Save thumbnails cache for project panel thumbnail view

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

The processing of thumbs at each opening of the project is really distressing. I would like to have the option to save these metadata at disk for faster start.

[mjshade]

Please fix this now! The program becomes barely usable once you have a few hundred assets, and I'm in a project with 20,000!

[Pierre Louis B.]

Adobe, this is the number 1 most frustrating issue while editing in Premiere! Please fix this before working on any new features. Waiting for thumbnails to generate is a life-sucking, creativity-killing affair! Thumbnails should be auto-generated in the background and then saved so they don't need to be regenerated every time a project is opened!

[RAD Films]

Thumbnail Cache please! 4K MOV files take ages to reload, even on 450MB/s SSDs, after project reopen or PPro crash.

[aarons55435919]

I'm working in a massive PrePro project on 5 year documentary and this is the only thing slowing us down. Please fix the thumbnail generation. It seems to get worse with every update.

[shaunw24355956]

Adding my name to the list... please Adobe. Fix this. It's September 2020. You're killing me slowly.

[Rene Heini]

because i am just waiting again and watch how one tumbnail appears around the other:
i would just be happy if i can assign a dedicated tumbnail to a film like in microsoft powerpoint... or like on youtube... or should i take a screenshot of all tumbnails and display them on another screen? i know, solving something like this is not easy, but bring any solution!

btw: i bought another sdd/m2 with 2tb - it's over 3'000mb/s - it has my footage on it - the project is again on another scotty warp speed disk - and the computer is something like a flux part from back to future. and still: it's miserably slow. on an old box with some rotating disks you can do something equally fast.

scotty: I need more warp!

[DanielSchmidt-Canada]

It has been 2 years since this thread was started and Adobe has not commented. IMHO this is the #1 most important issue with the Premiere software. We are considering moving to a different platform for our next feature documentary because of the loss of productivity of waiting for thumbnails. I'm wondering if Adobe is monitoring these forums since no one has responded in 2 years. Adobe?

[jimmym73148600]

Is there really no fix for this?

[TrentWexler]

this has been an issue for as long as I can remember, on every system I've used. Please please please fix this

[mjshade]

I just had my second kernel panic of the night while opening a folder and waiting for thumbnails to regenerate. This is absolutely absurd and not sustainable. This could be my last project with this software.

[dldavidluis69]

Same thing happened to me. Turn off the thumbs and you fix your problem

[Alex Elkins]

@david Luís
Turning off thumbnails isn't 'fixing' the problem. It is avoiding the problem. Big difference!

[Pierre Louis B.]

Alex Elkins is correct. Turning off thumbnails as David suggests isn't any more of a solution to the problem than saying 'use FCPX instead' would be. This problem needs to be fixed, not just avoided.

[Dhananjay Naidu]

how is this an option, its sl0ws the entire workflow to a grinding halt. solve IT!!!!

[Itam]

Is there an official statement from Adobe about this? Just wondering how big a problem this is or that we only have 60 votes here because people having this problem (including me) are just an exception. And if so, why are we the exception? (is it a hardware thing for example?).

It seems strange to me that only a "handful" of people are complaining about this, while fast thumbnail generation is such a basic requirement for professional editing software.

I really wish adobe could just give a statement about this problem..."no we can not fix this at the moment"...or "it's not us it's you" are also answers. At least we can react to that or know what to expect.

FYI: I contacted Adobe support about this problem. The help desk person couldn't figure it out, so I asked how to get this problem to a more directly involved person. His response was to post my complaint on this forum since this forum is read frequently by the seniors....this was half a year ago.

[valeriod95220074]

Very annoying issue, PLEASE FIX IT

[Andy Adkins]

I think the reason that not everybody experiences this or experiences it to different degrees is because it depends a great deal on the codec in use. That's been the single biggest factor I've noticed - not system specs, OS, drive type or i/o specs, version of Premiere, etc.

In general I've found simpler / less advanced / less taxing codecs (ie prores) just load faster (like 10x faster, no joke) and speed things up all over the place, not just in thumbnail creation. But there are exceptions... r3d thumbnails seem to load pretty fast for example. The worst for me seem to be 4k 10 bit GH5 files. If I don't use proxies with those everything is just painfully slow (on a very fast machine) which is of course so lame. I thought once it was a long-gop thing, but I did a quick test and the i-frame GH5 clips were just as bad. I think they just have some massive inefficiencies in decoding certain codecs. It wouldn't be that hard to poke at this problem, testing codecs, timing loads etc and come up with a more complete theory. But when I think about doing that I just get mad, cause I'd basically doing what we are all paying Adobe gobs of money to do. They're just failing at it and also failing to listen which is infuriating.

