Playback in Premiere Pro is choppy with frame loss using Nvidia 3060ti

Ahhh ... so not surprised. H.264, the dreaded long-GOP stuff. Or as it's also known, "interframe" ...

Some have referred to it as the codec created by Satan ... but well, it has a great use: with specialized chips in the camera, it can cut down the file size to something it can write to file quickly.

Which is it's great pitfall: the very thing that makes it useful in camera makes it awful to edit with. And I and others separate editing from playback, as the two are not even nearly the same thing. A player only needs to decode the file.

But an NLE has to decode just specific bits of the file while being ready to add complex effects and such. Which takes a ton more resources.

And long-GOP media's compression is nasty: there's only a complete or "i-frame" every 9 to however many frames the chip is set for. In between those i-frames, are p or b 'frames' which aren't actually a frame.

They're just a data file of 1) pixels that have changed since the last i-frame, or 2) pixels that will change before the next i-frame, or 3) BOTH.

So for decoding the computer doesn't just decode frame after frame ... it has to figure out entire groups of frames, decoding the i-frames and then computing the p and b 'frames' from the decoded i-frames AND the data charts of changed pixels ... just to show any one frame on your timeline.

Some CPUs and even some GPUs now have on-board long-GOP H.264/5 encoding and decoding capabilities, which can help. Premiere has preference options for using those IF they are available on your computer. If you haven't set those, find them in the Preferences and check them, see if that helps. It might, or you might do better with those unchecked. You have to test that.

I work with a lot of major colorists, who all have MASSIVE "Iron" as it's called. Mostly Macs, some PCs ... many cores, 256GB of RAM or more, multiple massive RAID arrays for playback of project & media files, we're talking computers running above $18,000 before even talking about reference monitors.

And many of those, on seeing any H.264 media in a project they're conforming to prep for grading ... will immediately have Resolve create proxies or completely new transcodes that they'll use in grading. And we're talking machines that run mulitple 8k RED tracks without blinking.

So ... you might well be served by having Premiere Pro make proxies for you ... use the Cineform or ProRes say 1/2 res proxy presets. Then in the Program monitor, get the Proxy toggle pulled out onto the visible controls.

Or use a keyboard shortcut to toggle from original to proxies and back.

Neil

The crucial data you left out is what is the media you're working with? Framesize/framerate, codec, and made by ... what?

Neil