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Poor playback/preview performance - how much better can I make it?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 17, 2021
5 replies
2001 views

Please help me set my expectations. Last year I bought a new PC - a Lenovo P520 Thinkstation with an Intel Xeon W-2255 CPU, 64G RAM, 1 TB SSD and a Quadro RTX-4000 video card. And I've been disappointed in the preview/playback performance while editing. It stutters badly and many times it seems to only show maybe every 5th or 8th frame! (the audio seems unaffected)

I'm only editing 1080p, not 4K. But I do lots of slo-mo where I shoot at 60 fps or 120 fps and then playback with the Speed/Duration set to playback at 24 fps. That's actually not what seems to kill performance the worst. I also usually have some video effects layers - brightness/contrast, color-correction (HLS), and maybe some stylize attribute - typically no more than 3 or 4 attributes per clip - but adding those on brings it to its knees. The other big killer is Neat Video noise reduction - that chokes the daylights out of it.

I'm already using GPU Acceleration (CUDA). I've tried reducing the playback resolution to 1/2 but that only helps a little and doesn't look as sharp. 1/4 looks awful so I'm not going there.

What are my options here? Some people have suggested a separate dedicated SSD scratch disk. How big a difference will that make? More RAM? Are there tools to figure out where the bottleneck is? If I was willing to throw lots of money at this, would it be possible to buy a PC from a mainstream maker that wouldn't have this problem? I want to start editing 4K but with this much trouble at 1080p that looks like a long shot.

Thanks in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Kevin J. Monahan Jr.

Hi Peter,

Sorry for the performance issues. Unfortunately, the most important component for video editing is the CPU, especially when considering the format you seem to be working with H.264.

Xeon processors are not very good for video editing H.264 since Quick Sync is not available for decoding and encoding the footage. Quick Sync is vital for decoding and encoding H.264. The GPU can also work for this too, but just not as well.

If you want better performance right now, set up the transcode at ingest option so that when you are editing, you will not be editing with H.264, you'll be editing a variant of ProRes or Cineform. Look on the bright side. With these new codecs, you can edit faster and export like lightning via smart rendering. You might actually prefer editing this way, I do. Let me know if you need help setting that up.

By the way, you can also create proxies to get the work done, but I like to transcode, so you can leverage your render files for your export, again, via Quick Sync.

Your native H.264 workflow is really unteneable with the setup you have as you considered the "other tasks" you were going to do before considering a true bottleneck for your editing tasks: processing H.264 files. I think a better way of approaching that would have been to build an editing computer that can also handle other tasks, not be optimized for the other tasks first. Unfortunately, you are finding that out a bit too late. Sorry about that.

That said, you may want to ensure that you have the latest studio drivers for your GPU, avoid the game ready drivers as they are not optimized for Premiere Pro. A great GPU that is functioning correctly does decode and encode H.264. Let's make sure that is functioning too by checking on your current driver version. What driver are you running?

Let us know how we can help you further with your GPU and any other setup.

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin J. Monahan Jr.

Correct answer

Community Manager

Hi Peter,

Sorry for the performance issues. Unfortunately, the most important component for video editing is the CPU, especially when considering the format you seem to be working with H.264.

Xeon processors are not very good for video editing H.264 since Quick Sync is not available for decoding and encoding the footage. Quick Sync is vital for decoding and encoding H.264. The GPU can also work for this too, but just not as well.

If you want better performance right now, set up the transcode at ingest option so that when you are editing, you will not be editing with H.264, you'll be editing a variant of ProRes or Cineform. Look on the bright side. With these new codecs, you can edit faster and export like lightning via smart rendering. You might actually prefer editing this way, I do. Let me know if you need help setting that up.

By the way, you can also create proxies to get the work done, but I like to transcode, so you can leverage your render files for your export, again, via Quick Sync.

Your native H.264 workflow is really unteneable with the setup you have as you considered the "other tasks" you were going to do before considering a true bottleneck for your editing tasks: processing H.264 files. I think a better way of approaching that would have been to build an editing computer that can also handle other tasks, not be optimized for the other tasks first. Unfortunately, you are finding that out a bit too late. Sorry about that.