Experiences like this over the past few years have driven me to a basic rule: I use proxies or I use Resolve. And shortening the rule to "just use Resolve" is starting to make more and more sense as Premiere slowly atrophies.

[autokroma]

Andy you are completely right it's about the codecs being used

[Itam]

I tried doing what you said Andy and use proxies for a change. I must admit the loading of the thumbnails seem to be a bit faster but I still have to wait every time I scroll down in my project browser. I just don't understand why premiere doesn't load the thumbnails all at once during startup of the project, because in the end you will be scrolling down to find footage anyway. I would rather wait a bit longer during startup, than to wait during editing.

Specs:
I7-5930K
32 gb RAM
NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 6 GB
All drivers,windows and premiere are up to date
Samsung SSD 970 PRO for editing
WDS WD2003FZEX-00Z4SA0 for Caching

[autokroma]

Could anyone who has BRAW Studio and is dealing with hundreds of .braw tell us if the same is true for BRAW Studio (slow or fast thumbnails) ? It would help a lot ! Thanks

[mjshade]

It's encouraging to see regular activity in the comments here, though I wonder if this thread would be more visible to Adobe if it had more votes. Please let other editors know that this is where we're trying to get this incredibly frustrating issue addressed. The original message was posted 2+ years ago!

[Itam]

I have to get back on what I said about the solution of Andy, I didn't "enable proxies" in the preferences -> media options yet. Apparently this option is disabled by default. Since the enabling, loading of the thumbnails is almost immediately. So what I did is make proxies of my GH5, h.246 footage in 'prores medium resolution proxies'. And it works like a charm now. Disappointing though that I first have to transcode my Panasonic GH5-footage before editing (which also consumes quite some disk space), but I am happy using proxies speeds up the thumbnail loading drastically. I hope in the future Adobe can speed up H.246 thumbnails.

[Andy Adkins]

We think of this problem as one thing: slow thumbnail loading, and that's pretty good summary but there are two things going on...

#1 is the the transient, must-scroll-to-load nature of thumbnails in ppro. In my opinion, it's the crux of the problem. This is compounded by issue #2, which is that some codecs load extremely slowly.

Proxies only address #2, but they do mask #1 (thus the overall slowness) to the point where it may not be a problem in practice.

What we experience is that a thumbnail will not load unless it is in view. So in a bin with hundreds of clips only the first dozen or so in view get loaded. Then you scroll, then you wait. Proxies or "faster" codecs to begin with just make the wait time less.

If thumbs always loaded lightning fast, I suppose their current load-when-viewed algorithm would be ok. But the combination of these two issues is obviously not working and some codecs will probably always load somewhat slowly. Which is surely why other software opts for caching thumbs (you only have to look next door at lightroom). That said, Resolve does not cache thumbs (right?) and they've made the thumbnail experience much less painful.

And btw if you happen close a bin, you might have to start the scroll, load, scroll, load process over. So, in addition to using proxies for slow codecs, I also keep many of my most-used bins open in different tabs. This keeps them open and active and the thumbnails loaded. And I rarely close a project once open for this and other reasons (media load time when opening a project is another topic I could rant about).

But yea, this is all really really dumb and the fact that Adobe doesn't appear to give a sh*t about this and a bunch of other no-brainer productivity-killing bugs is making me transition away from their software as much as I can.

[pjm460]

It is extremely frustrating and kills my workflow. I hope there is a solutionsoon

[DanielSchmidt-Canada]

I have found a solution for this. Others have mentioned this but it seems to be getting missed in the thread. I ended up converting all video clips to prores and the problem disappeared. The problem is due to codecs such as H.264 being much slower to process. If you use Prores or Cineform the thumbnails will appear almost as quickly as you scroll. Prores is generally better to work with and I find less crashing with plugins as well. There should be a big disclaimer by Adobe and this should be considered essential knowledge for anyone using Premiere. I had to figure it out myself but now I am able to edit my documentary.