Flickering footage in Premiere Pro CC 2014 but not in Premiere Pro CC 2013

[cwood123]

Hi guys,

I've been having repeated issues with Premiere Pro CC 2014 on Windows. Basically my footage has a weird strobe/flicker when in the suite and when rendered off even although the footage looks fine, unaltered out of the camera. I rendered off the same footage in the 2013 edition of the software and there is no flicker/strobing going on. I've included one of the worst effected shots in CC 2014 and CC 2013 for comparison.I also experience graphical glitches occasionally when rendering. Please watch below:

Premiere Pro CC 2014 - strobing (300% speed, cropped 15%, RGB curve adjustment, software rendered)

YouTube

Premiere Pro CC 2013 - strobing (300% speed, cropped 15%, RGB curve adjustment, software rendered)

Premiere Pro CC 2013 - no flickering - YouTube

The footage was shot on a Nikon D3200 at 1080p 25fps, aperture 3.5, shutter 1/50, ISO 400.

Editing on a

Dell Optiplex 9020

Intel i5-4570 3.2 Ghz

4 gb Ram

Intel HD Graphics 4600

Windows 7

Has anyone else experienced this issue? My suspicion is an issue with either my graphics card or insufficient RAM.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jeremy,

Did you add any effects to that clip? If so, which ones? Are you using Adjustment Layers?

Thanks,

Kevin

[JeremyBrownPhotography]

I have a few effects on my clip, not in adjustment layers though. Fast Color Corrector, RGB Curves, Lumetri, Film Convert Pro 2.1 (For Film Grain), and Tint. I disabled the Film Convert Pro 2.1 and it fixed it.

[johnwelshphotophilly]

Jeremy, is this new for you?

It was for me until recently.

The workaround I found was to use either DaVinci (or learn Speedgrade) for color since Premiere is crippled as this point.

I've found it's random and appears with any effect, even applied directly to a clip.

JW

[JeremyBrownPhotography]

John I've found that most of the time anything that requires rendering has been the culprit for me, ie when the bar turns red above the footage (Mercury Enabled is shown in yellow).  So if I avoid those pitfalls I have not been having issues. Well that is until I get into Speedgrade and it says my GPU is low on memory. You know, with a brand new GTX 970, clearly I'd not have enough memory to run color...(Sigh)  It's been a frustrating thing dealing with these programs lately, and its cost me a shot at putting my film into the film festival I was aiming for. I'm seriously upset with the software right now. I've been a CC member since it came out, and I'm really starting to think about Sony Vegas...

[johnwelshphotophilly]

I agree Jeremy and why this thread needs to be kept active (in my case since it almost cost us a deadline job). So below is going off topic slightly about the actual problem (since there are no solutions in sight) but does address the problem in general as a product.

The problem for me is that the 2 others in my company are Mac based and we decided to upgrade to CC.

I like Vegas a lot (having used it before Premiere came back into the spotlight a few years ago )and would switch to it for sure at this point if it wasn't for the company being on one software platform.

The benefits of tight integration with other Adobe products aren't of any use if we can't get a clean render.

Did you see the beginning date of this thread?

It goes back to August...no excuses for it to exist for so long while we continue to wait and shell out $$ every month.

JW

[luckypatofgold]

Agreed John - My issue is that there doesn't seem to be any transparency on actively working the problem. I'm in software development so I know these things should be handled. From what I can tell the issue is COMPLETELY random when ANY effect is applied to ANY footage. This tells me the problem is pretty foundational to the software. I mean - troubleshooting this can't be that hard. It wasn't an issue in CC - its now an issue in CC 2014. Check what changed. Pretty sure that's where the problem is.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Pmarshry,

Agreed John - My issue is that there doesn't seem to be any transparency on actively working the problem. I'm in software development so I know these things should be handled.

We have a bug logged with a reproducible project from a customer.

From what I can tell the issue is COMPLETELY random when ANY effect is applied to ANY footage. This tells me the problem is pretty foundational to the software. I mean - troubleshooting this can't be that hard. It wasn't an issue in CC - its now an issue in CC 2014. Check what changed. Pretty sure that's where the problem is.

It only happens to certain customers with certain systems. It is not a global issue if that's your impression. Regardless, as I said, we do have a bug filed so we are working on a fix as we speak.

Thanks,

Kevin

[djmattyz]

Kevin-Monahan wrote:

It only happens to certain customers with certain systems. It is not a global issue if that's your impression. Regardless, as I said, we do have a bug filed so we are working on a fix as we speak.

In fairness kevin,  Adobe need to be less vague than that.... what customers what systems does adobe think it is at this point?  I would have bought a new laptop based on that but without knowing I cannot......

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jeremy,

Well that is until I get into Speedgrade and it says my GPU is low on memory. You know, with a brand new GTX 970, clearly I'd not have enough memory to run color...

Can you try running SpeedGrade on its own and not via Direct Link? You can simply open the Premiere Project you are working on from SpeedGrade and you should get better performance.

BTW, we do have a bug logged for this issue and are working on it right now.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Josh JMFE]

GPU Acceleration has always been the culprit, which seems, lets say, counter productive.  There's a feature that speeds up rendering, but makes it useless. I've noticed it most often with Red Giant Color Suite, but the 3 way Color Corrector has caused issues at times.

Quadro K4200

Dual Xeon E5-2640

64GB Ram

Win7 Pro

[walt_burns]

here's what worked for us:

Go to Sequence settings / Editing mode: set to custom (rather than AVC Intra..)

