[UPDATE: 11-15-14] The “definitive solution” is at the end of this post.
The dreaded AudioPrefetch.cpp-87 error has been present in Adobe Premiere Pro at least since version CS4 and continues to wreak havoc through CS6.1 and possibly later (CC?).
Adobe has answered with everything from “simply cut and paste your timeline onto a new one” to “you must completely reinstall your software.”
Unfortunately, neither of these is necessarily the answer.
The issue has to do with playback and rendering the audio wave form (the visual representation of the audio wave). I assume the term “prefetch” means the program is trying to “fetch” the audio wave image before it is played back on the timeline. When it cannot do this, the error is spawned.
The error seems to occur most often (if not always), when Premiere is trying to play a clip that has been conformed to a non-native format. For instance, if you have a clip that you shot at 59.97fps but then conformed to 23.976fps so the clip would play in slow motion, and if you are allowing the audio to play, you will eventually get this error.
If you minimize the audio clip (click the triangle to the far left in the timeline) so that the wave form is not being shown and therefore not being rendered, the error will not occur. If you are not using the audio (most often if the clip is slomo, you will not be using the audio), you can simply “unlink” the audio from the video clip (right-click, unlink) and delete the audio portion of the clip. The error will no longer occur.
If you are doing something weird (like I often am), and you actually want to PLAY the slow-motion audio and need to see the waveform in order to edit in/out points, key frames, volume, etc., you are simply out of luck and will need to keep closing the program (making sure to click “close” a million times on all the prefetch error dialog boxes that are likely stacked up behind your main edit window), then re-opening the project and working until the error occurs again.
The “copy/paste to a new timeline” fix has been the go-to answer for years. The idea is that doing this will resolve any issue with a corrupt clip on the timeline. While it’s not a total fix (it does seem to work sometimes), I have noticed that the “copy all the clips on the timeline to a new sequence” solution does seem to extend the amount of time you will have once you re-open the program to work on the new sequence/timeline. Just be sure that once the error occurs, you copy and paste everything to a new sequence and then delete the old sequence without ever playing either the old or new timeline/sequence. Bear in mind, this solution means you will lose all settings you had for the original sequence (track names, mixer channel names, key frames on the timeline (not key frames on the clips), etc.).
[UPDATE: 9-30-14] Now I’m getting an AudioPrefetch.cpp-99 error in CS6.0.5. It behaves exactly the same.
[UPDATE: 11-15-14] I have been working on a project with a lot of overcranked footage, and utilizing a lot of the overcranked audio. As such, I have come up with what I will call the “definitive” solution to this issue. The problem is a result of Premiere having to process “slow motion” audio in real time (on the fly). Thus, I figured the solution would be to convert the slo-mo audio to “regular” audio. Simply right-click any active slowed down audio on your timeline, open in Audition, resave as a “normal” file, and then import that file and replace the audio clip (highlight the new audio file in your bin, right click the slow motion audio clip on your timeline, right-click and select “replace with clip from bin”). Golden.
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