I just upgraded to 2019 (13.0.1) from 2018 (12.1.2) on 11/2. I have opened and converted two projects in progress in 2019. In both projects, all parts of the editing process have become nearly impossible when working in 2019 vs when I was working on them in 2018.
The projects are 1920x1080 23.97 using ProRes 422 footage files of the same size and FR—not proxies. There are also dynamically linked After Effects comps. In several places, those comps are layered on top of the footage and each other and sometimes use the multiply and screen blend modes. I am also using the morph cut and cross dissolve effects on the footage and the tint effect on some of the AE comps.
Before, I could scrub and play through the footage without an issue in real time. At worse, when I had several CC apps opened the footage would drop to 1/2 res. Un-rendered motion graphics would playback with dropped frames but once rendered played back in real time. Rendering was fast and exporting both from within Premiere and with AME was also fast. The one project had a TRT of 6:27 and rendered from AME in about 8-10 minutes.
Now, in 2019, I cannot scrub through the footage at all, even with it forced to 1/4 res. It takes several seconds for the current frame under the playhead to display whenever the position of it is changed.
I cannot play the project back smoothly. When I hit the spacebar to play portions of the project that are footage only (no MoG), Premiere will play a couple seconds but there are tons of dropped frames and it will only play so much before the video stops and only audio plays. At that point, it will often grind to a complete halt after a few more seconds. I cannot playback un-rendered motion graphics at all—it won't even attempt it! Even rendered sections playback in the same choppy manner as the parts that are strictly footage.
Rendering within Premiere and in the new version of AME have also become unbearably long. Hitting return to render the project used to take minutes for several hundred frames of MoG and now I have no idea how long it takes because I let it sit for an hour and it had complete 30-some frames. The project I mentioned before that rendered from AME in about 8-10 minutes took that long just to get to 1% and at that point, the estimated time to finish calculator climbed until it read over 9 hours. I let it go for another half hour until it had reached 2% and canceled the render. Just opening the project in AME and changing the render settings takes 2-3 times as long now.
The dynamically linked After Effects comps are also problematic. If I make a change in AE, the change used to show up nearly instantaneously in 2018. Now, it takes several minutes or it will just show the media pending placeholder. Changing editable text fields for AE comps from within PR also used to be instantaneous but now takes upwards of a minute to show in the program monitor once I commit the change.
Double-clicking in the project pane and opening the After Effects file to import a comp also takes forever. First, it takes several minutes to populate the top-level folders of the AE project in the import window. Then, it takes several more minutes to populate the comps when I drill down into one of the folders. This process used to happen immediately in 2018.
I am having similar performance issues in After Effects including rendering both inside AE and in AME so although I tried exporting my comps as footage clips the renders were taking so long I canceled them.
I have tried using all three rendering engines (software, Metal and OpenCL) for both AME and in Premiere's project settings as well as restarting, clearing caches and deleting preview files. Nothing changes.
I am working on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018):
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (I am unable to upgrade to Mojave due to our IT dept and enterprise security apps)
2.9 GHz i9
32 GB memory
4 GB Radeon Pro 560X
1 TB SSD (OS and apps)
1 TB Samsung T5 external SSD directly connected without adapters (project files)
This thing is a monster and so far has handled everything I can throw at it...until now. So, I don't think it is the computer at all. I am up against deadlines and lost a lot of time screwing about with 2019. Luckily, I hadn't made any significant time-consuming changes and rolled back to 2018 and finished the projects there.
I know there are several existing threads about similar performance and stability issues but this seems to be a wide-spread issue that isn't getting enough attention from Adobe. I am going to keep using 2018 and hopefully, anyone who sees this post or any of the other threads thinks twice about upgrading or at least leaves the 2018 apps installed and doesn't test out 2019 with any critical projects! Don't be an overly-excited early adopter like me!
P.S. I haven't had any of these issues with Lightroom Classic, PS, AI or AU. Only PR, AE and AME. Granted, I spend the vast majority of my time in the video apps and only use the other apps for quick tasks to support the editing process and I haven't any large batches of raw files in LR since upgrading.
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