Premiere freezes during autosave

[#1]

Hey group, I have an incredibly frustrating issue that's been occurring on some of my projects.

I have autosaves set for every 5 minutes. If the autosave window pops up while I'm mid-task, like pressing the space bar to play back, clicking to make a cut, or doing any sort of navigation, Premiere will instantly lock up. I'm on a Mac, so I get the spinning wheel, the autosave never completes, and Premiere hangs indefinitely.

I'm regularly editing in a crunch with a need to move quickly, and I find that this happens incredibly often -- currently occurring once or twice an hour while working, and as the project size increases, this gets worse. The only solution is a force quit, praying that the previous autosave was recent (I find that the autosaves are often not truly saving every 5 minutes) or that I manually saved not long ago. Between this current project and other projects, I've lost hours of work.

Why not just turn off autosaves and save manually, you ask? I've also experienced such freezes when I'm saving manually. For some reason, I find that deselecting all assets on my timeline seems to lessen the likelihood of a crash during manual saves. But who knows, this could also be superstition.

Context:

• I'm working on a project that's referencing about 250 GB of content.
• My machine is an iMac Pro, running Mojave, with 32 GB 2666 MhZ DDR4 ram.
• I'm using proxies. And my playback is at 1/2 quality.
• I'm referencing about 20 simple AE comps through dynamic link.
• I have some audio effects applied to clean up interview audio, including compressors and Izotope tools. Problems began not long after beginning to apply, but I'm not sure if it's related.
• I have also done some color correction to the assets using Lumetri.
• The sequences I'm playing back are no longer than 4 minutes.
• I've reset permissions on all Adobe folders, and applied those changes to all enclosed items.
• I've tried migrating to a fresh project.

Perhaps unrelated?

• I've also had an issue with crashing during timeline playback, unprompted by anything. The timeline audio will continue to play, and if I have loop playback enabled, it will loop indefinitely, spinning wheel spinning away, and Premiere will not unlock without a forced quit.
• Projects that show these symptoms also tend to take a long time to open. Once I click a project to open it, the loading project status window will pause when the status bar is at about 75%, and take 5+ minutes to open from there for this particular project. On a previous project, where I was referencing a substantial amount of content (2+ TB), this stage would take 20 minutes.

In conclusion, I'm on my 20th version of this particular project. Each copy has been created because of a crash where I've lost work, and each one gets me closer to flipping my desk and tossing my machine out the window. If anyone has ideas, I'm all ears.

[#2]

Hey group, I have an incredibly frustrating issue that's been occurring on some of my projects.

I have autosaves set for every 5 minutes. If the autosave window pops up while I'm mid-task, like pressing the space bar to play back, clicking to make a cut, or doing any sort of navigation, Premiere will instantly lock up. I'm on a Mac, so I get the spinning wheel, the autosave never completes, and Premiere hangs indefinitely.

I'm regularly editing in a crunch with a need to move quickly, and I find that this happens incredibly often -- currently occurring once or twice an hour while working, and as the project size increases, this gets worse. The only solution is a force quit, praying that the previous autosave was recent (I find that the autosaves are often not truly saving every 5 minutes) or that I manually saved not long ago. Between this current project and other projects, I've lost hours of work.

Why not just turn off autosaves and save manually, you ask? I've also experienced such freezes when I'm saving manually. For some reason, I find that deselecting all assets on my timeline seems to lessen the likelihood of a crash during manual saves. But who knows, this could also be superstition.

Context:

• I'm working on a project that's referencing about 250 GB of content.
• My machine is an iMac Pro, running Mojave, with 32 GB 2666 MhZ DDR4 ram.
• I'm using proxies. And my playback is at 1/2 quality.
• I'm referencing about 20 simple AE comps through dynamic link.
• I have some audio effects applied to clean up interview audio, including compressors and Izotope tools. Problems began not long after beginning to apply, but I'm not sure if it's related.
• I have also done some color correction to the assets using Lumetri.
• The sequences I'm playing back are no longer than 4 minutes.
• I've reset permissions on all Adobe folders, and applied those changes to all enclosed items.
• I've tried migrating to a fresh project.

