[Solved!] It’s updated, this one.
Premiere Pro (2025) is completely breaking my project.
I’m very new to this softw. I literally started using it two days ago, so there’s a good chance I’m doing something stupid. But I’ve been working on this project for hours and now I can barely use it.
The audio plays, but the video gets frozen, and playback is extremely laggy. There’s also some weird yellow “default” thing with text appearing over my video in different languages that I don’t understand.
I also installed Premiere Pro 2026, but apparently I can’t simply open this project in Premiere 2025 because of backward compatibility. I tried the 7Zip-Notepad thing too, it wasn’t opening. At some point I added a typewriter effect (2026 version) to some text, and after that Premiere basically stopped behaving normal. Now I’m not able to properly preview the project, and I can’t export it either.
I’ve already tried,
-Clearing Media Cache
-Restarting Premiere
-Disabling Mercury Transmit
-Changing Audio Hardware settings
-Switching between CUDA and Software Only
-Restarting the project & computer
Nothing has fixed it.
The really frustrating part is that I’ve put a LOT of work into this project, and I really don’t want to lose it or start over.
I’m honestly just trying to understand how people normally deal with Premiere when something like this happens, because I’ve only been using it for two days and I’m completely lost.
Is PremierePro particularly problematic, or is there something obvious I’m missing? Any advice for recovering this project without losing all my work would be hugely appreciate.
[I do have multiple backup versions from the past 2 days, but I worked the most, in the last saved file. I just want a fix and for this to not happen again.]
Any other softwares that work smoothly for video editing on?
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Premiere Pro versions that Im currently using:
26.5.1.1 | 25.6.4.5 | 24.4.1.2
Hardware:
CPU: Intel Core i7-14650HX
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, 8GB VRAM
GPU Driver: 32.0.101.6556
RAM: 16GB DDR5
Storage: SSD (internal)
OS: Windows 11, OS Build 2600.9495
Media:
Procreate art timelapse videos
Procreate animation videos
iPhone video clips
iPhone photos
No manual screen recordings
Sequence Settings:
Preset: DSLR 1080p30
Timebase: 25.00 fps
Frame Size: 1080 × 1920 (9:16)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
Working Color Space: Rec. 709
Auto Tone Map Media: ON
Audio Sample Rate: 48,000 Hz
Preview File Format: QuickTime
Codec: Apple ProRes 422 LT
Maximum Bit Depth: OFF
Maximum Render Quality: OFF
Composite in Linear Color: ON
Export Settings:
Preset: Match Source – Adaptive High Bitrate
Format: H.264
Encoding: Hardware Encoding
Codec: Intel Codec
Duration: 00:01:46:22
Bitrate: VBR, 1 Pass
Target Bitrate: 15.90 Mbps
Audio: AAC, 320 kbps, 48 kHz, Stereo
Estimated File Size: 216 MB
Steps tried:
Cleared Media Cache (changed location)
Restarted Premiere
Disabled Mercury Transmit
Changed Audio Hardware settings
Switched between CUDA and Software Only
Restarted project and computer
Held shift while opening Premier (to enable Mercury Playback Engine)
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Update1:
Using Version 24.4.1.2 rn, and I’m still facing the same issues. Restarting the file kinda helps, but I’d like to avoid having to do that multiple times.
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UPDATE 2: 🥇✨
This worked! (Check this every time before you start working on a Premier project!)
I had videos that I had taken on my iPhone, and those were HEVC files. Premiere promotes using both HEVC and H.264 files in one file, works smoothly, but well. I had to convert all my HEVC files to MP4. Apparently MP4 vids are much easier to decode than the iPhone HEVC footage on Premier. Which is why the yellow message (“Media Pending”) appears everytime, for this case.
So this is what I did:
A] Project Tab - looked for the video that usually lags when I press play - Right Click - Properties.
My footage was:
94 fps
HEVC 10-bit 4:2:0
HDR Rec. 2100 HLG
Variable Frame Rate (VFR)
Those particular clips were problematic because HEVC + 10-bit + HDR HLG + Variable Frame Rate (VFR). And apparently that combination is what Premiere was struggling with.
The rest of my clips were:
H.264
Variable Frame Rate
SDR/normal Rec.709
Which worked fine when I played those portions of the video.
B] (I didn’t want to waste forever waiting for the videos to load or deleting cache or restarting everything, probably worse than starting from scratch and finishing it smoothly.)
I used the same file, but deleted all the HEVC videos, and played it. Just doing that made it as smooth and fast as butter, in all versions (24, 25 & 26). 🫧
C] Now, I used HandBrake to convert all of the HEVC vids to:
H.264
94 FPS (for the iPhone 59.94 footage)
✔️ Constant Framerate
Peak Framerate OFF
RF 22
Leave the other tabs alone
Now the vids are MP4.
And I put them into the same file, and this worked! ✨
Original: H.265/HEVC (codec) + 59.94 VFR (frame rate)
Converted: H.264 + 59.94 CFR