Adobe Premiere Pro is a truly horrible, buggy, unstable, unreliable program.

[sandefilms]

I'm with you.  I'm no noob.  I've been editing for 20 years, the last 4 on PPro.  It's a truly horrible, buggy, unstable, unreliable program.  AVID has it's problems, but it had always hummed like a race-car for me.  Unfortunately due to work circumstances, I have to use PPro.  It is shortening my life and thinning my hair.

[Michael Grenadier]

And I started on avid at least 25 years ago, moved to fcp 1-7 and then moved to premiere and find it works great.    so, maybe your hardware's not up to snuff, or there are conflicts with other programs...  haven't had a crash in months.  

[R Neil Haugen]

Premiere is used on by the largest number of users on the widest set of gear/media out there. Most are getting good performance.

But not for everyone. Naturally.

Each NLE has a very different look/feel/process also, and what works for one will NOT be happily appreciated by all. In the end, they are all tools ... fancy hammers.

I work in both Premiere (mostly) and Resolve (some). I like the Premiere UI, cannot stand the way Resolve is locked to a narrow set of user-changes for UI. I don't like the look/feel of the editing page.

And I also get very resentful that BlackMagic in all their wisdom and self-interest (which of course, they're as welcome to as anyone!) lock down any "outside" hardware like my full Elements panel while working in Resolve. At any one time, more than half of my Element's many knobs & buttons are 'blank', not assigned. And they do not allow the users to map anything.

Naturally, they want you to buy BlackMagic gear. But why would I want to buy their kit, which only works with Resolve, when I need kit that works in Premiere and AfterEffects also?

But I put up with it because at times I need the color tools in Resolve. Not very often anymore, with the recent changes in Lumetri and having added in a Red Giant Colorista panel color workspace in Premiere, so I have two full color workspace panel setups. With very different math and results. Yea, don't need Resolve so much now.

But again ... they're all just fancy hammers. Every video-post worker I've ever met whether editing, vfx, or color does their thing different than every other person I've met.

Use what works for your needs ... and get the job out to the nice customers that pay your bills.

And of course, feel free to rant every once in a while ... I certainly do!

Neil

[Michael Grenadier]

Yes, Adobe can do a much better job with providing learning resources and developing a better, more comprehensive manual...  but

You don't become a doctor by reading a manual or doing a "curated" set of comprehensive tutorials.  You need to spend years and money learning.    As I often say, nobody's life is in the balance in our jobs but the creative and technical sides of video postproduction are incredibly complex.   I went to NYU film school many years ago and frankly did not get the training I needed to get a job as a professional editor.  I had to start by working in an apprentice situation it and it took years to learn the skills I needed to be a good assistant.. and years to become a good editor...   and I'm still learning.   

Perhaps you can point us to another NLE that has the kind of comprehensive free training you're demanding... Certainly not DaVinci Resolve...  I've worked exetensively in Avid in it's early days and in FCP 1-7 and in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve.  With a professional background in Film and Video postproduction I was able to sit down and start working almost immediately.    And if I hit a wall, I figured it out, either digging in to the program, or doing online research or asking other professionals.  I also spent about 5 years in the 90's teaching avid editing on a college level to both continuing ed and matriculated students.  The most important skill to teach:  how to solve the kind of problems you're talking about..  

There are fantastic resources out there both with and without cost.  And anyone can learn an incredible amount just briefly reviewing new posts in the premiere forum.    And if you can't spend the time doing "due diligence"

hire someone to help you.   Had an intial meeting last week with a very experienced editor with a strong background in traditional film editing and on the avid platform.  He's now working in Premiere and having many problems.  His solution:  hiring me to provide support...    

[bam11247]

Stop trying to defend Premiere and the idiots at Adobe who are resentful to fix any of their awful broken apps! They don't care, they only care about sucking up more money through their BS subscribtion platform! So sick of hearing "oH, aLL nLeS hAvE iSsUeS!" No, not like premiere they don't!! Everyday is a new issue that will never be resolved and we're all sick of it! 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sande,

I've been editing even longer. Though I work here, I also edit all the time and have few stability or performance issues. That said, I have very good project management, mac maintenance, and am aware of Premiere Pro's reliance on certain hardware tech and work around anything I cannot handle natively, usually by optimizing my media to actual editing codecs or by creating proxies, much as other NLEs do. Avid, to my recollection, creates its own media files for editing. Linking to files is a feature, but is more bottlenecked unless you've got fast drives, isn't it?

