I’ve been working on a couple documentary edits (30min+), and am constantly running into Premiere freezing, crashing and generally becoming unusable. This has been across Ver.23 (all versions) and now Ver.24 (Beta included).
My workflow involves taking the content from a day’s shoot and syncing it all together in a multicam sequence. Most of the time this will be a 1-2 cameras (FX6, A7 etc…) and external audio. But it some instances it will involve having 3-4 cameras (mix of XAVC-I 4:2:2 10-bit through to H.264)
I will then edit using this sequence so that I can easily switch between the different cameras as needed.
In general, I keep having frequent issues where Premiere will freeze and be overall slow to respond.
Once I’m able to get settled onto the timeline, I can edit ‘relatively’ smoothly. I still have issues and would expect it to be generally more responsive, but for the most part I can get my work done on the timeline. Playback and exporting have never been a problem (besides a slight delay in playback start after pressing play).
It becomes more of a problem when I try to do anything more than dragging clips around timeline. For example, selecting everything and right clicking, save as, create new bin etc… These sorts of things will often lead to a full freeze, but are just examples.
The situation is worst when I open a multicam sequence ‘in timeline’ to alter something. Pretty much every time a click a button (right click, drag, copy… anything) the whole program will freeze. These go on for minutes at a time (my record is 9 minutes).
The freeze will either end after a few minutes, or I will get bored, close Premiere and try again.
It’s hard to say if this issue wouldn’t exist if I didn’t have any multicam sequences, because that’s all I’ve been working with recently. But there are plenty of instances where just trying to click around the project panel will result in a freeze.
I’m pretty sure that the Ver.24 Beta’s have improved things over Ver.23. I think that’s why my timeline performance is usable once I’m on there. The problem is everything around it which is sucking up literally hours of my day.
I will admit, things improved when I created ProRes Proxies for everything, but it's still far from acceptable.
Honestly, I’m more confused than anything else. I’ve been editing on Premiere since 2011, and back then was on a very underpowered Macbook which used to cope much better than this.
These days, I’m on a PC which I’m fairly confident should be powerful enough for what I’m throwing at it.
I would try going back down to Ver.22, as it was suggested the multicam on that worked, but unfortunately it’s not available anymore. Honestly, I’d be happy to go back to CS6 if it meant I could just do my job.
If listed some of the steps that I've taken bellow. Honestly not sure if there's anything anyone can suggest other than just waiting to see if Premiere improves. Figured that if I didn't share, it would never get sorted.
Computer Specs
Windows 11
CPU – [i9-13900k]
GPU – [3070Ti 8GB]
RAM – [64GB DDR5]
STORAGE – [M.2 SSD]
Note: Decklink Mini Monitor 4k installed, but not used in Premiere
Steps I have taken
- I have updated to latest (and now rolled back) my GPU driver (currently running Nvidia Studio 537.58).
- Deleted cache (several times)
- Reset preferences (holding alt on startup)
- Disabled audio waveform in timeline
- Disabled clip markers in timeline
- Created new project and imported old (have to do this every startup)
- Tried with/ without proxies (ProRes Proxy) – Proxies do help reduce the length of freezes
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