Upon opening, intermittent timeline red bar for projects/sequences resulting in poor performance

Yep, get it. Great functionality... but it's another step for my workflow.  A worflow that worked great until a few PP versions ago. And some of my projects have literally thousands of clips, and I don't always have all of my clips to begin with so it's another thing to remember. I use subclips extenstively, and who knows what other kind of thing comes along that adds complication from using proxies.

So, yes, maybe proxies are in my future, possibly inevitably, but why would anyone want to take extra steps if they don't need to. I'm hoping I don't need to.

I never understand the reluctance to use proxies. What works ... works.

Proxies are one of the older editing/colorist tools out there. Heavily used by the 'heavy hitters' in both editing & colorist trades. And all the top-end cameras like the Red and Arri and the Sony Venice have the option to make proxies in-cam. That's how major proxy use is among the upper tier workers.

It's pretty spiffy for most purposes in Premiere. Select a bin of clips, right-click/Create Proxies. Set the keyboard short for toggling proxies to something you remember. Done.

I should clarify that the more I use it the more clear it is that I am just getting by at 1/2 playback resolution.  It stutters occasionally, and the playback quality isn't representative; it feels like it's struggling when it is in RED; when YELLOW, woohoo it is terrifically fast. I understand the proxies option, but why go through that if using the original media works fine, and up until the recent version updates, it did work fine. So, I am hoping for a bug resolution that bring the performance up to where it was before. I've seen nothing in the recent feature upgrades that are worth this slowdown.

I look forward to your suggestions.

Thanks MyerPJ. I think I jumped to the wrong assumptions.

By the way I'm still losing ProRes422 rendered files on re-opening projects. I must try ProResLT as you suggested

It's a different issue JV. Using Proxies lightens the load on the machine. You were/are having problems with losing preview files as you wanted to Export using Previews. That's also an excellent way to work. But here we are trying to get more performance in the timeline for the OP, that's exactly what Proxies do. I was using cineform for a long time, but I've switched to ProRes now, since I render in that also. 🙂

My apology - should be this link :

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/some-prores-422-video-preview-files-lost-on-closing-and-re-opening-project/idc-p/14316350#M19154

I saw this post and it started reminding me of timeline issues and loss of rendered Pro Res files. Using ProRes files is fine as long as a user doesn't start encountering the issues I experienced with Pro Res see post

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/losing-render-files/m-p/14344236#M487116

You will then have patches of red bar in your timeline where Premiere Pro has lost your previously rendered Pro Res files.

I've still had no formal response to this problem from Adobe engineering even though Kevin Monahan  agreed he saw the problem as well and raised an internal bug report. Bad  !

If 1/2 playback works, fine. What works, works, right?

But properly chosen proxies lower the "weight" of the processing on the system, which is why they are used. Using an interframe codec like ProRes where every frame is complete is vastly easier on the system than computing intraframe codec clips used in timelines. Even if the file is actually bigger for file-size than the original.

I have considered using proxies, but I hate to add more overhead to my process. For now it's solved by running at 1/2 playback resolution.

Worse case, I will upgrade my hardware although that seems unneccessary when the system graces me with YELLOW.

Mainly, I hope dev finds a bug and solves the problem for all of us.

It might be time to consider using Proxies.

Here's a good tutorial on that... just be sure you do not use h.264 proxies, it defeates the purpose. I prefer ProRes Proxy format. They work really well in Premiere as does the proxy workflow.

https://creativecloud.adobe.com/cc/learn/premiere-pro/web/proxy-media?locale=en