Premier Pro Video Playback Choppy and Laggy

I found a solution for jerky timeline playback that worked for me: make sure your monitor is connected to the computer with the best cable pathway.  I found this out yesterday after months of trouble-shooting, by replacing my hdmi connecting cable with a display port cable, using a wire with thunderbolt on one end to connect to the macpro, and display port on the other connecting to the monitor.  Problem solved!

I am running 5 monitors off my macpro and never had problems playing back HD video, but in the past year my various 4K files, especially from the iPhone 10, were frustrating, jerky even when using proxies and half quality on the program playback window.  It was the cable.

Hey man, today is 03.18.2019. I'm new to Adobe Premiere. I also thought I had a powerful enough laptop to handle it. However, my first issue was that my laptop wasn't powerful enough to handle Premiere Pro CC 2019, so I had to download Premiere Pro CC 2018. My first couple of practice clips rolled along pretty well, but then (just a short while ago) my video clips were playing all choppy. I naturally googled my issue and found no answer that would solve my dilemma right here and now. So I went back to the (choppy project), looked around, fiddled, and found a way to get rid of the choppiness. This is what I did: If you look at the main window where your video is shown, you will see at the bottom (right) a little open ended wrench icon. To the left of that is a little window that reads FULL. Hit the elevator and you will see some options. First I tried 1/2, but it was still choppy. Then I tried 1/4 and all of my choppiness disappeared. I hope this helps you. It sure seems to have helped me.

Chances are, you have the playback set a full resolution. Drop it 1/2 or maybe even 1/4.

I have a very similar setup ( i7-6800k, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1070 GPU, with Intel 750 and 600p NVME drives for C and D respectively) and CS6 PP is laggy as well, but in my case it lags everywhere - in the timeline, and in the media player. And the lagging only occurs with DJI 4K drone footage - all other 4K footage (DMC-LX100 and even various phones) PP plays smoothly.

Did you resolve your issue? Please update.

I think your best option is to convert the footage to an edit friendly codec.  ProRes, DNx, etc.     Transcode, edit, online, send.

If you want to test your configuration you could run my hardware evaluation tool Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) and we can see how well your hardware performs.

What is your hard drive setup (how many, what kind, what size, how full, and what is on each)?

What is your media file type and codec?