Premiere Pro 2020 Crashing Constantly

[jeankelsey]

I recently updated to Premiere 2020, and I'm running Catalina on an older Macbook Pro (2014). The program is constantly crashing - I can work for about 5 minutes each time before it just closes with no warning. I'm not doing anything fancy, just editing normal footage. I tried resetting my preferences and emptying my cache, as well as resetting my workspace, but nothing seems to be working. 

Is this just a bug, or is there something else I can try?? 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jean,

Thanks for your message. I am also in your predicament with my Mac in my home studio, a 2013 MacBook Pro. It's not powerful enough to work with H.264 or HEVC footage, especially 4K or 4K scaled down to HD.

I really need to upgrade it soon. In the meantime, I've made some discoveries. 

• Go with macOS 10.13, or 10.14. 10.15 might be a bridge too far for that OS and your machine. I run 10.14.
• When you import footage, take action!
  • Either transcode H.264/HEVC footage to something like ProRes LT, or create proxies with ProRes Proxy.
• Change your render preview codec to ProRes LT in Sequence Settings (Editing Mode > Custom...scroll to the top of the list)>
• When exporting, use smart rendering. Basically, render your entire timeline to ProRes LT, then Export directly to ProRes LT with "Using Previews" button enabled. If you need H.264, create it from the ProRes LT which looks fine.

Hope this advice helps you. Let me know if it does not.

Thanks,
Kevin