Why does Premiere spend so much time "relinking media" when opening a project?

[Ovidius9000]

When I open a large-ish project, the Progress Dashboard on Premiere spends minutes doing what it say is "relinking media".   What is it doing?  Why is this necessary?  It is technically a "background" process, but nothing really works until it is finished.

After a few mins, or 5-6 mins on really big project, it finishes "relinking" and then I can edit normally.  But my question is why can't Premiere just save the state it is when it's done and then just open quickly the next time?  Nothing has changed in my media files, why "relink"? 

NOTE: I am not talking about when Premiere cannot find the correct location and you have to point it to the right place. I'm talking about normal everyday automated stuff that happens when I open a project.

[R Neil Haugen]

Computers can be so ... opaque ... at times. After 30+ years working in and on them, I don't know how many I've had at this point ... I know what sort of behaviors I can avoid to help avoid issues. But there are so freaking many things that can cause issues it's nice to have folks like @RjL190365 around who actually know a ton about them, how the work, and where the problems often come from.

Relinking issues typically are based on say:

• an external with specific mapping types that don't work well with Premiere or other video post apps;
• too long of a total file name, which starts with the drive letter ... the entire location is part of the filename ... so D://Video Projects/Johnson Motors/January 2024/TV adspot/media/shoot 1 ... all of that is part of the filename. And too many total characters is a common problem with "buried" file folder structures;
• "special characters" like punctuation things, ! or # ... and at times, non-English language letters with diacriticals on the letters, sadly;
• when it's a Blue Tuesday before a Blood Moon but only after the fourth month of the year ... sheesh ...

So you get total sympathy around here. Some relinking is pretty direct to sort out with the right help. Like ... change the setup used to map a network drive sort of thing. And some ... seems almost witchcraft at times.

[De Geliefde]

Dear R Neil, it seems like you are not really addressing the issue that these issues were not there and now are, with a newer version. They are a proper problem which, it appears, Adobe need to look at. To say its because your kit is not pro enough, or you are not working at a high enough level doesn't really help. I'm having the same problem working professionally using a mac Mini Pro 4, and have used Premiere for 20 years, after using FCP, Avid etc.  Who do I speak to at Adobe about this as it is actually making the system unusable. Thankyou, Elmer Postle

[R Neil Haugen]

41 replies into a thread, you can't take a post without the context for whom it was a reply to. Keep comments in relation to what they are specifically about, for best comprehension.

Most playback issues (in general) are from users having gear that isn't quite up to what it could be for the media and effects they're using. Say someone with an Intel KF  CPU processor using mostly H.264/long-GOP media. For which the KF CPU is not equipped.

Or someone with an older 6 core CPU and 32 gigs of RAM, and a 1060 GPU, trying to run both long-GOP and 4-8 K clips. With Warp. Well, that is going to be a problem.

There are some playback issues, with especially specific newer Macs .... and that is entirely a different issue. As that is what you seem to be having troubles with, comments specifically meant for those who list low-end or older gear do not apply.

[Phoenix37379893n6lt]

Neil, I think it might be best if you just stop replying to this thread because I'm not convinced you're even reading the posts. No one here is talking about playback issues, or listing low-end gear. We're talking about some sort of media cache error that delays a project from being ready to use upon opening, one that only started occuring after the 24.0 update. You've been quite condescending to the other users in this thread, especially considering you don't seem to understand what the issue is.

[R Neil Haugen]

As you wish, Sire. 😉

[kyle huber]

I will be clear as this is not based on gear. Since it was not an issue in previous relases of premere. Taking 30-40 min to relink media in backround before you can work is insane.
Not to say that other software companies have found ways to work with this media seemless so again not machine issue. I tested the same project and media built out in Resiolve and is working fine. Just for clearity my gear specs are below. Codecs i have tried H265 , H264 , Prores 422, to rule out the codecs. 
Everyone else should also post specs here so adobe cant point at user machines. 

Premiere ver. 25.6.2 (build 1 ) 
Apple M3 -Max ( osx 15.7.2 )

Ram: 64gb

Internal SSD stoarage: 1tb 
Media Storage: SSD over 10gbe transfer speeds image below. 

[Studios28461152567w]

I can feel your pain.

I’ve been editing for 24 years, and for the first time, the editing software is relinking files this long. When I open Premiere, it starts the "relink process", which is done in about 5-6 minutes.
After it’s done, you can properly work with the computer. This happens regardless of the machine, whether it's a MacBook Pro or heavy duty Mac Studio. These external drives worked also perfectly before, but towards the end of last year, this relinking issue started. In fact, I hadn’t even noticed the blue circle before – I’m not sure if it was there in previous updates, but something strange is going on. And I’m not the only one – fellow editors have noticed the same thing.

[OliverLooping]

Hi there,

The same for me... I´m working in a Mac Mini M4 Pro attached to an Areca RAID that allows a transfer speed of about 1000Mb/s. 

