Why do complex projects crash after updating them to a major new version?

Report · Oct 23, 2017

I'm a little tired of paying to beta test Adobe's products. I just updated the the new Premiere 2018 without waiting to see what bugs it would cause. (I haven't made that mistake in a while.) And now, it's crashing every two minutes as I frantically try to make tiny bits of progress between crashes. Reminds me of 2005.

Isn't one of the supposed advantages of our CC subscriptions that Adobe can release updates at different times--when they're ready? So why did they push out this bug-fest version of Premiere at the same time as the rest of the suite, when it's clearly NOT WORKING? It's SanS: Software-as-no-Service.

I would much rather wait for an update that works than get the buggy untested version earlier. Where's the value in that?

Adobe, you're killing me. Stop — doing this with every update. Test the updates and then release them. In that order.

Moderator: Title changed to reflect the actual issue. Please also avoid using profanity, even if implied, it's against our community guidelines.

Report · Oct 23, 2017

Hi,

I am not on the Premiere CC beta group and anyone who is would not be able to discuss what occurred in that process. I will answer by giving experience in similar situations.

I assume Adobe did have a group of beta testers for the 2018 update and probably bugs were found and fixed. I would hope that Adobe felt they caught all the showstopper (critical) bugs before releasing it. As always, the beta testers are a sample of users and don't capture every instance. So, new issues are bound to be found after release.

As mentioned, the above is just my guesswork. Even considering the above, I do agree that any company should hold back release if they have any sense of critical bugs being present.

Report · Oct 23, 2017

I understand that there are bugs, and as frustrating as it is there will always be some things that slip by unnoticed via the beta testing but serious performance and stability issues surely are easy to see? Unless the beta testers use serious workstation grade machines that don't suffer the same issues as the average joe with just a laptop, where every dip in performance is very noticeable, in that case I seriously question adobe methods. Furthermore, I concur with @d26228905 Isn't the whole point of cc subscription to get updates quickly? Surely with the number of people involved in new products they can address the critical issues asap, and work on the smaller bugs as a second priority.
Considering how quick the update is I wouldn't mind having one every other couple of days to keep me working instead of "just downgrade to the 2017 version" brilliant support solution.

Report · Oct 23, 2017

I made the mistake of updating and I have found this newest version to be so unstable and unusable, I will need to go back to the previous version. But having such an unstable version available is scary. How can we trust future updates?

Report · Oct 23, 2017

There's no reason for them to push out updates that haven't been thoroughly tested. And remarkably, reverting to 2017 (11.0.2) is no longer an option that I can find. The only Other Version available is CC 7. When is that from?

Report · Oct 23, 2017

Yea, the CC Desktop app not listing previous PrPro versions is a mistake, as most other apps list all the previous versions. I'm assuming in the next couple days that will be fixed. In the meantime, go to ProDesignTools ...

ProDesignTools: Adobe® Developments in Focus

Go to the Downloads tab, click through, and you can get to the complete list.

As to testing ... they can't possibly test on every possible combination of OS/hardware/connected hardware/installed software/media types/plug-ins & etcetera that every potential user might have. With the 2017 release, there was an issue with a few users and I think it was Mercury Transmit. It turned out from some awesome sleuthing by one user, that it was the presence of the MS Office file OneDrive.dll in the OS folders. If you were having that issue, and moved that out of the OS folder, PrPro worked fine.

Most users with MS Office installed and onedrive.dll going ... didn't have the issue. Why only some users who also had that MS Office dll file? No clue.

Yea, some major bugs can get through ... but a lot of the ones that hammer small groups of the thousands of users are interactions that are dang difficult to predict, test, or even find. Which is of course no less painful for the users that have those issues. I've been in that boat ... couldn't use the 'new' version for almost 4 months one time, had to stay in the previous major version.

One thing taught by most serious pro editors ... never upgrade an OS or NLE during a project ... wait for completion if at all possible. If not, always start in a new version by testing a 'new' project file with some typical media & effects through to export, maybe a half hour/hour of work. If it all works fine, make dupes of your in-process projects, and either 'migrate' them into the new version, or preferably make a new project file in the new version and import the previous project from navigating to its project file in PrPro's Media Browser ... and importing the assets of that project.

Then, if it goes belly ... you still have the last version of the pre-update project file in the old version, so you can revert programs and get back to work.

Neil

Report · Oct 23, 2017

Hi Neil,

One thing taught by most serious pro editors ... never upgrade an OS or NLE during a project ... wait for completion if at all possible. If not, always start in a new version by testing a 'new' project file with some typical media & effects through to export, maybe a half hour/hour of work. If it all works fine, make dupes of your in-process projects, and either 'migrate' them into the new version, or preferably make a new project file in the new version and import the previous project from navigating to its project file in PrPro's Media Browser ... and importing the assets of that project.

Most of the time, it's this.^^^
Updating a complex project across major versions (and/or OS) is not recommended by editors.

Regards,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community & Engagement Strategist – Pro Video and Audio

Report · Oct 23, 2017

I just updated the the new Premiere 2018 without waiting to see what bugs it would cause.

Might want to rethink that policy. You do get two activations with your subscription.

Report · Oct 23, 2017

Right, this has not been my policy in the past. Normally I wait a few weeks. Not sure why I didn't do that this time.

BUT... Isn't it ridiculous that we should all just tacitly know that we can't trust Adobe products for the first several weeks of a release. We've come to accept this and so they don't try very hard to put out a finished product. It's a bad cycle. We should demand more from Adobe. They are making stellar earnings and can afford to pay to properly test software before release. Especially since they unilaterally changed their payment model so that we must pay to subscribe to additional products we have no use for. I am a paid user. I like the products, but Adobe is not serving their customers. And now I find that I can't easily revert to an earlier stable version of Premiere, since 11.0 is no longer an option under Other Versions.

Report · Oct 23, 2017

Isn't it ridiculous that we should all just tacitly know that we can't trust Adobe products for the first several weeks of a release.

It's working just fine for me. Given the variety of projects, media and systems, there are bound to be some where that doesn't hold true.

But testing first is good advice for any mission critical software you use, not just Adobe software.

Report · Oct 23, 2017

Hi D,

Was this an updated project? If so, avoid updating projects when any major new version of Premiere Pro is released. That will save you a lot of trouble in the future.

You can run older and newer versions side by side to get that done. Just make sure to enable, in Advanced Settings in the Creative Cloud application, to not delete the previous versions, and you should be well set up for success in future releases.

Sorry for the pain points.

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community & Engagement Strategist – Pro Video and Audio

Report · Oct 24, 2017

For anyone wishing to revert back to 2017, just uninstall 2018 and you can get the previous version for Mac here. I don't have the link for Windows. But maybe you can just change "/mac/" in the link below to "win" or "windows". Not sure if that would work.

download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/premiere/mac/11.x/AdobePremierePro11AllTrial.dmg

Report · Oct 24, 2017

Here are Mac and Windows CC 2017 links:

Download Creative Cloud apps