Very Slow Imports

[vanlazarus2013]

I'm getting extremely slow imports with WAV files into my project.  No matter which way I import a WAV, it takes up to 20 seconds to import one file.  Premiere freezes and shows the busy icon the entire time.

My system:

Windows 10

Intel i7-5960X @ 3ghz

32gb RAM

OS drive: Corsair 240gb SSD

Project drive: 7.2gb RAID 0 on 2x4tb WD Black Drives

Any ideas on why this is happening?

[vanlazarus2013]

This problem still persists!  I upgraded to the latest version (2018) and the problem is unchanged.  It takes over a minute to import one WAV file into my timeline.  This is completely unacceptable.  I have a very fast computer setup with lots of RAM.  I've installed the latest Premiere, latest graphics drivers, and cleared my bloody media cache (which seems to me their default bug workaround methodology for everything).

[JeffreySBrown]

I feel the pain. WAV files are bad enough, but today I've been waiting for about 3-5 minutes every time I update a file sequence. Does no one at Adobe test with real-world workflows? Why should it take 3 minutes to read a directory of 6000 TIFF files? And: That's the only thing in the directory. AfterEffects also takes forever to read the sequence, but at least I don't have to wait to import it -- I can use frame.0000 to ident the sequence, and it loads in. Premiere won't load the sequence until the whole directory is read. Are they doing a bubble-sort using FORTRAN or something when reading a directory? (tho' that would probably be faster)
Massive bug!

[chadk18656396]

I am also having this issue.  I'm assuming there's still no fix, correct?  It's insane, even very small .wav files are taking 2-3 minutes to import.  It's killing my workflow.

[WeAreMoose]

Since CC 2018

Cutting down from Source monitor and Importing takes 10x as long as it should be.

Adobe, this is a joke..

[Kevin-Monahan]

VanLazarus, and others,
Sorry about this. Sounds very frustrating. Are these new projects showing this behavior or just ones you've updated from CC 2017? Can you try ingesting media into an entirely new CC 2018 project? Let me know if that works.

Thanks,
Kevin

[mrianwebb1983]

These are brand new project files created using CC 2018.

The larger the project gets, the longer import time takes. My largest project file is only 4.4 MB, so that should not be an issue.

I edited a feature two years ago and was able to import all of the media into one project file, I could immediately import new files into the project with no issues. Now I have 4 project files for one feature film and very slow import times. I'm hoping for a fix very soon! Thanks

[mrianwebb1983]

Hi Kevin, is anyone looking into this? This is killing the workflow on the feature film I am editing, it's putting our production really behind.

[rosss52988253]

Hey Guys, I'm having the same problem as everyone else..

My Macbook Pro has Premiere CC v12.0 and imports files in a second no matter how large.

My high spec new custom PC running Premiere Pro CC v12.0 takes 1-3 minutes to import a 5MB mp3.

Trying to add sound design files (which i need tonnes of) is an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE.

I also edit heavily using motion graphics, logos and a variety of songs and sound effects and i'm genuinely considering editing my next project back on my awful macbook pro purely because of this issue.

If i receive no reply, like many of you haven't from staff, I don't see what choice i have but to call Adobe and have them refund me each month until this is fixed, i'm encountering this problem every single day.

Looking forward to hearing a reply/solution and/or seeing an update so everyone experiencing this can move forward!

[mrianwebb1983]

I am having the exact same issue. I'm currently working on a feature film and have had to create multiple projects in order to manage all of the media.

Now I've got media spread out through 4 project files, extremely frustrating.

Even still, when I import a SFX file or a music track, I am waiting upwards to 5 minutes for the import!!

This completely kills my creativity and gets me off track, I really need a fix ASAP. This is slowing my workflow down like non other.

[Pete Grayson]

Let me be the first to add to this for 2018.

I'm working on a very large project and some imports are taking up to an hour!

This is beyond a joke. We have literally lost days to slow imports and it's making me look very slow to my client.

The same imports take no time in After Effects.

I'm on a top spec brand new 2017 iMac.

To add to the pain, when I type in for example 'mov' in the search bar, it takes ages to do anything, then doesn't show the appropriate files.

Again, this is working perfectly in AE.

Please please please fix this Adobe!

