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Adobe Premier CC 2014 and Flickering
Poking around online it looks like others have also encountered this but nobody seems to have an answer.
Ever since the 2014 update my coworkers and I have been encountering this mysterious flickering issue in premier and in renders. We’ve all tried the usual things like clearing caches, making new sequences, rendering out of either Premier or Media Encoder, using the anti-flicker slider in the clip controls tab, and fiddling with bit rates but nothing seems to consistently fix it. It’s like some kind of background issue with the 2014 update.
What’s also weird about this issue is that it isn’t consistent itself. It just shows up on certain clips and not others, even though they have all the same settings, filters etc..
We’re working with 24fps 1080p footage in 24fps 720p sequences.
So, Has anyone else encountered this and has anyone found a good solution or have some insight? -
14 Replies
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Dear John,
We also have this problem, working on 1080p 25fps footage, from various cameras. Happens almost every time when there are two or more effects affecting a clip. Most notably adding a couple of simple effects like levels or color correctors on an adjustment layer will cause random flickering on the footage below.
I thought it was a problem with CUDA as we’ve got a range of nvidia cards in the studio, but turning it off doesn’t change a thing. Absolutely nothing helps with that issue, except maybe reducing the amount of effects on a clip or layer.
I believe that there are many people with this problem but they just try to get back from CC 2014 to 2013 in their workflows. As hard as it may be after upgrading a project and finding out there’s no easy way back.
I saw reports on that on Adobe forums recently but I didn’t see any solution at the moment.
I wonder why this bug still exists, being so critical and all; doesn’t everyone have it? I’ve tested this on very different machines and it appears every time.Edit:
Recently, I had to work on a huge project that was cut in CC 2014, and when I added a couple of simple effects the flickering appeared. I found something on Adobe forums; It seems that nesting a single or multiple clips and then adding the effects on the nested sequence is almost always flicker free. This solution doesn’t always work though – flickering is still awful in simple a combo of
levels+luma curve+color balance+three way color corrector+stabilizer+rolling shutter repair.
In the future I plan on never using the newest versions of Premiere for any effects until it’s proven bulletproof (or flickerproof). -
I encountered this in an earlier CC2014 and now in 8.1. I get full frame white flashes/flickers that only appear after rendering. They remain in the same spot and are visible in the waveform when you move frame by frame. I imported all media into PP 5.5 and recreated a small portion of the timeline and it was perfect. Adobe had me move some files to the C drive and replace the shots on same timeline with C drive shots. That rendered perfectly. They suggested having IT reset permissions on RAID. So now I wait…
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Mihali Moore has posted a possible solution.
Disable GPU (open CL) rendering in Project Settings.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/959153#959197
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I’m having identical problems with 1080p 25fs footage downscaled from 4k off a Lumix GH4. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to happen with clips off a GoPro. But there’s definitely some connection with effects, because I rendered a sequence of the same clips without effects added and there weren’t any issues.
Other than that it’s hard to detect a pattern. Sometimes I get the problems really badly, other times not.
Has anyone encountered any fixes for this? Or heard any word from Adobe on the subject? It basically makes the editing suite next to useless.
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Dear David,
Since my last post I didn’t find a solution other than returning to CC2013 or earlier version. If it’s really bad and you don’t want to recreate your project from scratch, I’d recommend:
1. Exporting xml from cc2014 and importing it into an earlier version of Premiere;
2. Using After Effect to export a project into it and then back to previous version of Premiere (I’ve heard it works for some, I don’t know how to do it though)
3. Nesting every single clip on the timeline that shows the issue, and then adding all the effects that you had on the original by copying them and pasting on the nested clip, or adding them again which may be more effective. This one worked for me in most cases. For adjustment layers, if you have only one track with them, you might want to consider nesting entire sequence and adding the effects from the adjustment layers on the nested sequence. -
Thanks Adam
I’m new to video editing and have no expertise, so all that sounds a little daunting! Think I may try to revert to an earlier (pre-2013) version of APP- any idea how to go about that now that it’s done via the cloud? I guess I could purchase the software on disc instead?
