Why does Premiere Pro crash when using GoPro footage

[emily28034006rlwi]

Premiere Pro keeps crashing every time I try and upload/edit GoPro footage. The footage is in mp4 format.

[Peru Bob]

What are the complete computer specs, including hard drives (how many, what kind, what is on each, what capacity, and how full)?

[emily28034006rlwi]

apple MacBook pro, 452GB available storage. memory: 16 GB 3733 MHz LPDDR4X

[Michael Grenadier]

lots of reports of problems with gopro footage.  It's extremely compressed so maybe try transcoding to a format like prores using adobe media encoder and see if that works.  The files will be much larger but hopefully much less taxing for the system.

[Christian.Z]

try using handbrake to convert to another file

[Michael Grenadier]

handbrake doesn't convert to any "mezzanine" format like prores.   It just converts to heavily compressed formats which are not ideal, but may work better than the files that gopro records...  

[Jordan Clay]

Gopro footage making my premiere crash as well....I can handle other footage but gopro footage locks my premiere up

[R Neil Haugen]

GoPro and DJI drones both push the limits of "long-GOP" encoding to the max and beyond. I've seen footage from both with over 100 frames between complete "iframes". And they both at times use partial iframes!

So the computing load simply to play back those files is rather ... stark ... unless you have the correct system hardware to do so. And many computers don't. If you don't, that's ... a huge pain.

Even those systems that do have the correct hardware bits, will still struggle more with playback for that media than 8k Red or Arri RAW files. That's how hard the insta-computing is when grabbing bits and pieces.

As Premiere has to first figure out where the first and last iframes are for any bit of a clip on the sequence, and must decompress/decode/re-compute every frame between them to even begin playback.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, mostly using "heavy iron", computers that have more spent on the calibrabration gear than you and I probably have spent, combined! ... on our computers. And mine is a 24 core/128GB of RAM rig with a 2080Ti.

If I have more than a leetle bit of H.264 from anything, I transcode the stuff. Import the t-codes into Premiere. Dump them when done as they can be recreated. Life is too short and messy to work with cruddy media on a timeline.

And that's what basically all the many colorists I know do with H.264/5 media on receipt from a client: transcode. They don't want to grade that ... stuff.

[John35724857azdj]

I've been experiencing this problem for quite some time.  Premiere Pro locks up when I'm working with Go Pro Max footage. 

I've been dealing with it by hitting the 'Save' button after every edit but I waste ALOT of time restarting my program.  Something has changed over time. I didn't have this problem with Fusion or initial Max plug ins.  I was hoping either Go Pro or Adobe would come out with a new update to fix this.  I dread working with Max footage these days but the unique shots I get from the cameras keep me using them. After I manipulate a shot with keyframes, (and restart my computer a half dozen times during the process), I export the edited shot in H.264 and delete the Max clip entirely from the program.

[Michael Grenadier]

I strongly recommend you transcode your gopro footage to a "mezzanine" format.  Go Pro footage is heavily compressed and not an ideal editing format...  I'd suggest you transcode to ProRes 422 or better...  Happy to explain in more detail if your interested...  Yes, the resulting files will be much larger but Premiere will work much more smoothly.  You can also use a proxy format...  again I'd suggest a prores format like prores proxy or lt...

[R Neil Haugen]

I'm with Michael on this. I work for/with/teach pro colorists, most of them on machines that make any editor's setup look puny and weak ... and they hate that GoPro stuff even more than most H.264/5 media.

But then, most of them see long-GOP files in a job coming in, and part of the conform is to simply transcode all H.264/5 to either ProRes or a DNx. I know of many editors that do this also.

Yea, the t-codes are a lot bigger, but when you finish the job, you can simply delete them, storing the originals of course. You can recreate the t-codes if you need to redo anything of the project later.

[Michael Grenadier]

Is your head spinning with terms like Mezzanine and long-GOP?  Always hard to judge someone's experience level from posts here, so don't be offended if we're underestimating your skill set...  I don't think Neil's been at it quite as long as I have, but our knowledge base has been developed over years of experience as new technologies and workflows are introduced.    Can't imagine what it's like diving in to the deep end of the pool today...  And frankly, equipment and software developers usually ignore how complicated things can get.    And that includes Apple and GoPro.

[Michael Grenadier]

If you create proxies in a Mezzanine format, you should be good to go for your editing and when you're ready to output, you can use a "smart rendering" workflow, using a high quality mezzanine format to hopefully avoid any crashing...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/faq-what-is-smart-rendering/td-p/10648488

Adobe has done a great job updating the proxy workflow in recent years...