If you are still editing with H.264 and expecting a highly responsive timeline, I think you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Transcode and all will be much better with your workflow, I'd bet.

Thanks,
Kevin

[bam11247]

Typical Adobe reply. "I don't have any problems, the problem is you" NO! It's your worthless software and Adobe's resentfullness to fix anything! Quit trying to gaslight us that we're the problem and there's nothing wrong with Premiere! Just admit that you're product is worthless and doesn't work and you work for a corrupt comapny that has no interest in actually providing a stable product to paying costumers. 

[R Neil Haugen]

I've been using Adobe and BlackMagic video post apps for a decade now. I work primarily in Premiere, but I work for/with/teach pro colorists, mostly based in Resolve or Baselight. I spend a lot of time routinely in both apps. Right now, I'm working on a tutorial on using the Tangent "Warp Engine" software to remap the controls of the Color page (specifically HDR wheels and Color Slice)

for use on the Tangent Elements panel.

As Baselight is the old school process, you buy a $15,000 computer from them, and pay a couple grand yearly license fee, I don't have experience with that app.

Over the years, by following closely to what other users have recommended, I've had very few crashes in Premiere. Other than a couple builds years ago, which were nasty buggers, and the one release which I couldn't use because that had a specific known issue with my hardware, so I had to wait like three months for a new released build.

So I find Kevin's comments, from a user's perspective, to be pretty accurate.

And, as a daily user of Resolve and participant on the Resolve and general colorist forums, I'm around the BM Resolve user base also. Which ... I think perhaps due to BM's choice to mimic Adobe's one=app-for-everyone-on-all-gear-media idea, is having ... issues.

More and more, there are users with odd behaviors, bugs or whatnot.

Ain't any of these complex and complicated apps perfect, or even near. Lose the emotions, they are tools. Use the tool that works to get the projects out the door to the good clients what pay your bills.

[bam11247]

Well Premiere isn't the tool that can get projects out the door to clients anymore. Look through all the rest of the comments here and you'll see I'm far from alone in my emotions. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Again, lose the emotions. Why anyone has emotions over these tools is beyond me. I do NOT have affections for a hammer.

Next, you do realize there are several million daily users of Premiere? That aren't on here complaining? Yea, there are some bug issues, and they've had doozies at times.

But most actual bugs affect only small sections of the overall user base. Everyone else is just working away. Here, Resolve, Nuke, whatever.

Please do post buggy and weird behavior, plus ideas for improvements!

That should be clear to everyone, but just saying. And include enough data for someone else to be able to replicate the issue/problem. Or sadly you wasted your time. 

Feel free to rant but keep it specific to issues and polite! 

I've certainly posted my share of epic rants here. Like when they stoopidly EOL'd SpeedGrade.

But again, be respectful, be polite, and keep some perspective. I push for some major color tool and panel capabilities, but ... at the same time, I do completely understand when the devs tell me that realistically, so few users would use those that they aren't going to make the Hit Parade of engineering time budgets.

I keep asking, of course ... lol

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @bam11247,

I'm sorry you find Premiere Pro so painful to edit with. This thread is quite ancient; my reply is almost four years old, but I still stand by it.

Typical Adobe reply. "I don't have any problems, the problem is you" NO! It's your worthless software and Adobe's resentfullness to fix anything! Quit trying to gaslight us that we're the problem and there's nothing wrong with Premiere! 

I'm unsure why it runs so well; I can only look at my workflow habits and reap the results. I had a lot of experience before working here at Adobe as a pro editor, so perhaps that's it. I'd like to know just what things you are struggling with. Maybe I can help.

I don't use crappy Long GOP media is my #1 thing. Transcode on ingest or create proxies at the very least to edit more smoothly. That's pretty much my rallying cry. I can see how one would say that Premiere Pro is difficult to work with if you are not using an editing codec to edit. In that respect, yes, you must meet the app halfway by bringing a healthy computer system and proper media to edit with.

I'd love to help you iron out your workflow so that you can enjoy your work as an editor. Let me know about your current setup, the media you edit with, and the kind of things you edit day to day, and I'm sure I can help you.

Cheers,
Kevin

[gcw87632117]

Exactly! I have worked with Premiere Pro, Avid, and switching to Final Cut. Avid and FCP are by far less buggy, smoother in how they run, more efficient and provide better results. I’m no noob either. As a post-production editor and videographer/filmmaker since 2009, I have enough on my plate than to spend over 50% of my time trying to troubleshoot. 

