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vrvince
Participating Frequently
September 4, 2013
Answered

Choppy playback in CC, suddenly

  • September 4, 2013
  • 32 replies
  • 82599 views

Yes, yet another mysterious choppy, jerky playback out-of-the-blue issue.

Premiere Pro CC 7.01, Mac, was working relatively fine for a few weeks on a couple projects. Now, on new project, exact same setup and media as before, I get playback that is fine, then after a few moments or a minute, gets choppy, as my CPU becomes increasingly pegged, as if GPU acceleration becomes disabled with time. Cannot edit when it is like that. I give it a rest for a few moments, can play ok for a minute, then CPU and choppiness creaps up again.

Premiere Pro CC 7.0.1

Mac OSx 10.8.2

Nikon D800 and D7000 .mov files, 1920-x1080 23.976fps, High Quality

Sequence: DSLR 1920x1080x23.976fps

Project: Mercury OpenCL GPU (via AMD Radeon 6770m in Macbook Pro.) No change if switch to Software Only.

Premier Pref/Memory: either Optimize for Performance or Memory, and restart. No effect.

Playback Resolution: 1/2. Always worked before.

No other software running. (Time Machine enabled, not backing up. Crashplan paused or service unloaded did not help.)

When CPU pegs, it is kernal_task and Premiere at top of All Processes/%CPU table in Activity Monitor.

Macbook Pro, late 2011, quad-core 2.5 GHz i7, 16GB memory. Apogee Duet2 audio output.

Source files and cache files and preview files on Pegaus Raid on Thunderbolt. NEC monitor on Thunderbolt. Premiere on internal drive.

No complex layers, effects. Just straight video and 2-4 tracks of audio. So little to no Previews rendered.  Timeline bar is yellow, which always played fine (via OpenCL.) Rendering Previews of a few minute section does not help.

Happens whether doing multicam sequence or simple cuts.

Cleaned media cache (Premiere/Prefs/Media/clean cache.) No Previews to clean out.

Graphics Switching disabled, so always on Radeon.

Only Changes since it was working -

CC app update (i.e. the menu bar thing, but I usually Quit that anyway.)

Indesign CC, Extension Manager update (but never launched.)

More memory allocated to Crashplan (but if I pause or unload that service no effect. And memory does not seem to be an issue looking at Activity Monitor.)

Checked Files on and rebuilt Thunderbolt raid directory (with DiskWarrior, just as general maintenance.)

Apple Timecapsule firmware updated to 7.6.4.

Maybe Java updated to v7 update 25 during that time.

Thanks,

Vincent

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer CRide97

    I just solved the problem that I've been having.  I traced the problem back to the audio device I've recently plugged in to my mac through the Digital Optical cable.  I can't say why Premiere was struggling to play nice with it, but as soon as I plugged the device in through a regular line out (quarter jack to RCA) my problems went away.  It's too bad I can't try and monitor true digtial 5.1 surround, but at least I'm back in action for editing.

    I hope this helps.

    32 replies

    Show previous replies
    C
    CRide97
    Participant
    September 28, 2013

    I have a very similar problem.  Priemere Pro CC was working great, and then suddenly all of my projects won't play back right!  Every time I load a project, the footage plays and then stops after 1-2 seconds, or the video and audio slow down and the pitch drops, as if it's all in slomotion.  When i export the videos, they play back fine, but I can barely get through the editing to begin with.  I've tried rendering all of the footage and it makes no difference.  I've tried transcoding the files.  Also no change. The same thing happens when I play footage off of an external FW800 drive AND when I play it from my internal HDD. I can't get anything done like this and it's driving me crazy. Please help!

    My machine stats:

    Mac pro (tower) early 2008

    upgraded graphics card: ATI Radeon 5770

    16GB RAM

    OS 10.8.2

    Adobe Premiere Pro CC latest version (today is sep 27, 2003)

    playback resolution: (I've tried them all, makes no difference)

      Jeff Bellune
      Jeff Bellune
      Legend
      September 5, 2013

      Is the RAID doing a patrol read or consistency check during this time?

      Jeff

      V
      vrvinceAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      September 5, 2013

      Nope. Promise Utility's "Media Patrol" and "Redundency Check" (if that is a consistency check) are not running.

      The issue doesn't have the feel of a throughput bottleneck. It's that CPU load that troubles me. Now I'm wondering if I actually upgraded to PP 7.01 from 7 after my last video project but before the recent photo-based project. Maybe didn't see a 7.01 issue with video till this current video project.

      8 "threads" (of 4 core cpu) start out low, under 30%, as I play footage, then creap up to 99+ over a minute or so. Choppines starts.

      Vincent

      B
      Blabberlicious
      Known Participant
      December 14, 2013

      Hi vrvince,

      What happens if you run the Mercury Playback Engine in Software Only?

      Thanks,

      Kevin


      I recently upgraded to Mavericks

      No I have lost Cuda Support in Premiere CC, and Media Encoder

      Playback in PP is choppy. But returns to some acceptable when I turn  Mercury Playback Engine to Software Only.

      It also dramaticaly improves the playback of Speedgrade Lumetri graded clips - even with masks

      But Media Encoder now takes a crazy amount longer to render using Open CL.

      Help!

      Is 'Software Only' not leverging the gpu?

      any help appreciated

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