BUG: VST3 plugins crash the app when rendering or exporting
I had a deadline today and instead of delivering on time, I spent the entire day troubleshooting this crash. Turns out, adding a vst3 plugin to an a/v clip causes Premiere to crash 100% of the time when exporting or rendering. Sometimes Pr immediately crashes, other times it will crash at the end of the audio pass. Either way, the only fix was to delete all signs of vst3 from project and then export. I had a ton of work which i basically had to trash because i didn't have time to rebuild all the audio with other solutions.
I tried every workaround imaginable and nothing fixes the crash except deleting the vst3s. I even have a few plugins in both vst2 and 3 format and the vst2 version exports as expected.
Premiere 14.4 on Win10 v2020 with Nvidia 2070.

10 comments
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Earth Oliver commented
Matt, here's a recording of the issue. I did a full rescan as you asked.
https://www.loom.com/share/0d4b866937fe41b2a0fef0c07ae1f317 -
Matt Stegner commented
Hi Earth,
I'm not sure what might be your issue. Like I said, we test extensively with 3rd party effects and haven't run into any issue like this.
Can you verify that you did a full rescan of your effects that I detailed below? "so the list was fresh" doesn't mean something hasn't changed since then.When you rescan, can you also press the default button to reset your VST2.4 scanning locations. This is to eliminate variables that might be causing issue, not cause I want you to use Volder VST 2.4 effects.
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Earth Oliver commented
Sure, no problem. There were no references to vst3 in my plugin paths and i also removed vst2 and disabled all plugins, except a single random one to test with... Pr still crashes on Export or Render when the vst3 is used on a clip or the track mixer.
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Matt Stegner commented
"I wonder if Pr is scanning the default (C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3) location in Win10?"
Yes, it does. VST3 works differently than the older original VST (what we call internally VST2.4 for the last SDK). That is why I said to remove any VST3 paths from the VST2.4 scanning area as it can cause problems.Can you send a picture of your Audio Plug-in Manager window to audbugs@adobe.com (Attention Matt) so I can look at it?
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Earth Oliver commented
and in testing again, now simply dragging a vst3 onto a clip from the Effects Panel is causing an app crash. Understand that i use my audio apps (Ableton, Bitwig) every single day with these same vst3 and i don't have any issues at all.
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Earth Oliver commented
I'm also noticing that Pr is prompting me to sometimes authorize plugins which have long ago been authorized. Perhaps that's what's causing the crash? Even though the plugins are working fine within the app, upon Export i get the authorization warning about 5-10% of the time and then Pr crashes again.
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Earth Oliver commented
Thanks Matt. A few weeks ago was the first time i had opened Pr on this system and scanned my plugins, so the list was fresh. The odd thing I'm noticing is that i have no vst3 path in my plugin locations, but all my vst3 are in the list. I wonder if Pr is scanning the default (C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3) location in Win10?
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Matt Stegner commented
We test extensively with 3rd party effects. So it makes me think there is something else going on.
Can you try this:
1. Open "Premiere Preferences>Audio>Audio Plug-in Manager..."
2. In the VST Plug-in Folder section, remove any folder paths that have the word "VST3" in them.
3. Once any VST3 folders are removed from the VST2.4 scanning list, put a check next to "Rescan Existing Plug-ins"
4. Press the "Scan for Plug-ins" button.
5. Once the scan completes, close the dialog, try exporting with effects again.You might have a stale list of effects scanned into the Premiere plugin list. If that doesn't help we can trouble shoot further.
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Earth Oliver commented
Hi Matt, all vst3 effects would result in an app crash when Exporting from Pr. If i sent the export to the queue, then Pr would crash in the background while ME was running. Eventually, ME locks up too and won't render the video.
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Matt Stegner commented
What effects were causing the issue?
Were you exporting directly from Premiere or from AME?