Permiere getting ridiculously sluggish

Question

In regards to Permiere getting ridiculously sluggish:

Working on a big 'ol doc. Project file is around 100MB, takes about 15 minutes to load the project from a OSX Mac boot up, and I'm using ProRes 1/4 proxies --for reference. Oh, there's A LOT Of transcribed media in the project too.

I'm editing docs on an Intel iMac and a brand new StudioPro; same issue across hardware with the same project. 64GB RAM in the iMac. 32GB RAM in the StudioPro.

Anyway, the project will eventually load, link media, and grind away as all the conform files connect. Thing'll be reletaively good for an initital stretch. Peppy enough to not be frustrating.

BUT...

Then if I decide to try and export something, as one does when creating videos, one doesn't even need to actually do the export, just engaging the export window is enough to make the whole thing screech to a halt.

It's like the project has to re-analyze every single bit of meta data that exists.

So, if you have tens of thousands of clips and hundreds upon hundreds hours of footage. It takes (relatively-depending on the deadlne) forever. Worse, the "media pending" issue runs rampant. It all just bogs down and it refuses to behave in a timely manner.

This problem is also really bad if proxies are disabled and then re-engaged.

Something wild going on with how Premiere handles media. I sense it's fundemental. I also feel like it ain't pretty ---meaning there's probably nothing to be done about it, it's baked into the code, whatever process Premiere needs to do, this is just the way it is and large projects just are too much for it.

Now, there's no effective way to get good feedabck on this because an online search is a bunch of dead ends --as the phrases needed to articulate this (such as "media pending" and "media cache") just lead to seperate issues.

So, I'm here trying to get a human to chime in and confirm they're expereiencing Premiere becoming intolerably slow under these circumstances.

I'm guessing that if you tend to do with Premiere are short form edits, you probably don't fret about this.

My issue probably stems from big projects?

BTW, all media cache files on a snappy .5 TB SSD. If I burn the time to "media-clean" my cache, it doesn't really do anything. Once you activate that export window, forget about it. It's just slow after that regardless.

So, anyone else having these slow downs?

R Neil Haugen · Answer

You're doing long-form or episodic on an old style stand-alone project? I've no clue why ... that's guaranteed to slow down.

They replaced that model several years ago with the Productions workflow ... which is how one is expected to work large projects. Either long-form or episodic.

It's even better with a small one-person shop like mine, for general client stuff.

Premiere Pro Productions Introduction

Using Productions in Premiere Pro

Adobe Long-form and Episodic Best Practices Guide

Jarle’s blog expansion of the pdf Multicam section: Premiere Pro Multicam