Slow response Premiere Pro

[paland89]

Hi,

I have a very powerful computer.

i9-7940x CPU (14 core)

64GB Ram

Nvidia 1080Ti

Two SSD, an HDD and some external drives,

3 screens connected

Still I have a lot of problems getting premiere to run smoothly, If I press the play button it usually takes 5-15 seconds for the video to play back (sometimes only audio plays, sometime nothing happens, and sometimes I get the yellow "media pending" screen).

I edit footage from the Sony a7 mk iii, DJI phantom 4 pro, and some GoPros (everything i 4K). I still believe my computer should be able to handle this. Does anybody know why it is so slow, or have any tips? Would greatly appreciate it!

I have my media stored on a fast external drive, and I have divided the rest of the scratch disk setup to different harddrives.

[Ann Bens]

This external disk is how fast? As in hdd or ssd?

Best is to set footage on a internal ssd disk especially footage like your highly compressed files.

[paland89]

It is a rugged design 4TB Usb-C (think it is HDD).

So you suspect it is the HDD that responds slow?

What would you recommend for high capacity, high storage solutions for premiere? I also use the LaCie DUO 20TB, but that is also a bit slow responding. I have a lot of active project at the time and can't fit everything into SSD, that would be to expensive. Any tips would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[paland89]

This is the drive I am using now:

https://www.lacie.com/gb/en/products/rugged/

[Ann Bens]

All your footage is 4K: you need fast drives.

Or consider using proxies.

[jasontcox]

I mean, in theory, Ann is right, but with your setup, there should not be 5-15 second delays in playback. It's POSSIBLE the issue is that the media resides on the HDD and not an SSD but still, those lags seem extreme. Have you just tried (for curiosity's sake) to move the media to one of the SSDs and see if the playback issue is any different? I mean, hell, I playback very similar 4k media with virtually no issue without creating proxies and you've got better specs than me, minus the hard drive situation.

[paland89]

Testing to transfer my working media files over to an SSD drive now. Will let you know. Thanks

This is my disk setup before transferring:

Operating system: 500GB NVMe m2

Program Installed at: 500GB NVMe m2

Capture video: Disk 3: 4TB HDD

Captured audio: Disk 3: 4TB HDD

Video previews: Disk 3: 4TB HDD

Audio previews: Disk 3: 4TB HDD

Project Auto Save: Disk 1: 500GB NVMe m2

CC Libraries Downloads: 500GB NVMe m2

Now I will use my other 500GB SSD for my working footage. Do you think it will have any effect to send "video previews" to the SSD as well, or would that be minor improvement? (running out of storage on SSD)

[paland89]

Tried putting it on an SSD, it's a little better. Still it is 4-5 seconds lag before it plays, and it's still dropping some frames during playback.

I am getting a 30-40% CPU usage, 60% RAM use, Disk read is at 5-10% and GPU is at  50-60%, can't figure out where my bottleneck is.

[Jim_Simon]

I do recommend using Cineform proxies for all H.264 media.

Work offline using proxy media |

[paland89]

Thanks for your feedback.

Part of the reason for buying such an expensive setup was to avoid long conforming times, as well as it taking up a lot of space.

I am combining footage from all my cameras in a single sequence. (4K 60 fps), maybe I should consider transforming my gopro footage as I understand that is a though codec?

[Jim_Simon]

Part of the reason for buying such an expensive setup was to avoid long conforming times, as well as it taking up a lot of space.

To be honest, I think you're better off accommodating proxies than trying to avoid them.  Whatever speed boost your hardware offers will also speed up the process of creation.  The benefits while editing are substantial.

[markz631]

I think you all are failing to focus on the actual problem -- 5-15 seconds is redic regardless of where the media lives or its size. I am having the same problem and it all began with the latest 'update' of Premiere Pro CC.

My files are all 2k or smaller and in editing I had no lag despite working of an external Thunderbolt drive. But since updating, it takes 7-10 seconds to playback after pushing spacebar.

[jasontcox]

Yes, there is indeed something off here. No way the lag should be that long. Again, I RARELY use proxy files (but sometimes) and my 4k H.264 files start within 1 second MAX of hitting play.

