Premiere pro sequence goes black periodically!

[Tiim]

Hi Everyone. The video deadline is coming up fast, and I'm in for a massive monetary loss if this does not get resolved.

I've literally tried everything but the issue persists.

My system has worked flawlessly before on larger more complex edits, but for some reason today I was experiencing weird playback issues - choppy, laggy, stuttering playback.

I could deal with that by lowering the playback resolution, but now another issue came up.

After a day's work I set my in and out points and clicked Render In to Out to smoothly double check my work.

Everything looks good, playback starts nicely but then the program monitor goes black periodically. Like every minute or so the program monitor goes black for a minute, then shows the video, then goes black again.

Also some of my clips and assets that are clearly visible on the timeline, simply do not show up in  the program monitor.

It has been a real headache since the video should be finished right about now, but I can't finish it.

Tried updating adobe

Tried updating Nvidia Studio drivers

Tried clearing cache

Tried rebooting the computer

Tried restarting premiere and opening the project over and over again!

What is happening????

The timeline is 4k if that helps

PC is more than enough for the job : Ryzen 5 3600, RTX 2070 Super, 32gb 3200mhz ram, 1tb M2 SSD. Windows 10.

Please help!

[Peru Bob]

Try resetting the preferences:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/faq-how-to-reset-trash-preferences-in-premiere-pro/td-p/...

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

If that doesn't work, try Preferences > Audio Hardware and set Input to None.

If that doesn't work, try creating a new project and import the old one into it.

[Tiim]

No luck with any of this...

Also the black is only happening on the part that i have rendered, the clips outside the in-out points are not affected!

[Peru Bob]

You can also try proxies:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/proxy-media.html

[Graeme Bull]

The last thing you want to do is update Premiere half way through a project. I would double check that and likely downgrade the software to a previous version to finish the project. Not sure if the suggestions made so far helped, if not then there's a decent chance it's the update to Premiere that would do it in (reasonably common problem unfortunately).

[Tiim]

This happened before updating! Updating was trying the patch the wound so to speak!

[Michael Grenadier]

tell us where your sources came from.  Does the frame rate of the sources match that of the sequence?  By any chance was the material shot on a smartphone or recorded using a screen recording program?  If so, the problem is that that sources have a variable frame rate.  Here's my prerecorded shpiel on how to deal with it...

use mediainfo to determine whether your source is variable or constant frame rate

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

if it's variable use handbrake to convert to constant frame rate

https://handbrake.fr
and here's a tutorial on how to use handbrake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=xlvxgVREX-Y

[Tiim]

Thank you for the advice, the sources were 24 fps 4k from Sony A7iii , and a 60fps screen record - also 4k...

Seems like youŗe on to something, will try!