Inspiring

10 Second Lag in Timeline Playback

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
June 18, 2025
4 replies
312 views

Hello Adobe Community,

I'm having a reoccuring issue where every time I move the playhead and press play, it takes a full 10 seconds for playback to occur. I can playback a sequence in full if I don't stop it. But if I press play and then soon after press stop, pressing play (even though the playhead hasn't been moved) requires another 10 seconds before it continues. I can watch the sound level meter bounce around at 1 frame every 3 seconds until it starts moving 10 seconds later. So it seems like premiere is requesting playback from a drive that doens't have the HDD needle in the right place, based on where the playhead is. It's almost as if it's getting reset or having to search for the files, only moments after playing them. For example, if I play 5 seconds of a sequence, and then go back 5 seconds and press play, Premiere takes about 9.5 seconds before it starts playing.

In the past, I could move the playhead back to the start of the sequence and immediately achieve seemless playback on any drive. I recently posted about this issue when using a cheaper hard drive. I purchased a new one as that one was getting older anyway, but now the issue has returned after a short hiatus. The hard drive I am editing off of is already spinning, and no tasks are currently underway. I've tried updating everything to the latest version, and moving the scratch disks to SSD's. I'm working off of a new Lacie 10TB Big (the project I'm working on has grown to 7.5TB).

The strangest part is that I can move the playhead around and the program window will often keep pace with the playhead, but playback is delayed 10 seconds...

My Computer:
- Apple Macbook Pro M3 Max
- 36GB Memory
- MacOS 15.5

Premiere Pro: 25.2.3 Build 4

Video Files Being Edited: 98% 4K 10bit H.265
Occasionally: 2% 4K ProRes 422

Any pointers would be super appreciated! Thanks!

Editing and Playback

N

NA.MediaAuthor

Inspiring

Hey Mary,

Really interesting. Glad you were able to find a work around.

To anyone readying this, my problem was with my camera's internal audio channels. Deleting my camera's two audio channels fixed this issue. This might have been exacerbated by using a HDD, but who knows. From now on I just use the audio channels from the RODE Wireless Pro and NOT what my camera records alongside the video file.

M

maryb10836570

Participant

Not sure if this will help anyone, but for me, the big lag time was happening because I had a nested sequence on my timeline and in that nested sequence there were some 3rd-party audio effects (Izotope Ozone 8 and others) on one of the tracks. Played fine inside the nested sequence, but apparently Premiere can't figure out how to play those same effects in another sequence where the nested sequence is located. I'm running a 10Gbps network with an RTX4090 and 128GB of RAM. Machine isn't the problem.

No big deal, I just had to render out the audio, apply all my effects in RX11 and then re-import the audio.

It's not like we expect much more from Adobe anyway, always needing to do extra steps to make the broken system work.

N

NA.MediaAuthor

Inspiring

Hey Ian,

Thanks for the quick reply.

By accident, I've discovered where the issue is, but I really don't know why.

In my sequence I have 4 audio tracks (see above):
1. A Cam Sound (Muted)
2. B Cam Sound (Muted)
3. Boom Sound
4. (Empty)
5. Background Track

When I delete the files from A Cam and B Cam, the problem disapears. In fact, it only occurs when I'm attempting playback on the main part of the sequence where these audio tracks exist. I discovered this when I found that playback was fluid on the and title card of the company logo sting.

Any thoughts as to why?

I like to have those tracks there in case something gets bumped out of alignment. It makes re-syncing very easy. I'm not totally beholden to them though. I could delete them. But I'm just very cutious as to why muted audio tracks are causing an issue?

IanB_360

Community Manager

Hi @NA.Media

and welcome to the Premiere Pro Forum community. Thank you for taking your time to report a problem. You mentioned you have tried updating everything? Have you also tried to update Premiere Pro to 25.3? I would make sure to save your project somewhere and you can always roll back if you wanted to.
Here to help.

Ian

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