That said, you may want to ensure that you have the latest studio drivers for your GPU, avoid the game ready drivers as they are not optimized for Premiere Pro. A great GPU that is functioning correctly does decode and encode H.264. Let's make sure that is functioning too by checking on your current driver version. What driver are you running?

Let us know how we can help you further with your GPU and any other setup.

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio

R

RjL190365

Legend

There are a couple of reasons why:

Your Intel CPU does not have QuickSync capability whatsoever. In fact, it is based on LGA 2066 that does not have integrated graphics at all (nor does that platform support an IGP at all). It is a version of the i9-10900X that we deemed to be a very poor value even when it became officially available.
Even though the Quadro RTX 4000 is of a resonably newer GPU architecture, NVDEC (not to be confused with NVENC or CUDA) in even the most powerful Nvidia GPUs still lags behind QuickSync in even the cheapest Intel IGP-equipped CPU for playback of AVC (H.264) material although NVDEC does a better job than QuickSync with the playback of HEVC (H.265) material. What's more, NVDEC's H.264 playback support is limited to 4:2:0 color space. 4:2:2 H.264 material cannot be decoded via NVDEC at all and therefore must be handled entirely in software-only mode (in the case of your system).

In other words, your Lenovo workstation isn't all that powerful, especially for the price that you paid for it.

Graeme Bull

Community Expert

Every time I read your responses I'm amazed at the level of technical understanding you have of computer hardware.

B

basil1891

Inspiring

@Graeme Bull Why you marked the topic as 'solved' ? Should not we get confirmation from @peternelson first?

Joost van der Hoeven

Community Expert

What is de codec of your footage?

P

peternelsonAuthor

Inspiring

What is de codec of your footage?

I have a whole bunch of different cameras I use - two Nikon 800-series DSLRs; a Z7 (and next month a new Z6 II!), a GoPro, a cellphone, and a Canon XA-20. In addition to that I also sometimes shoot with an Atomos Ninja, taking 10-bit output through a LUT. So the sw that generates the files are all over the map. So I don't want to try to optimize for a specific one. The footage in the video I'm editing at the moment was from a mix of D810 shot at 60 fps and Z7 shot at 120 fps; some of it was .mp4 files and some of it was .mov files.

Kevin J. Monahan Jr.

Community Manager

Peter,

I think that with this computer, you actually do want to optimize for a specific filetype. I would shoot for any smart rendering codec, personally.

Mixing formats and using any Long GOP H.264 is going to be painful (especially from a Nikon camera). Transcode or create proxies is the only way to go for your setup, I'm afraid.

Keep in mind that after exporting your sequence, you can delete these files that are "all over the map" afterward. No harm, no foul.

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio

A

Andy 1968

Inspiring

More RAM will not help. That being said if you are editing H.264 some variations of H.264 can bring a 24 core CPU to it's knees. The new Intel six core consumer CPU should support more variations of h.264 and play it back with ease. The Apple M1 chip already does this.

B

basil1891

Inspiring

1) What is the color of the timeline render bar, red or yellow? It's expected to have many dropped frames for any 'red part' of the timeline. To get maximum performance follow these tips : Order of filters/effects and drop in CUDA-rend... - Adobe Support Community - 10510537

2) Regarding slo-mo, I recommend to use this workflow: STOP Interpreting Your Footage for Slow Motion in Premiere Pro! - YouTube

3) Regarding NeatVideo, it's also sensitive to the order of effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VT6BK15wAA

Also, I suggest you to try this denoiser, it's very fast: Free Video Denoiser. How to reduce video noise, remove grain, HQ noise reduction, tutorial - YouTube

B

basil1891

Inspiring

@peternelson .. and a few more things to try:

4) Try Preferences > Audio Hardware > Default Input => select "No Input"

5) Reset workspace: Window > Workspaces > Reset to saved layout
6) Try on/off "Mercury Transmit" option (Preferences > Playback > Enable Mercury Transmit)
7) Make sure that NVidia G-Sync/ AMD Freesync is off in driver control panel
😎 Make sure you are using NVidia 'Studio' driver and not 'Game ready' one

P

peternelsonAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks! I'll try these and report on my results! If they make a significant difference I'll marke this as the correct answer, but it may take a few days to get back on this.

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