[Jim_Simon]

I think you all are failing to focus on the actual problem

Not failing, just...not yet.

The OP is doing things is a less than ideal manner.  I find it best to bring things back into the ideal and see if the issue still exists before trying to solve it with things still "out of whack", as it were.

In other words, do it "right", and let's see if you still have an issue.

[juanmario]

Hi.

It seems to me that he must have some conflict, I make a series of recommendations, so that you go testing.

To begin, comment that you have 3 connected screens, no, try only the main screen.

Disconnect any non-STD peripherals.

In the audio hardware preference, change the output and device.

Uninstall and then install the audio and graphics drivers.

Somewhere there has to be the problem.

[getho]

was this resolved, I've just come back to my main edit machine after using my laptop for a month. Downloaded the update and now I'm finding 4k footage wont play back smoothly. Moving from clip to clip takes about 3 seconds for the screen to update. Even changing the view port size from 50% to fit takes a couple of seconds to update. this feels like a video driver or card issue.

[R Neil Haugen]

It's a puzzler. Some are having no performance problems as Jason notes, but others are. Why?

As with others I can can offer suggestions but that's been covered in this thread.

Neil

[Ann Bens]

I play 4K intra full resolution, but sometimes I do see a lag when pressing play. Range from very short to a few seconds.

[markz631]

I'm still having issues, though a slight improvement by updating my graphics driver which was out of date. But instead of always 15 second delay, it is sometimes down to a 6-8 second delay. Still ugh.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Larkor,

Have you tried your setup with a single screen rather than three?

Thanks,
Kevin

[paland89]

No,

I really need all my screens to have a decent workflow. Will try it out.

Have you heard of others fixing the issue by doing this?

[R Neil Haugen]

Looking back at your performance data posted well above, I'm wondering ... from the testing done by SafeHarbor Computing, Puget Systems, and Bill Gehrke, PrPro's use of more than 10 cores is not particularly heavy. Their recommendations are to go up to 10 very fast cores (4Ghz/better), then get as close as possible to 10GB of RAM per core. As that determines how fast the total pipeline ​can​ flow, then the GPU is added to be able to work up to the level the CPU/RAM/cores subsystem can send it.

That CPU you have has a relatively low base operating frequency ... 3.10Ghz. it does list a max speed of 4.3Ghz. If you can increase that to maybe 3.5/3.6Ghz, you might get a notable boost in performance. Also a consideration, there's very few mobo's recommended that are setup to pass along the data throughput without choke points in the routing of data on the mobo and to/from installed cards & drives. Your mobo might not be perfect for this purpose, I wouldn't know of course.

So ... if there was a ​safe​ way to OC that CPU, it might help with the issue. The media you're using is all ​very​ intensive CPU stuff. From the data I've seen, you'd probably get better results with a "ideal" CPU of 10 cores at 4.2Ghz. So ... as I don't think swapping out CPU's is sensible, can you OC that to see if you get better performance with H.264 media?

It's something to try, and well ... seems supported by testing elsewhere.

Neil

[paland89]

Thank you!

Will try some overclocking. However, when PP drops frames and responds slow, the CPU is never using more than 60% of its capacity. Shouldn't the CPU be utilizing 100% if it should be worth OC?

[R Neil Haugen]

I know, that sounds like something is 'choking' there, but ... I have seen several discussions in the Hardware forum where judicious OC of CPU and readjusting RAM frequency if needed for a match has resulted in higher CPU usage. I'm not nearly experienced enough to give directions/details, my computer guy always handles that stuff.

I just play with the results ...

Neil

[SteveBalaam]

Have had this problem with CC2019 for the last few weeks.  Got slowly worse until it was around 20 seconds before the timeline responded.  Tried everything - ran a similar project in Resolve and that ran like lightening so clearly not an issue with spec or drives.

Finally downgraded Premiere to CC2018 (earliest version out of the available list) and all is well now.

Extremely tired of surfing on bug fixes or trying to get Premiere to do what it is supposed to do so am finally migrating to Resolve.

Unfortunately I still use After Effects a great deal so will have to continue with the subscription, but will see what alternatives are out there.  This whole situation seems to limp from one disaster to another...