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AerialCinematics
Participant
November 17, 2020
Question

Premiere Pro Playback Lag (4K)

  • November 17, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 5621 views

Hello All, 

In premiere pro my mavic air 2 drone footage shot (HEVC 4:2:0 4k60fps/h.265) lags or freezes significantly when trying to playback the footage a little sped up after a few seconds (press L to double the speed) or with color correction applied. My current setup is as follows (see below) but I have a C drive SSD (550mbs read speed) with the OS/premiere pro software installed and all project files, cache etc are on a Samsung 960 EVO 500gbs NVME drive (2200mbs read/1800 write). I've follow so many tutorials many times to try and fix the premiere pro lag but nothing has worked (Example: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/premiere-pro-lagging-fixes/)

 

I tested putting my footage on my C drive SSD and the playback is significantly better and smoother than if the video files were on the NVME drive which doesn't make sense to me as it is quadruple the speed. What is happening here as it should be the other way around. I've tested read and write speeds using crystal disk and they are within spec. Each drive is only about 50% full. The task monitor shows very little activity on either drive about 4% usage and processor about 6% usage with GPU at 50% usage. I've tried to show this issue here: https://youtu.be/3SIF3ciynBk


Win 10 PC w/ Premiere Pro 14.5.0 (build 51) - software up to date

Ryzen 7 1700x at 3.8ghz

32gb Ram

GTX 1660 Super 6gb - drivers up to date

C Drive (OS): Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD (500mbs read/write speed)

D Drive: (Project files & Media Cache): Samsung 960 EVO Nvme 500GB (2200 read/1800 write speed)

E: Storage 3tb HDD

 

3 replies

Averdahl
Community Expert
AverdahlCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 26, 2020

On my Intel system the SATA ports are handled by the chipset while the M.2 are handled by the CPU.

 

Hence a long shot; If the CPU are saturated during de-coding your clips on the M.2 drive the CPU will have fewer clock cycles to handle the data transfers on the M.2 drive while the chipset that connects the SATA drive will handle the data transfer without bigger problems.

 

So i would look at that, how much does the CPU work when playing back from the SATA drive vs the M.2 drive.

 

No matter what, it has already been mentioned that the proxie workflow is the way to go with that footage. 🙂

Averdahl
Community Expert
AverdahlCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 26, 2020

@AerialCinematics Is it possible that you can use the PM feature in this forum to send me one of those files? Zip before. I am interested in testing it here. 🙂

P
Community Expert
Phillip HarveyCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 17, 2020

As far as playing back that stuff, I honestly don't think it's going to be a throughput issue. I don't know what the bitrate is on your drone footage, but for an h265 file I doubt it's even enough to saturate a regular HDD. That being said, it's h265. It's pretty much the worst codec you can use for editing, and unfortunately a lot of newer consumer products shooting 4k are going to use HEVC precicely because you can fit more quality into a lower bitrate. But it's like asking your computer to unzip a file in real-time as you play it back. I've also always noticed that DJI products have a special secret sauce that makes their h264/5 media especially difficult to decode. I absolutely recommend creating proxies to work with that stuff.

 

The UI issues seems like something else. You might try rolling back to 14.4 or trying the new version 14.6 to see if that helps at all.

    A
    AerialCinematicsAuthor
    Participant
    November 25, 2020

    Hello, Thank you for the reply. 

     

    I am trying everything and noticed this. When I 'preview' the file in the source monitor... it plays fine, at FULL, 1/2, 1/4... but when I drag it into the timeline and try to play it, it doesn't play at all at 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 etc... it only plays fine at FULL in the timeline. This is with no color correction, no luts... the footage is the same as it was in the source monitor. 

    The issue: https://youtu.be/lh30CBExbr8

     

    Why does it work fine on one side and not while playing in the timeline? I need to play it back at 1/2 when I add color correction. 

     

    Any info is appreciate. 

    Kevin J. Monahan Jr.
    Community Manager
    Kevin J. Monahan Jr.Community Manager
    Community Manager
    November 26, 2020

    AC,
    Sorry. I agree with Phillip. Drone footage? Transcode or create proxies. It will save you time and trouble in the long run.

    Regards,
    Kevin

    Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio
    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    November 17, 2020

    @RjL190365  could give the best answer, that's directly in his/her bailiwick.

     

    4K long-GOP files like this are a problem for data-transfer besides hard on the CPU/subsystems for computational needs. Media cache/cache database files are also something that needs SPEED connections.

     

    So with only three drives, one of them apparently a spinning platter, you have compromises to make.

     

    Even with SSD and Nvme for system/programs and cache drives, I keep projects on another SSD and media on a fourth ... all internal. For the 6-core system I'm currently using. I've got a brand new custom Puget system with a 24-core Ryzen, 128Gb of RAM and 2080Ti sitting here but I need a couple free days to get moved to it.

     

    Even then, I'll be running on mutiple drives.

     

    Neil

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