Team project with dynamic link loads very slowly

Report · Nov 16, 2017

I recently started using team projects in Premiere and After Effects 2018. One issue that I'm having is that load times are incredibly long. (Sometimes around 15min.)

I can understand some load time when downloading changes from another computer, but even opening the same team project in After Effects that I already have open in Premiere (on the same computer) takes an incredibly long time.

Similarly, it takes quite some time for changes to update in Premiere after I change something in After Effects (I'm left with "media pending" yellow screen for 5-6 min.

For context, as my current project is loading, it says I have over 1000 media items.

What strategies can I use to lower these load times?

System Specs:
- Windows 10 Fall Creator's Update
- i7 quad core 7th gen

- NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080

- 32GB RAM

Graphics assets are stored locally on solid state, footage assets are stored on networked server storage (10Gbit ethernet, SSD RAID 01).

Report · Nov 17, 2017

I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing these slowdowns. When After Effects opens a Team Project that contains Premiere sequences, it creates a DynamicLink connection to each sequence. This can be fairly slow if the sequences are complex or if there are a large number of sequences, since it involves launching a copy of Premiere Pro in the background and waiting for that copy to launch and open the Team Project. Premiere Pro needs to create similar DynamicLinks to any AE comps in a Team Project. Instead of doing that when it opens a Team Project, though, Premiere opens the comps in a "pending" status and connects to them in the background.

If you're seeing slow load times with a Team Project that contains both Sequences and Comps, I'd suggest breaking the work up into multiple Team Projects that either contain just sequences, just comps, or just one or two of the "other" container type.

Another issue we've seen is that sometimes having a slow drive connected to your workstation can slow down opening a Team Project, even if the Team Project doesn't use any media on that drive. If you have any remote or removable drives that don't have Team Project media on them, you could try disconnecting them and see if that speeds things up.

Report · May 09, 2019

I am getting this aswell.

I have to wait over 40 to open the project on one of my machines. It gives me multiple lunch breaks each day if it crashes.

It has premiere and after effects components. It lists that there are 1590 components.

On another machine (different adobe account) the project opens in just a few seconds but the AE comps remain at media pending.

So I susspect it is something to do with the AE comps. They also containt PSD elements that are small files (probably a few MB each) but on network drives.

I could try breaking the project up but then how do I use a AE comp on the timeline in premiere? I understand dynmaic linking doesnt work across team projects like in non team projects.

Report · May 09, 2019

Update to the above. I think it is related to one specific machine. An almost brand new HP Z4 to be exact.

It isnt the adobe account, as I am able to open the team project using the same account on a very old HP Z820 and it opens in seconds. I replicated the exact same network drive mapping and local storage.

Back on the Z4, I removed all adobe applications with the 'remove preferences' option, deleted the cache folder, ran the CC cleaner, and re-installed premiere and after effects. Again it took about 40 mins for the project to open. Interestingly, premiere still gave me my list of recently opened projects. I would have thought that these should be gone? Is it possible that something remained on the machine? The project did (once apon a time) open fast on the Z4 also. It has become a bigger project but not that much bigger. Once open, it runs relatively well while editing. I do occasionally get a 'not responding' in the title bar when sharing changes. But it should not take that long to open, especially when significantly lower spec computers can do it 100 times faster.

I am wondering about a complete clean install of windows.

Report · May 09, 2019

That's strange. Are the AfterEffects comps coming online in Premiere on the older machine? If the slowdown is, indeed, DynamicLink, then not having AE installed, or having a version that's not compatible with your version of Premiere would cause the Team Project to quickly give up instead of making those costly DynamicLink connections. Of course all of the comps would be offline in Premiere.

If the comps aren't the issue, then it's hard to say what it might be. Did you check %APPDATA%\Adobe\Common to see if the uninstaller cleared out Media Cache, Media Cache Files, and Team Projects Cache? If not, try deleting those, and renaming Team Projects Local Hub (that one contains your auto-saves).

Report · May 14, 2019

On one of the computers where the project loads in 30 seconds, the AE comps are offline. I am not exactly sure why they are offline, as AE and Premiere are both on the latest versions and dynamic link works fine in non-team projects. I do not want to fix this on that computer as it is nice that the project loads in 30 seconds.

On the other two computers, one of them (an old HP Z820) opens the project in about 5 mins but sometimes 30 mins. The AE comps are online. I havmt really experimented enough to see if it was just once fast or if only some of the AE comps were online.

On the newer HP Z4, CC cleaner had not removed the %APPDATA%\Adobe\Common folder. I did a clean re-install of windows and purchased a new CC account just in-case. The project then opened in 30 mins but after a couple of days this has increased back up to 40+ mins. It also did not seem to matter if i uninstalled AE, the project still opened slowly. But I am not being very scientificly consistant with this tests. That is hard when I actually need to edit and not experiement with things that take so long.

One thing that is interesting in the behaviour: Everyime I open the project, there is a new "recovered media" bin with a clip that apears to have no properties; no name, no linked media, it is offline, and has no original path. It is infact one of my AE comps that is on a timeline. I use the "video usage" colum in the project panel to reveal where it is. On the timeine it does have a name so I can identify it (but is still offline). The original AE comp is still perfectly ok in the original bin but I have to find all instances of the 'recovered' one on the timeline and replace it with the original. So somehow the project is getting corrupt. Could this lead to the long load times?