[Michael Grenadier]

and I've been working with nle's since around 1990 after editing film and working in linear video editing for many years.  NLE's  all have pluses and minuses...  Started on Avid for about 10 years or so and then moved to fcp 1 and stayed there well past it's expiration date when apple pulled the plug and spent a fair amount of time in resolve and settled into premiere in about 2017 and I haven't had any serious issues with Premiere.     

Don't understand why you're still working with premiere if you're having serious issues that you're not having on the other platforms...  

[R Neil Haugen]

They are all tools ... fancy hammers ... use what works on your rig with your media and deliverable needs.

I work with both Pr and Resolve. Daily. And communicate with a ton of colorists daily, most based in Resolve. They all have their long list of bugs that haven't been fixed. There are enough options in Resolve that sometimes actually when the app is behaving poorly, there's a way around it with settings. Been through a lot of discussions about that.

And new major releases ... are simply problematic. The most recent major Resolve release had very much the same user situation: most users working away, some doing so but needing annoying workarounds to do so, some totally hammered.

I think with any complex and complicated app, used for all sorts of different workflows on the array of gear these are used on, with all the different media, effects and such ... it's not possible to get total guaranteed stability.

The only apps that do that are like Baselight. You buy between a $10G and $20G custom computer running Linux from them, and the only app on the machine is Baselight. Yep, total stability.

Neil

[Mark24073202xvbs]

same and agree.  now Is HDR problem premire 2022. 

[cugrad16]

I'm no noob myself, and give a huge thumbs down unfortunately.  I only installed it (Beginner trial)  to create a standard mp4  20-min. video of our company holiday party, after pooping around with numerous other so-called Windows editors (that either froze midstream or whatnot).  But sadly discovered that there are just too many complexities to deal with, after painstakingly adding my clips, then trying to finalize.  I was simply looking for a good simple video editor after Microsoft dumped the former Movie Maker (which was awesome AND user friendly)  

[Ann Bens]

  I was simply looking for a good simple video editor after Microsoft dumped the former Movie Maker (which was awesome AND user friendly)  

By @cugrad16

By all means Premiere is not a simple video editor. Steep learning curve.

Think you chose the wrong NLE. Premiere Elements might suite you better.

[cugrad16]

I believe I have used PE once before in the near past.  I will check it out again.  Thanks for sharing  🙂

[Ann Bens]

These frustated posts/behaviour of yours is imo a result of you not grasping this simple editor.

[neil wilkes]

I seriously do not understand all the bile I am reading in this forum. I honestly don't - and I can whine & complain with the best of them if necessary, I can assure you of that.

PPro works just fine - as long as you know what you are doing, and as long as you have a basic understanding of the file types you are working with then results are easily produced.

With YouTube, for example, the correct method has been stated already & this works. There is actually a YouTube preset.

Where I suspect a lot of people are going wrong is by trying to edit & work with heavily data reduced forms such as H264, mp4 (whatever the container form) and then expecting the recompressed output to have the same quality as you began with. This is simply never gonna happen. You start with heavily compressed footage you have already downloaded from the Interweb and then complain when it all goes to hell! There is a well known programmers saying 'GIGO'

Recently, someone we work with decided to do their own YouTube promo clip from an album we mastered for them as for various reasons they did not call us & ask us to do it for them but instead used Movie Maker, and ended up with a blocky, awful mess that had 'trial version' banners across the bottom of the footage to boot, so please don't tell me how much easier to use Movie Maker is - because it simply isn't.

The grass may look greener on the other side but when you ghet up close & personal it rarely is in reality. I still remember having to use tools like Edius, Canopus and the Windows 98 versions of Premiere Pro - they were unstable. What we have now basically works but you must put some time into learning what you are doing. This is a professional quality tool that is designed to run on as wide a range of systems as possible (admittedly with a heavy bias to Mac OS-X variants) and it has a steep learning curve. In just the same way you cannot possibly expect to install an Audio workstation & immediately produce commercial grade mixes - you must learn what you are doing & this takes time, patience & effort - all seemingly alien attributes in this modern world where there are a large number of folks who want everything, now, for free.

Welcome to reality.

[R Neil Haugen]

Well stated.