Video previews: set to Microsoft AVI (rather than I-Frame only mpeg..).  Quicktime also seemed to work.

I also cleaned the media cache data base (Edit / Prefs / Media)

If that fails, it may help to select field options on each clip / flicker removal.

Hope that helps

[walt_burns]

'Render and replace' is also worth a try

[johnwelshphotophilly]

Thanks Walt,

I'll surely give these a try.

John

[walt_burns]

No sweat.

In the end the only sure fire solution for us was to do all our color grading in Speedgrade (via direct link), then try to add any additional filters in AE (or premiere if you're lucky)

[johnwelshphotophilly]

And in the end (for me) that was my solution too, Speedgrade.

What worries me (besides the sound of crickets - when I was hoping we were all to have some kind of answer/solution, it's now May, geez) is I guess we'll be hoping that CC 2015 will solve all of this? I strongly doubt any fixes are now on the way with CC 2015 coming soon.

And Lumetri correction is supposedly coming to Premiere (which is what Speedgrade is sorta built off of if I understand correctly).

So I have no confidence that this will be any better since it's an effect applied through Premiere rather than in Speedgrade (which solved the flicker problem).

And does this mean that since this method is now going to be available through PPro, that Speedgrade will eventually disappear and we'll have this "user friendly" Lightroom approach that may or may not be work?

At least provide us with a roadmap so I know when to jump ship (150 a month for 3 licenses adds up fast along with the frustration).

[johnwelshphotophilly]

Well, after moving the media cache (and building new versions) I ran into the flicker AGAIN even though the only effects I applied were from Speedgrade which leads me to believe it's NOT fixable in the sense that it's an effects problem, but it's a preview problem.

Though I'm not sure why a final render would be depend on a preview that's flickering vs. applying the effect to the original...but there it is.

Fortunately, Walt's fix - changing sequence settings cleared it up.

Now can we have a fix? This has got to help pinpoint the issue, right?

I think we all should be getting paychecks from Adobe for our time troubleshooting...

JW

[jonathanf]

johnwelshphotophilly wrote:

Now can we have a fix? This has got to help pinpoint the issue, right?

I think we all should be getting paychecks from Adobe for our time troubleshooting...

I hear your frustration johnwelshphotophilly‌! Its not all about the $$ but for the frustration dealing with defects in a product I am paying for, I've had the same thought -- that they should consider partial refunds until they fix this.

Uncharacteristically of Adobe, there is not much support on this. In a similar issue, they said

Although some users have great tips on this thread, I would use these effects at your own risk.

as if we were using a beta product or something.  (see Re: Shadow/Highlight flickering)

[RickerC]

Just wanted to chime in that I have the exact same problems on all our Mac Pro's.

I find I even get glitches rendering out of AE, when the files are brought into premiere pro.

100% related to CUDA drivers being screwed.

Never had this problem, it all started for us in late 2014, I believe we made the move to yosemite at the time. Or maybe it was CC2014.

Considering rolling back to CC2013, for my next project, as I get crashes all the time every day, and its just killer.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi CWood and others on the thread,

We have a customer having this issue who is now on the upcoming version of Premiere Pro in our prerelease program. The flicker problem is no longer occurring for him and we cannot reproduce the problem either.

It sounds like we have a fix for the upcoming version. Just thought I'd let you know the positive results.

Thanks,
Kevin

[luckypatofgold]

Thats great to hear Kevin - can you provide specifics regarding when this release will be available?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sorry Pmarshry, I can't talk about any release dates at this time.

Kevin

[CtheProducer]

Update would be great guys! Shows are due to the networks Monday and we have been battling with this for way too long. New flickers are popping up all over the place after we fix previous ones. Just spent over 4 hours on the phone with an Adobe person with no help. Just a bunch of random, read off the paper canned answers......

I would say we would just stay here all weekend and re-grade everything, but now it is flickering on Warp Stabilizer.... so that solution is out. 

[johnwelshphotophilly]

I'm still amazed that this exists (and CC 2015 will arrive before a fix does, I have zero confidence right now regarding Adobe reputation).

However, on the bright side of things, the (only) solution I found is to learn Speedgrade basics really fast, I have experienced zero flicker issues and have not touched Premiere color corrections since. As far as warp and other corrections best of luck, and maybe if there are less Premiere corrections on a timeline maybe you'll get lucky and be able pull off a render. I wish I knew more that could help.

[CtheProducer]

Thanks for this insight John. We are all on the same page with you as to how this issue could have lasted so long now for what adobe states is a professional grade product that we pay monthly for.

We love Premier when it works, all of the Adobe products are great, but when an issue like this cripples your company it really, really stings. I think the speed grade option might be a quicker solution as MB looks weighs a timeline down.

I did laugh when I was at Best Buy last night buying the only AMD graphics card I could fine ($89) to hopefully "fix" this solution after spending close to $800 on a Quadro4000 GPU strictly because it is Adobe certified for use with Premiere.

[johnwelshphotophilly]

C - how did your experiment go with the AMD card? I"m ready to bag this NVidia situation if it's a potential fix.

(My partner and our part time guy have no problems rendering on their Mac laptops, but it's glacial speed-wise & I'm set up with RAID etc. and need to be doing the rendering).

I have upgraded to CC2015 but since we discovered the problems they are still running an older CC2014 (and rather than try to somehow downgrade - if that's even possible - I just need a solution before putting my head through the wall).

Thanks and Happy 4th to all it applies to...

J