[davef43726944]

Importing still takes forever here as well. Running 12.0.0

[Pete Grayson]

Hi all.

I just did a test Premiere CC 2018 vs FCPX import times.

RED Footage

1 Card

479GB

2017 iMac top spec

I restarted the computer and created a new, clean project.

Premiere CC 2018 - 20min 55 sec

FCPX - 35 sec

Yes, you read that correctly. Almost 21 minutes before I could start cutting with the footage in Premiere. In Final Cut I could start cutting the footage after 35 seconds.

I'm working with 2 weeks worth of footage and 5 cameras. This one is a no brainer. There is something very wrong with PremiereCC 2018.

[vanlazarus2013]

Thanks ReelArts for performing this test.  Nice to see what the normal import of 479gb of media should look like.

It is unbelievable how a bug like this is not a 5 alarm blaze at Adobe QA.  It's been this way for months and not a peep from Adobe.  Business as usual.

[Pete Grayson]

Absolutely! I'm being forced to cut in Premiere just now due to the client already starting the project that way, but we have lost days to importing - and it makes me look bad. Not cool at all. I really hope they are working on this!

[jamess55428008]

REELArts,

I'm having similar import issues here.  However, I'm looking at around 3 hours for my import of RED material!

This payload is near 4TB and it's being accessed over 10Gbe (stored on 120tb server).

The common thread here seems to be sheer clip volume and total data payload ingest size. 

This bug needs to be addressed ASAP.  Import should NEVER EVER take this long.  This is a literal travesty.  If this is not fixed within the week, our entire company worldwide is going to dump Premiere and AE products and move to a far more productive and reliable suite.  We simply can't afford to lose hours on every project like this. 

Adobe are you listening?!  This is how you lose your base.  Wise up and address this or you will be left wondering where all of your money went.

I suspect this bug is some glitch relating to network/attached storage import because if I look under the hood at the import speed over the network, I consistently see the same pattern, average of 7.3Mbps receive, and sequential/repeating peaks of 49Mbps.  Now this connection moves gigs a second once everything is loaded in and playback is great even with 8/7/6K, but why is this import process so severely throttled, especially if standard usage and playback nets anywhere from 10x that speed, up to 1-2 Gbps in Premiere.

Something is seriously amiss here. 

Oh and it's also worth noting that these issues even persist after the import phase.  Then the problem becomes the actual project load time, which can (with 4TB of RED material) take upwards of 15-20 minutes to merely open and load all previously imported and actively linked media from the 10Gbe server.

In order to mitigate this load issue, we've gone through all of the bins and made sure to remove any of the duplicate/splinter clips from the RED clip folders (clips that are long and spanned/split).  In other words if you have A001_C001_001 you wont need A001_C001_002 or 003 or 004, and in pruning these redundant (span fragments) we are able to accelerate the project's load speed. 

Wonder if that is the actual bug, perhaps Premiere is overwhelmed by the high res, long run clips, and mistakenly treats each iteration of the span as a unique clip and therefore imports each unique clip up to 20x-30x times (depending on the length of the RED clip length and span fragments, ex 20-30 min clips).  Could very well explain why the import times vary wildly, but also are taking upwards of 10x to 30x as long to import than it should. 

Just my two cents. 

Really hope there's a solid solution or at least a workaround that can be deduced here.

Has anyone else noticed the same correlation regarding the RED clip length, clip quantity and clip resolution impacting their import times?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi JamesS,

This payload is near 4TB and it's being accessed over 10Gbe (stored on 120tb server).

Have you tried importing the files locally? Tried this with a brand new project, as well?

The common thread here seems to be sheer clip volume and total data payload ingest size.

Odd, I just ingested a bunch of 4K .r3ds instantly. So, not everyone seems to be having this issue. I did check the existing issues we know about and it appears that RED Helium 8K files are slow to import for some customers. Would that describe the files you are using? I'll see if I can replicate that problem here.

Adobe are you listening?!  This is how you lose your base.  Wise up and address this or you will be left wondering where all of your money went.

This is a support forum and largely user to user based. Let the developers know your plight by filing a bug, please. Those Adobe employees that are on the forum are in support, and we can only triage existing issues. Sorry, we cannot address any quality issues with the actual product, we can only report on them.

