Premiere keeps crashing - Project too big? What can I change?

[Guest]

Hi everybody.

We are in the final stage of editing a feature documentary with a deadline ahead and unfortunately Premiere keeps crashing around 15 times in a 10 hour day. There are also strange occurrences with clips not being displayed. I described everything more detailed below. Please have a look. I'd be really happy for any advice. I'm wondering if the project is just too big and if thats premiere's weak point.

Thank's a lot for your help!

Greetings from Germany!

Jonas

SYSTEM

iMac Retina 5K 27“ Late 2015

4 GHz Intel Core i7

32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB

MacOS Sierra 10.12.1

2 external monitors 1920x1080 through displayport / HDMI

2 external hard-drives via USB3 with 8TB each (Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8TB)

SOFTWARE

Premiere Pro CC 2017

Now updated to

Premiere Pro CC 2019 (13.02 . Built 38)

- didnt change anything

VIDEO-MATERIAL

Approximately 75 hours of 3840×2160 pixel Sony FS7 material (XAVC-I-Mod.: QFHD 25p CBG, Bitr. 250 Mbit/s, MPEG-4/H.264/AVC).

Video Material is used natively. No transcoding.

Timelines have two videotracks each.

AUDIO

Approximately 100 hours of 48Khz 24bit .wav files coming from different sound devices recorders. Timelines have about 16 Audiotracks each

PREMIERE PROJECT

We have been successively working on the edit of the film over two years. The project contains a lot of different sequences - I estimate its as much as 150 sequences, since I tend to make new sequences for different steps. Most of them are around one hour.

The project file is 95 MB big.

PERFORMANCE

All video files in the timeline have at least one Lumetri-Color effect apllying a LUT and further tweaks in color. There are some compositings done in Premiere mostly combinig a still and a video file or two video files through an opacity mask.

Basically the system can handle this amount of data. I never render. All clips are marked with the yellow bar. It doesnt play super fluid in full resolution but it performes good enough in ½ resolution.

CRASHES / ERRORS

In the past month the program ran quiet stable. It sometimes crashed, but nothing to worry about. But it increased and at the moment the program crashes around 15 times in a 10 hour day. There are some actions that surley will make the program collapse as moving the outlines of an opacity mask with a lot of feather slowly around but GENERALLY the program just crashes at random points, sometimes even while loading it. In between it works just normal. You can scroll the mouse through the timeline in different speeds and it displays the video fluently (I kind of regard this as a test for system performance). We have the german version. Translated the message showing up would say: Due to a serious error the program is shutting down. Anyhow the program is saving a recovery version which is never faulty so we have no data losses. Still its super annoying, time-consuming and just super interrupting. I really want it to stop.

CLIPS BEING NOT DISPLAYED

There are certain groups of clips that arent displayed in the program monitor. Each group of clips comes from one day of shooting. Their thumbnail is displayd in the timeline. Also if I double-click I can see the footage in the source monitor. But playing it from the timeline I can hear the clip's audio but no video image, just black. In this state its not possible to export the timeline since the program crashes while exporting these passages. What helps is reopening the program again and again until everything is back there. I'd say its every fourth try that brings these clips back.

I tryed to relocate these clips by copying them to the internal SSD and re-link them in the project, but nothing changed.

[Guest]

Ah ... I have dedicated 31GB RAM of 32GB RAM in total to Premiere. No other major applications are running while editing.

[Guest]

A colleague recommended to simplify the project by setting up a new project and afterwards only import the sequences and their data that we are actually using. I've tried it. Imported some sequences with a duration of 1-2 hours and the contained video and audio files.

Again some clips did not display as mentioned above, again the program fully crashed after a few minutes

PS: He said it has no effect to delete sequences and video files from the existing project since they leave so many traces in the projects library that it makes no difference.

[Christian.Z]

I suggest to manually delete Cache and Preview files. Although by doing that, the project might take some time to load when you first open it afterwards, Make sure to give it time to conform everything. Make sure that the Cache folder is not on the main drive.

Hint: it is advisable to use proxies if you aren't doing so already.

Please report back

[abaggett05]

I'm also editing a documentary with 200hrs of footage - and had Major issues a year ago before I started 

Using Shared Projects now called "Project Shortcuts". (it's like bins in avid) and it's the way to go.

Need any help reach out Aaron@vampirepost.net - I've made a bunch of tutorials that could also be helpful. Adobe doesn't handle huge projects well - especially documentaries - but with compartmentalizing your days - interviews and only bringing in what you need in your timeline (a seperate project) - while having access to everything is crucial... Anyhow I get you and if you need help reach out.

[lembl922]

Am currently an AE on a doc with 200hrs of footage, and we've recently started experiencing issues (slower load time, more frequent crashes, glitchy playback). I'm now exploring splitting our big project into linked projects, and would be interested in the tutorials you mentioned. Is there any way to access them?

Thanks, in advance, for your guidance!

[abaggett05]

Hey I can walk you through what I've done and we can setup a call. Since this post I've actually moved most of the project over to Davinci where I've been able to work a lot smoother, and in the past month I've started exploring more with Avid and will more than likely move there for all the interviews and transcriptions using script sync and phrase finder. Premiere just can't keep up, but you can make it work. Shoot me an email. [Personal information removed by moderator.]

[Michael Grenadier]

I'm guessing that you shouldn't dedicate so much ram as you may not be leaving enough ram for the operating system to run properly.   One great thing about premiere is that you can now have multiple projects running at the same time, so no reason not to pare down your project to see if that's the issue.  When you copy a sequence to a new project, all the clips in the sequence will be included in the new project, so I'd start with copying your latest sequence to a new project, quit premiere, restart the computer and launch just the new project and see if the system behaves any better.  

Not sure what you're mac expertise is, so if the following has already occured to you, ignore it:

You might also make sure your hard drive structure is not overly compicated (folders within folders within folders).  There is a limit to the number of characters in a file path and although the mac will allow you exceed this limit, it can cause problems.  

Make sure you have at least 20% free space on your boot drive and at least 10% free space on your media drives.  You might want to run disk utility: disk first aid on all drives and you might want to run diskwarrior on all drives if you have it.

Also, although it seems unlikely, you might try disconnecting from the internet either by turning wifi off or pulling your ethernet cable.  

[digividkid]

Check the sequence settings to ensure that your video previews and editing format are compatible. We have had incidences with different editors changing the settings without informing the post-super or team. The result was simular issues as you have seen. I'd also recommend checking your project settings to ensure Video Rendering and Playback settings are correct. 

[Peru Bob]

"I have dedicated 31GB RAM of 32GB RAM in total to Premiere"

You need to allow less RAM for Premiere Pro.  Your system processes need more RAM than 1 GB.

Try 24 GB RAM allowed for Premiere Pro.