16 Replies Latest reply: Dec 2, 2010 5:40 AM by Harm Millaard RSS

    scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up

    AudoWarp Community Member

      When scrubbing in the source or trim monitors, playback is not smooth unless I scrub back and forth a lot.  Does Premiere load frames into the RAM like After Effects does?  I notice that my RAM gradually fills up--don't know how to clear it...

      Shouldn't the video card (480, hack) be handling this?

        • 1. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
          AudoWarp Community Member

          This is with 1080p .MOV's from a Canon DSLR.  Yellow line timeline scrubs clean for a few frames, but if I drag it fast, over the entire length, it gets choppy.

          If I scrub slowly back and forth, it gets smoother.  Like when the green line fills in in an after effects RAM preview.

          930, 12 GB, gtx480, raid 0....

          • 2. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
            JSS1138 CommunityMVP

            That behavior makes sense.  You go to fast, Premiere Pro just can't handle the load.  This happens even with DV.

            • 3. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
              AudoWarp Community Member

              But if I scrub it slowly, eventually those frames that I scrub over

              seem to "take", and then I can scraub fast.  As I do this, the RAM widget on my desktop shows that more and more percentage of my RAM is being filled.  Even if I change projects, the RAM stays at a that level.

              Only exiting Premiere frees that RAM back up again.

              • 4. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                Harm Millaard CommunityMVP

                If you are concerned about system responsiveness, perform an elementary step first: Turn off the sidebar and all the widgets permanently. They are memory and system hogs.

                • 5. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                  AudoWarp Community Member

                  The more important question is:

                  Is RAM used up while working in Premiere?  Does it fill up the RAM buffer, and the only way to free the RAM is to close the program and re-open it?

                  • 6. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                    AudoWarp Community Member

                    The only widget I have running is the one that tells me

                    how much CPU an RAM is in use. (Not sure what a "sidebar" is).  I can kill that when I really need to, but the issue I am most concerned about is how Premiere loads frames into the RAM.  I thought the video card was supposed to handle that.

                    In After Effects, scrubbing the timeline makes the line green and when all the gaps are out of the green line, scrubbing is smooth--no matter the size of the frames.

                    Premiere seems to operating the same way, except there is no green line to indicate a "RAM preview".

                    Also, the RAM fills up (according to my widget).

                    After Effects has an option to clear the RAM.  Does Premiere?

                    Does Premire fill up the RAM during operation?

                    • 7. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                      AudoWarp Community Member

                      My question is:

                      Why does scrubbing back and forth start out choppy, and then become more smooth the more I do it?

                      It behaves just as After Affects does when one scrubs back and forth in the timeline--where each frame loads into RAM.

                      The widget tells me how much RAM is being used.  I will turn it off when need be, but I am still curious as to why scrubbing fills up the RAM in Premiere.

                      • 8. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                        AudoWarp Community Member

                        Does Premiere load frames into the RAM when you scrub?  Like After Effects?


                        • 9. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                          Jeff Bellune CommunityMVP

                          Are the files still on the SD card?  If so, copy them to your hard drive and try again.

                           

                          -Jeff

                          • 10. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                            AudoWarp Community Member

                            The video is transferred two a RAID 0 of two smasung F3's.

                            Scrubbing via ShuttleExpress or mouse becomes chunky at high speds--in the beginning.

                            Aftter scrubbing back and forth, back and forth, scrubbing becomes smoother--even at high speeds.

                            Scrubbing at a different point in the timeline, or the source video, goes back to being chunky.

                            • 11. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                              AudoWarp Community Member

                              Harm, does Premiere load frames into the RAM, and does the RAM gradually get used up while working in Premiere?

                              After Effects has an option to clear the RAM.  Does Premiere have such an option?

                              • 12. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                                Harm Millaard CommunityMVP

                                It appears that PR loads images into RAM. Your observation is correct in that after opening a project, the first time scrubbing is rather slow and has sometimes serious delays, but after having scrubbed through the timeline, the next scrubbing goes much more fluidly and delays are no longer apparent.

                                 

                                AFAIK, there is no public way to regain memory after it has been filled with images, like AE. There is no flushing of the cache publicly available.

                                • 13. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                                  AudoWarp Community Member

                                  That would appear to be a SERIOUS shortcoming, as RAM could become unavailable rather quickly.

                                  Am I the only person disheartened by this realization?

                                  • 14. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                                    Harm Millaard CommunityMVP

                                    I'm assuming that a FIFO approach is taken here, so the downside is pretty limited, especially since memory management is pretty good with CS5. It is astonishing that the page file is hardly used at all and memory management so effective. Quite an accomplishment on Adobe's side. Nevertheless, it also shows why 12 GB of memory performs much better than 6 GB and why 24 GB is even better. I predict that in one years time, a lot of users will have moved to 24 GB machines.

                                    • 15. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                                      AudoWarp Community Member

                                      12 gigs cost me an arm and a leg.  I'll have to

                                      pawn the others and forsake the 12 I've already got

                                      to upgrade to 24.

                                      I'm assuming by FIFO, you mean that earlier frames are replaced by later frames, correct?

                                      I'm still curious as to why it seems spotty to get the video card to engage on crunching these frames.

                                      The meter shows the graphics card is working, and then "poof!", it drops off, and things get chunky.

                                      Why doesn't MPE keep the card working?

                                      Of course, these frames are close to 2 MB a pop, and I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

                                      But then, at the price I have paid so far, it hardly seems like a "gift".

                                      • 16. Re: scrubbing smoothness & RAM filling up
                                        Harm Millaard CommunityMVP

                                        FIFO = First In, First Out.

                                         

                                        If the images/frames are too large to handle in CUDA, because of lacking memory, PR switches over to CPU as if CUDA acceleration had never existed in the first place. This seems to be happening in your case. A remedy can be to reduce frame sizes before rendering/exporting.