The thing is i usually work with a really big project with tenths of thousands of references. It actually weights 900Mb, wich can give you a glimpse of how big it is. 

Well... Each time I open it the "relinking" process takes about 1hour, wich is frustating because nothing or very little has changed from the last time I opened it. I´m searching all over the Intenet for a solution but it seem to be a major Premiere Pro issue. I don´t know if other NLEs do the same since I have been bouilding this archive in Premiere since 2010 and hardly can change now. 

If anyone has a solution for this it would help a lot of people. 

Thanks!

[Ovidius9000]

It's such a crazy bug for an editing system to have.  I'm surprised Adobe doesn't have a solution.

[Myles22945263otdx]

Seconding all this. 40TB project on an external (removable), but need to boot up the project a good chunk of time before starting and just let it finish the relinking.  This started with an update to PP 2025.  So maybe there will be something to make this a bit more efficient since it seems it is a new issue to do this "relinking" every time you open.  I guess I am curious why it started recently?  What it is.

[JonesVid]

Hi Neil

You said

Now, there is a separate issue where Premiere doesn't remember it already has preview files and such, and recreates those every launch of the project. THAT ... is very annoying, but again, not the same issue as the above.

Well I have reported many times to the Dev Team about ProRes preview files getting lost

I don't think Premiere Pro creates all new Preview files every time, but I do know it randomly can't find some perfectly good ProRes Preview files that are sitting in the Video Previews folder.

I've only got modest size projects and it still does take a while to 're-link' data even on NVMe internal drives. I can see the logic in needing to do that - but not to 'lose' previews that were previously generated - even with no project changes  at all after shutdown.

The ProRes lost Previews issue has happened on the last three PC's I have built with nothing wrong with the hardware. I still believe there is random Database file corruption in Premiere Pro, but so far Support and the dev team deny any problem.

Other users have reported the same. I still get the problem occasionally.

[JOHN MONDO]

Ignore that - just realised you are talking about generated preview files.  Haven't seen htis too much myself except if you trim clips etc.

[ScottSimmons]

This this tip:

Tool Tip Tuesday for Adobe Premiere Pro: Don’t Bury Projects

[parkerchill]

This just happened to me and it was because premiere automatically updated on my comp from 25.2 to 25.2.1 

I went into creative cloud app and installed the older version and now it's not relinking for over an hour. 

....it was premiere that changed. Not an external drive thing....

[Peru Bob]

 premiere automatically updated on my comp from 25.2 to 25.2.1 

By @parkerchill

You can disable auto updates in the Creative Cloud app.

[Evan5C9C]

Same here, working with a large project from a NAS drive. Been dealing with this for over a year Adobe. Not holding my breath for this to be fixed anytime soon. Been using Davinci more and more, it has no issues with this. 

[jd_9026]

I'm having the same issue.  My project is not even that big -- maybe 100 hours of Canon C300 MKII footage.  But it takes over 10 minutes to "relink" everytime I open.  My material is on a NAS -- this should not be happening.

[jd_9026]

In my testing, this appears to be an issue exclusively with media over SMB protocol.  If you're using iSCSI volumes over your NAS the problem goes away completely.

[Ovidius9000]

My drives were on Thunderbolt.

[MyerPj]

...<edited> I see from your other post you are using a Production, thanks.

[Luke27192710ddg7]

I reverted to 24.6.5, and though it still does the "Relinking," it doesn't chew up almost all the workstation resources to do it.  I can work normally while it does it in the background.  It's proabably where I'll stay until Adobe fixes this.  Adobe NEEDS to fix this.

I submitted a support ticket to our server manufacturer (SNS) as well in hope that they will also put pressure on the Adobe to rectify things.

[Registration5E5A]

Some of the responses in this thread are extremely frustrating.

This 5 to 20 minutes of 'relinking' Premiere needs to do every time you open a project was not a problem before version 24.0. This is not just some normal operation Premiere did before this that we didn't notice and don't understand because we're luddites. This is new.

It's also absurd to say that we shouldn't expect to be able to work with a NAS anymore, like we've been doing for decades without issue. No other Adobe program behaves like this. None of Adobe's competitor applications in this space behave like this.

We're preparing to dump Adobe for Davinci. Adobe's complete lack of action on this is ridiculous.

[jd_9026]

You are completely correct.  None of this behavior is normal -- and it's crippling for a professional application to behave this way.  I have come back to Premiere for the first time in 5 years after doing several features on Avid Media Composer and there is a lot of new stuff I like.  But this kind of thing is enough to decide not to pursue Premiere for the next project.  I sincerely hope it gets cured, and soon.

[De Geliefde]

I'm having the same issue, even with about 2 tB of material its taking about 30 mins to relink each time I start.

It was ok about a month ago and now its not. Its actually disabling my system in a concerning way. I have spent several hours this trying to figure out what is going on.

[Alexander_DVA]

Thank you for your feedback - there have been performance improvements in Premiere Pro 25.3 which should lower the relink time from minutes to seconds in some cases.