simple as waiting a little while for the audio to conform. Check the lower right corner of the status bar in Pr to see how such things are progressing.

Report · Mar 13, 2022

I figured the AE thing was just something I'd have to deal with.

Here's the interesting part of the audio problem that I forgot to mention--normally yes, you're right when you import a new file the first thing Premiere will do is conform it. But when the scenario I described happens, it doesn't conform--that's what's weird about this. It doesn't conform, and no waveform pops in.

Report · Mar 14, 2022

It sounds like Pr is confused somehow about the .pek files.

Try deleting all of your cache files from Preferences>Media Cache. That should trigger a re-conform of your project audio because there will no longer be any .pek files left to confuse the software.