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘nesting’ but will try to figure out your fullsome technical advice, which I much appreciate.
As I’m sure you’ll agree, this is a frustrating problem given the expense of the subscription.
I haven’t lost any work as such because I’m still experimenting with very short sequences of clips, following the whole workflow through from import to export (and uploading to Vimeo) in bursts so as to learn how to manage it.
Did you not manage to get any useful feedback or support on this from Adobe? It’s hardly credible – you’d think they’d be keen to solve problems like this as quickly as possible. But what do I know . .
thanks again for the reply
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To buy an earlier version of Premiere, you would need to install a trial from a third party website (I couldn’t find any legacy downloads at Adobe’s website). I think that when the trial of an old version ends, you will still have an option to buy the software.
As of why Adobe still didn’t repair the flickering, I don’t know. I must say that I didn’t follow the threads on their forums recently because I use earlier versions and I won’t use the newest version until it’s proven bulletproof.
Some people reported the bug, I also tried reasoning with Adobe staff at their forums… I hope they’re working on it since so many people complain. I can only guess that the problem doesn’t occur on high-end hardware and graphics, as everyone who experienced the bug has an average priced hardware, like nvidia cards from 5- 6- and 7-series. -
Thanks Adam,
So do you think this problem is attributable solely to a bug in the most recent version(s) of PPcc? Or using inferior graphics cards and drives?
And am I correct in thinking that you no longer experience these issues now that you have reverted to an older version of PP? If so, which one? cc 5.1?
I still haven’t experimented to isolate the problem yet, but yes, it seems to only happen when I add effects to a clip. And it only affects 4k clips, not others at 2.7k and 1080p.
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I’m not sure if you guys are referring to a constant flickering (like every other frame) or intermittent full screen green flashes. I’m cutting a large green screen project and I’ve been experiencing both.
Constant Flickering:
First sequence that I cut I was getting constant flickering and it seemed to get worse if I had more than one video effect (i.e. levels, contrast, CC). I reduced my effects down to just one and then increased Temporal Smoothing to 5 sec. Any less than that and I still saw the flicker. Not a great solution but seemed to be working at least.
Intermittent Full Screen Green Flashes:
Same footage, different sequence. All of the sudden I started getting the full screen green flashes. OMG! I went into PP Preferences>Memory>Optimize rendering for… and switched it from performance to memory. I also allocated 13GB of my RAM to PP and only 3 GB for other apps. This seemed to work. No more flickering or green flashes. I even tried reducing temporal smoothing from 5 sec to 0 sec and it still worked.
Oh yeah, I’m on a MAC Powerbook, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, OS X 10.9.5.
Good luck! -
Hi Everyone,
I am not sure of the status on this issue for you all, as I just stumbled upon this thread. I have been encountering a random flickering issue when playing back clips dropped into my timeline. There are no effects on any of the clips. Just a standard clip with playback that intermittently will begin flickering when I attempt to playback.
My workaround has been simply saving and closing out PP CC and relaunching the project. The issue has definitely gotten worse over the last several weeks.
I’m working on a Macbook Pro w/ CUDA enabled. I did some digging around on CUDA for my model year of MBP, and found out that there is documented issue with the vid card that Apple is aware of and advises that if your machine falls into their range, to take it into the Genius Bar so they can run a test on it to determine if it’s the issue, at which they will send out the machine for repair. (I’m sorry I can’t find the link I came across that brought me to this conclusion). Unfortunately my passed the test, but there is definitely something wrong (thank goodness I have Apple Care until October!). However, because I’m on a huge doc series through the end of September, and since this is my only machine to work on at this time, I have to hold of sending out for repair for a bit until I can work ahead enough to go without my MBP for about a week.
Anyway, if you have a MBP, you may want to look into what year it is an see if you qualify for the Apple repair on it. I just bough Sapphire plugins and can’t even use them because the CUDA is jacked up and won’t be able to use them until I get the issue resolved. Good thing I”m not cutting any promos right now, ha ha ha.
I hope this helps.
Cheers!
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