Perhaps unrelated?

• I've also had an issue with crashing during timeline playback, unprompted by anything. The timeline audio will continue to play, and if I have loop playback enabled, it will loop indefinitely, spinning wheel spinning away, and Premiere will not unlock without a forced quit.
• Projects that show these symptoms also tend to take a long time to open. Once I click a project to open it, the loading project status window will pause when the status bar is at about 75%, and take 5+ minutes to open from there for this particular project. On a previous project, where I was referencing a substantial amount of content (2+ TB), this stage would take 20 minutes.

In conclusion, I'm on my 20th version of this particular project. Each copy has been created because of a crash where I've lost work, and each one gets me closer to flipping my desk and tossing my machine out the window. If anyone has ideas, I'm all ears.

[#3]

Try resetting the preferences:

FAQ: How to reset preferences in Premiere Pro?

If that doesn't work, try resetting the Workspaces:

Reset a workspace

Reset the current workspace to return to its original, saved layout of panels.

1. Do one of the following:
   • Click the Workspace menu icon and select Reset to Saved Layout.
   • Choose Window > Workspace > Reset to Saved Layout.

from here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/workspaces.html

[#4]

Thanks for the response, Peru Bob. I've tried both resetting preferences and resetting the workspace.

I've also tried trashing Media Cache and Media Cache Files contents.

[#5]

Are you using any third party effects or transitions?

[#6]

Hi Bob, thanks for checking back. Yes, I'm using Izotope RX 6 for audio corrections. However, it's typical for me to use this, and I haven't had the same issue on each project in which it was used.

[#7]

Try creating a new project and import the old project into it.

[#8]

Unfortunately I've already attempted this as well. I've also tried migrating only the media referenced by my picture-locked sequence, but I'm still experiencing the issue.

[#9]

Hi JarrettB,

Sorry for your autosave woes. I have heard of this complaint before. I think adding your upvote might be the best way forward: Let me edit during auto save – Adobe video & audio apps

In the mean time, you could Auto Save less frequently and perform a Save As every few hours or so—building up your own "archive". I prefer making additional backups, actually. Auto Saves are great, but they have let me down before on many different NLEs.

As far as your project problems go, I think you have tried most of these things: Basic Troubleshooting & Maintenance for Premiere Pro on macOS

What kind of media are you operating with? Have you tried transcoding it?

Thanks!
Kevin

[#10]

Exact same experience as JarretB.

It's a truly great way to destroy concentration and workflow

I have this issue constantly! Every time I hit a key as the autosave pops up it CRASHESSSSS#$%! FFS!

That happens about every 2or3 autosaves... And I have it set to 5 mins because of all the other random crashes that are bundled in with the software..... I don't trust the software past that length of time.

NOTHING else crashes this much. NOTHING! 

Really starting to hate opening the program. Due to this BUG.

How can they call this professional software with such a fundamental BUG? 

[Avid & Davinci are starting to look pretty sweet right now.]

For now the best solution might be to turn F%&#*&N autosave off and set myself a recurring 5 min alarm to remind myself to save manually...

Probably a good habit if I ever have to do a job in 1980.

So much time wasted. Can I get a reduced rate until this program works?

Or send Adobe a bill?

ADOBE, Please do something about it ASAP. 

[#11]

Having the same p´roblem, now on all of my machines since mid this year...

[#12]

I've been pulling my hair because of this, It was so annoying to the point I go to a bar to refresh myself and beat someone and had to set in prison for a full day.  I am quite savvy when it comes to fixing this from preferences, to %appdata%, deleting the "common folder" but this auto save that freezes and keeps crashing is one annoying nutbag. I hope they (ADOBE) Implement an Auto-save features like Davinci Resolve does where it doesn't need a modal dialog pop-up to let the user know its auto saving, I think that's the disadvantage of NODE.JS as serverside it can't do Multi async task like Postgresssql does, that's why Davinci resolve is saving in the background without showing modal dialog and ruining someone's day.