[alexc38681120]

imo, it's just a terrible UX. imo, but always, when you need to use tutorial or do 100500 actions for a generic thing shows that UX has big problems, like massivelly overloaded UI where person easilly get lost. functional wise PremierePro a powerfull tool, but imo, when for set of simple things you have to use manual or video tutorial/forum, where in FCPX you would just do it within a second without even noticing it by just using tools out of the box. As example, I had just read datetime from file metadata and append to video clip. While in FCPX its a question of drag&drop, in final cut pro i was surprised that it was just not possible at all: u need to install a plugin or do it manually and using setup out of box its just not possible. Also turned on that for simple editing of the video (cut, mix up audio, clean up sound, add protos and simple transiong effects in FPCX it takes 10-15 minutes and you use only few hotkey combinations and all the rest are quick drag&drop operations,in premiere you need to do 100500 operations with tonns of the hotkeys, otherwise you will get crazy from amount of clicks and menus selection). And definitelly I hate idea of this marketplaces implementation from Abobe with subscriptions. Of course its question of gettting used to it, but still it steals a lot of time and potentially a lot of money from the pocket because bunck of generic things just not available out of box. I trying already 3rd time to move into windows environment and to Abobe because need to use powerfull GPU to speed up operations, which is not possible to use with OSX.

[lot 7 media]

This post is  especially relevant while we're all dealing with the nightmare that is 24.5.  The key to using premiere is finding a stable iteration and sticking with it.  I'm on 23.2 / windows 10 and it's rock solid. handles mxf, red giant. i think the current iteration, 24.5, feels like a lost cause.   Long story short, find a setup that works and don't chase updates... 

[R Neil Haugen]

24.5 may be a problem for you. But do understand, for many others of the several million daily users, 24.5 is an "awesome!" build. That's the way it is at this time.

There is such a wide variety of computer hardware, let alone camera hardware, codecs/formats and the choices therein, workflows and types of effects used, totally mind-boggling the number of options for users these days.

And therein lies a conundrum ... literally thousands of options for each of those, yet ... how to make an application that "just works" on all of them? All possible combinations?

Quite literally, even with a couple thousand engineers/coders/testers, you cannot possibly test all possible user cases for an app these days. As I noted above, Baselight users buy a very spendy computer from the company, that is ONLY ever used for Baselight, and pay a hefty annual fee.

For that, you do get rock-hard stability for your grading.

I've got a 3960X 24 core Ryzen with 128GB of RAM, twin Nvme SSD drives, one for OS/programs, the other exclusively for all cache files. A 2080Ti GPU. Eight internal SSDs, a couple internal spinners, a couple attached external LARGE spinners for basic local backup.

My internal media is mostly BRAW or ProRes with some All-I mov occasionally. A small amount (thankfully!) of H.264. I work heavily in color, some in graphics and audio, and do a ton of testing and pushing various media formats and effects.

I've had very good processing in Premiere over the last few major series.

Another user, with a rig so identical it had to have been another Puget build, was getting lag beyond belief. Never got that sorted, and it irritated me we couldn't figure it out.

But ... there have been truly odd things that have been sussed out over the years that have been the cause of bad stuff in Premiere. Like ... a user posting here had a few games also installed, and one of the games added some "gaming enhancement" utilities in the background that they didn't know about. And which caused no end of troubles for Premiere and Audition, as they were "sound optimizations".

On suggestion, eventually, they removed those from the computer, and voila! ... Premiere and Audition simply screamed along. Reinstall, doggy days. Confirmed ... those things couldn't 'live' on a system running Premiere.

There are so many potential issues, that no maker of software can sort all possibilities out. And as frustrating as that it, it is Reality.

As noted, I work in both BlackMagic Resolve and Adobe daily. And am on the BM 'house' forums as well as LGG and the MixingLight boards. There are issues for some users on any of these apps.

But as I do often point out, they are tools.

Fancy hammers, that's all they are. Lose the emotions, I don't emote over a hammer. Use what gets work out the door.

[Will..]

It's been two months of v24 and it's still at 24.0 with so many people complaining about bugs. The top feature of this release is 'stability' LOL Where are the updates to address the issues paying customers are having? How are weekly updates not being rolled out for the people that rely on your software to pay their bills? Adobe is worth over 200 BILLION dollars. There's no excuse for this. Whoever is in charge of the Premiere team needs to be swapped out with someone who can manage all of this better, as the existing situation is just straight up deceptive. (marketing that it's stable when it completely isn't.)

Last night I tried to do speed ramping in Premiere by copying and pasting work I've already done to a new clip (Something I've done many times in the past). It just wouldn't work this time. Half the clip glitched at the end, so I ended up not being able to finish the project in Premiere. I was forced to do it in DaVinci Resolve, which worked perfectly on the first try. (Their workflows are actually significantly better for slow mo speed ramping too. It's easy to make adjustments in comparison)