Why is this import process so severely throttled, especially if standard usage and playback nets anywhere from 10x that speed, up to 1-2 Gbps in Premiere.

Not sure. Again, I'd test this off the network to see if you can isolate the issue. Also contact the VAR that installed your system. I'd want to know what they have to say.

In order to mitigate this load issue, we've gone through all of the bins and made sure to remove any of the duplicate/splinter clips from the RED clip folders (clips that are long and spanned/split).

Are you importing via Media Browser? Spanned clips are handled best there.

Wonder if that is the actual bug, perhaps Premiere is overwhelmed by the high res, long run clips, and mistakenly treats each iteration of the span as a unique clip and therefore imports each unique clip up to 20x-30x times (depending on the length of the RED clip length and span fragments, ex 20-30 min clips).

Please include this observation with your bug report. I will also inform the team. Some other things to try:

• Please also test with other kinds of media. Are slow imports specific to RED footage?
• If this is an updated project, try with a new project
• Ensure all Adobe folders have the correct permissions
• Log in with a new user account
• Test on a computer with an older or newer OS, if available.
• Test on a computer with different GPUs
• If on a Mac, test on a PC, if available.

Hope we can assist.

Thanks,
Kevin

[mrianwebb1983]

Thanks for the reply Kevin.

My media is not on a server, but just internal drives. For me, the problem begins occur when my project file gets large, over 3.5MB or so. It's as if every import begins to take longer and longer. It doesn't seem to matter what I am importing, everything from one small audio file to large R3D files take at least 5 minutes to load in to the project; not as bad as others are experiencing, but still long enough to kill my creativity.

[vanlazarus2013]

Yes, Ian.... It doesn't matter where the file is located or what format it is.  This problem seems to be related to project size.  Projects with nothing yet imported into them take a short amount of time to import new media, but import a few files and the wait times grow exponentially very quickly.

There is some huge inefficiency/bug in the Premiere import code.  It goes into a coma, or over analyzes the current pool of media when adding even a 2 second WAV file.  I had a project of about 3tb of Red media, and importing a simple short WAV file would take almost a minute.   Yet in versions of Premiere from 2 years ago, imports were normal (instantaneous!) with the same size of project.

This currently makes Premiere unusable for professional projects.

[mrianwebb1983]

Man, what a bummer.

I agree about the previous versions, I worked on a feature 2 years ago, 6K RED footage and I was able to use one project file for the entire film with no import delays.

The current feature I'm working on, also RED footage, but now 8K, has my film spread across 4 different project files, just to keep my import times under 5 minutes.

It's such a disappointment, I've spent so much time just waiting around for imports when I should be creating. Hopefully it's fixed soon, otherwise I'll have to work elsewhere.

[mrianwebb1983]

After backing up my system, I went ahead and took the chance to update. The imports are immediate now! My previous projects have all opened up and everything is running good so far.

[Guest]

So far so good, it seems importing lag/freeze issue has been fixed with 23/01/18 update Version 12.0.1 (Build 69). Check it out.

[Pete Grayson]

Wow, that's good to hear. Ironically I'm waiting for an import while writing this. I haven't seen the update come through yet. I'll be keeping an eye out! Thanks

[KlokwerksVideo]

Great to hear everyone is having success with the latest update!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Still experiencing this issue after the update, vanlazarus? Please let us know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[vanlazarus2013]

Hi Kevin,

I haven't yet had a chance to try out the new version and am not currently working on a large narrative project at the moment.

Looks like the news is positive from others though, so I hold high hopes based on their reports that this import issue is finally resolved.

Yet, still, delivery of these updates happens in a vacuum.  When I click on the 'more info' about the latest Premiere patch, all that is said is 'this version contains additional format support and minor bug fixes'.  Is there another location that lists a more detailed report where we could read something from the engineers saying that they found and fixed a bug related to importing?  Is Adobe just hoping that something they changed fixed the import problem?

It wouldn't take much to make customers feel like Adobe cared about this horrible problem.... like, for example, at least listing it as something that was fixed in a new version.  But if Adobe considers this import bug to be 'minor' or doesn't know if they fixed it, it adds to the feeling that they don't really care.