At least, that's the best way to describe it. Things will be running fine, and then playback just... dies.
Move the playback head: it moves, but nothing actually plays, nor does the counter update to a new position.
Hit spacebar or Play/Stop: nothing.
Change the counter: it changes, but the playback head won't move to the new position.
It's not locking up (as that's usually defined). Menus work, etc., however it won't let me modify the timeline at all. If I try and add a new clip, I get the hand with the crossed out circle cursor.
The only other notable thing is the audio level indicators froze with some signal left in them (i.e. the lower third of the indicators are green, like you froze them half way through a sound).
Restarting (Premiere) or rebooting fixes everything, but that's not going to work long term.
Any ideas?
Other deets: 15" i7 2011 MacBook Pro, 10.6.whatever's up to date. CS5 is up to date as well.
Note, this isn't the two-second playback bug. Already had that, and it's fixed.