Huge R3D Files Crashing Premiere 2020

[OhTheFuture]

Once I understood how to work with R3D files I never had an issue...until today......

Began work on a new project that has almost 1TB worth of media. Not a big deal until I started importing and the usual way of doing this was crashing Premiere 2020(fresh new update). Tried other ways and ultimately started importing the footage one by one. Then I got to a couple folders that were 50 and 60+ GBs alone with 15 to 20 R3D files. These were the problem. Premiere will not import these RED files or folders. 

Strangely, they wont import even one of the 15 to 20 R3D files. Like, if the footage is over a certain size, it's not importing at all. 

NOTE: R3D files are broken up into 4 GB chuncks hence 15 to 20 4GB video clips that are suppose to be streamed together in Premiere. 

So in short, can Premiere just not even be bothered with R3D files of a certain size? Never had this issue before but unsure if I've had files this big before.   

PC Windows 10 (also freshly updated) 64x 32 gb of RAM

2 1050Ti GPUs 

i7000 processor 

3 seperate SSDs and HDDS and all the typical "best practices" with media managment, files, etc... 

Thanks in advance! 

[OhTheFuture]

UPDATE: It seems to have smoothed out now. I thought I was allowing time for the machine to do it's thinking and not ge confused but perhpas not. I may have been forcing too much on it at once, but as of now, it's importing everthing it wouldn't earlier. 

[OhTheFuture]

UPDATE to UPDATE: Issue has now evolved to Premiere freezing up my PC while doing basic things to where nothing works at all and I have to physically shut down and restart via power button. 

I don't know if this is a Premiere thing or a PC thing BUt it only does this in Premiere. It's not a "crash" it's a "freeze up" and my system recocnizes it as "windows not shut down correctly" and not as a "crash or freeze". at least from what I can tell. 

I dont know how to fix this and has rendered me unusable at this point. 

Please help! Monday Jan 18 2021 

[Sami Succar]

How are you importing? If you use the built-in Media Browser, it will automatically recognize the "chunks" and import them as one clip.

[OhTheFuture]

Honestly, I've just used right click and import. Should I re import the footage to keep Premiere from freezing on me like mentioned above? 

[R Neil Haugen]

Two things ... make sure you are on the latest or latest-minus-one Studio driver from Nvidia. The game ready drivers have been causing many varied and massive issues with Premiere. Many of us can use the latest Studio driver, some have to to back one Studio driver.

Next ... especially with "spanned" clips, but even with most complex-metadata files like RED media, it is best to "ingest" media via the Media Browser panel in Premiere. You can set 'favorites' in the top left of that panel to quickly access certain drives & folder-trees that are of must use.

And it simply is far more stable at ingesting and sorting all the meta that those RED files bring with them.

Another thing to consider for those working with media with massive meta involved like the RED, the Arri and upper Sonys, that sort of thing ... a lot of specialized log/raw files:

Use a Productions workflow even if you're a stand-alone user working one current "project". In a Productions workflow, you separate stored media in project files like you currently do in bins.

Because if you do, and say have a Media folder with several project files in that folder: Day 1 RED, Day 2 RED, and on ... then have separate project files for sequences ... Premiere only need load the specific meta for the files on a sequence in a project file into RAM/cache files, rather than loading ALL the meta for every one of the thousand total files in the project.

It makes working in Premiere a lot faster and easier.

Neil