PPro 2018 (12.1.2) Poor Performance on iMac Pro

[crmccrackin]

Look...I get that it takes time to fully optimize software. I also know that Adobe apps often times like faster clock speeds over more cores...regardless PPro 2018 runs horrible on my few months old 18-Core iMac Pro. I waited to see if they'd update to improve performance. Despite the last update mentioning doing things to fix performance on Macs, I have seen none. The 2013 8-core Mac Pro I was using before could handle the RAW files I threw at it at half res better than this iMac Pro can at 1/4 res in PPro CC 2018.

I thought maybe it was the machine, but then I re-dowloaded PPro CC 2017 and it run circles around CC 2018! It is night and day. What gives Adobe? This is an issue no matter what type of RAW file I try to run in CC 2018 (Canon, RED, etc). For a program that touts being able to play back RAW files natively to struggle this much on such a high end machine is unacceptable, especially when the previous yr's release can still handle it, no problem. I pay for CC so I can get the latest updates as soon as possible and use the new feature. What good are new features if the software is so poorly optimized it can't even play the footage.

Here is a video demonstrating the poor performance I am and have been experiencing when trying to play RAW files (or pretty much any 4K+ files other than ProRes) in 2018 vs in 2017:

PPro CC 2018 vs 2017 on 18-Core iMac Pro - YouTube

I am open to hearing any opinions, options of settings to change etc, but as far as I can tell I have both versions of PPro set up the exact same way. If nothing else I want to present visual evidence of the problems so Adobe can hopefully investigate and work on better optimization.

-Chris

[R Neil Haugen]

Also file this on the UserVoice system ... that's the place that goes to the QC engineers. This forum is primarily user-to-user assisting with problems. Now, getting a good discussion on this here is also a good thing.

And yea, the more and better evidence, the better.

Neil

[Jeff Bugbee]

Here's 2 screen grabs from your video, one from the 2018 version and one from the 2017 version. Did one or the other have a LUT or Lumetri attached? That is likely to affect playback performance, especially on footage of that size.

[crmccrackin]

Hi Jeff. There was no LUT applied, but there was a slight curve on the RED RAW settings applied that I forgot to remove before recording. However, playback is the same even with it off. Frames drop even at 1/4 res.

[Guest]

It performs poorly on everything; the past two updates have made premiere 30 times harder to use than it used to be.

[crmccrackin]

I will say my associate on a comparatively spec'd PC does not have the playback issues I have. His performance on CC2018 more closely resembles how things play for me in CC2017. Not quite as good, but much closer.

[crmccrackin · Accepted solution]

Happy to report that *so far* CC2019 seems to perform MUCH better on the iMac Pro than CC2018 did. I'm back to Full Rez playback of 5K+ RED RAW files with no issue. Thanks Adobe!

[Rameez_Khan]

Glad to know it's working for you now.

Thanks for your patience on this.

Best,

Rameez