Premiere Pro will not launch on Mac Pro 2019

Report · Feb 23, 2020

I contacted Adobe 10 days ago about an issue I’m having on a new Mac Pro 2019. When trying to launch Premiere, it gives me an error message saying "Premiere Pro could not find any capable video play modules. Please update your video display drivers and start again”, and then it closes. Adobe chat support told me that this is an issue with Promise Pegasus drivers and to contact Promise, which I did. They are still supposedly working on this, with no updates and no solution in sight and it’s taking too long.

It’s true that this seems to be an issue with their driver potentially, but this problem also only affects Premiere. I don’t have this same issue with FCPX, Avid, or DaVinci Resolve. Is there any way Adobe could help, also, since this is a Premiere/Promise issue? Even if it’s just communication between Adobe and Promise support staff. Again, this seems to be an issue that exclusively affects Premiere, and I’m unable to work on Premiere jobs because of this. It’s been 10 days since I contacted support and still cannot launch Premiere, so I’d like to resolve this quickly. Anyone else having this issue?

Report · Feb 23, 2020

See if this helps:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/error-premiere--capable-video-play-modules.html

MtD

Report · Mar 28, 2020

I couldn't find a driver for this GPU in the list.

Still no solution or help from Adobe or Promise.

Report · Mar 28, 2020

did you follow the instructions regarding adminstrator rights MegTD pointed you to? Is the pegasus a display card?

Report · Mar 28, 2020

Administrator rights aren't necessary to successfully run Premere on MacOS. That article is full of misleading and/or inaccurate suggestions. The issue at hand here is the interaction between the latest set of Promise storage(!) drivers and Premiere. This has been a known issue since December or perhaps January. Promise has older drivers available that may (I can't emphasize MAY enough) work, you'll just have to find them and try. Ultimately, unless the OP is using a specific aspect of the Promise RAID stack, there's probably no reason to have the drivers installed at all. MacOS will see each of the drives in the RAID array, and you can assemble them into a software RAID set, bypassing the (very badly written) Promise drivers.

Other than what I just suggested, there's nothing that can be done at the moment.

Report · Mar 28, 2020

read write permission which can only be adjusted if you have administrator rights are crucial to running premiere successfully on a mac. there have been many threads here with problem that seem to point to that. When someone who provides excellent advice points someone to a resource I don't think it's a stupid question to ask the OP whether they followed the recommendations thoroughly. Are you having the same problem?

Report · Mar 28, 2020

I run Premiere on a Mac all the time, and don't have admin privs for my main user. That's a security risk. Pr runs just fine.

Further, the article has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with the problem at hand. The OP even stated in his original post what the problem is and why he's facing it. There are no "GPU drivers" for MacOS and there haven't been for a very long time. The error that Pr is throwing is very misleading, and in fact has nothing at all to do with the graphics subsystem of the Mac.

It's a known problem with the Promise storage drivers and Premiere. I'm not having the same problem because I don't use Promise's overly expensive hardware or their badly written drivers.

Report · Mar 28, 2020

gotta say I've worked on the mac for the last (I'm guessing here) 30 years and always had administrator privileges. Unless there are issues with multiple users there's no reason not to. And I've had issues with permissions that need to be fixed a number of times often when I've updated software or OS. Certainly temporarily enabling administrator privileges and checking to make sure your boot drive is set up properly as far as permissions go to see if that solves the problem seems like worth a shot. (that sentence seem to go on way to long but hopefully my meaning is clear. It's been a long day)

Report · Mar 29, 2020

I'm not really sure how many different times I have to say this and why it's not getting through: this is a known problem with the interaction between Promise drivers and Premiere Pro on the Mac. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with permissions or any such thing.

End users can't solve this. Developers at the respective companies have to. Full stop.

Report · Mar 29, 2020

perhaps if instead of just repeating your assertion without any documentation or references, you explained how you know this, I would stop questioning it. I don't think that's an unreasonable position for me to take.

Report · Mar 29, 2020

Please read the OP. Then re-read it. When you're done with that, re-read it again. Just to summarize, the author already knows that this is a problem between Promise and Premiere. He got that from Adobe chat support.

If that's not enough: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/premiere-pro-could-not-find-any-capable-video-play-modul...

Note the "Correct Answer" given by Adobe employ Mitch_W.

Report · Mar 29, 2020

I've read it, and reread it everytime before I post. No one is infallible including Adobe Support. I see in one of your posts you dismisssed an Adobe post. And you still haven't said where your authority on this matter comes from... I'm done unless you have something substantial to add.

Report · Mar 29, 2020

It sounds like you'll have to use different storage for Premiere Pro projects until Promise gets their driver updated.

Fast, high capacity storage isn't cheap, so I know full well that doing may be a genuine challenge for something that should just work.

Report · Mar 29, 2020

Have you tried removing the Promise extension?

This is what's on my iMac:

/Library/Extensions/PromiseSTEX.kext

It's version 6.2.9.

However, I don't use a Promise RAID any longer (not to mention that I'm still running macOS High Sierra 10.13), so I have no way to test if this will help in any way.