Skip to main content
zacharys55326699
Participant
November 25, 2018
Answered

Premiere Pro unable to play back smoothly

  • November 25, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 2405 views

Hi!

Recently, I was working on a project and noticed Premiere wouldn't play my project back smoothly, even at 1/4 resolution (original 4k). I have a GTX 1080 Ti (CUDA is selected under Renderer in Project Settings), 32GB ram, a Ryzen 1800x, and am storing all the project's files on a Samsung 850 Evo SSD, so I feel like it should be able to play back just fine. Each clip is Lumetri colored, but even in the Editing tab, it doesn't play back properly. I am using Premiere 13.0.1.

I would really appreciate some help understanding why this is happening! Please let me know if there is other info I should provide.

Thanks,

Zachary

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer mandicreally

Are you pre-rendering before playback? Lumetri REALLY bogs down 4k footage.  I'm literally working on a 6 minute project right now completely edited with Lumetri, and various other effects applied.  Mine is playing back smoothly, AFTER I render it all out for a preview.  Your system should render pretty quickly, your specs are very similar to mine and I run at 1/2 resolution all the time.

Original 4k files and Premiere just don't get along that well.  Throw a couple jump cuts into the mix and playback gets stuttery, let alone lumetri.  You can look into editing with Proxy files to lighten the load.  I do 5-10 minute videos and have a pretty good system down of rendering out sections or full videos when they start to bog down so I've never bothered diving into proxy editing.

What is the 4k footage from by the way? Codec matters.  I'm just running a Panasonic with 100Mbps bit rate files so they aren't heavy duty 4k footage.

4 replies

Legend
November 25, 2018

I feel like it should be able to play back just fine.

With that media, not really.

Use Cineform proxies instead.  You'll see marked improvement.

Work offline using proxy media |

Mo Moolla
Legend
November 25, 2018

Users are under the impression that should they have big GPU's, SSD's, tons of RAM etc etc it will allow smooth playback of 4-8K files. This is just not the case. All these will help slightly but remember that you are building cache as you are playing back and cache fills up faster than you would expect. So huge 5K files shot on say a RED DRAGON will stop you in your tracks. Rendering first can be time consuming and to me, counterproductive as even a single change will break the realtime render. The best option is to Proxy out the files to a resolution your machine can manage, In most cases 1080 will be just fine. There is really no need to watch the timeline in 4K BEFORE the final export. And for visual effects shots AE is a "frame by frame process" so 4K will be just fine on the timeline.

Please proxy to make sure your experience is pleasant and not one filled with continuously dropped frames or dead playback

Mo

mandicreally
mandicreallyCorrect answer
Inspiring
November 25, 2018

Are you pre-rendering before playback? Lumetri REALLY bogs down 4k footage.  I'm literally working on a 6 minute project right now completely edited with Lumetri, and various other effects applied.  Mine is playing back smoothly, AFTER I render it all out for a preview.  Your system should render pretty quickly, your specs are very similar to mine and I run at 1/2 resolution all the time.

Original 4k files and Premiere just don't get along that well.  Throw a couple jump cuts into the mix and playback gets stuttery, let alone lumetri.  You can look into editing with Proxy files to lighten the load.  I do 5-10 minute videos and have a pretty good system down of rendering out sections or full videos when they start to bog down so I've never bothered diving into proxy editing.

What is the 4k footage from by the way? Codec matters.  I'm just running a Panasonic with 100Mbps bit rate files so they aren't heavy duty 4k footage.

zacharys55326699
Participant
December 14, 2018

Everyone, thank you so much for your help, and sorry for responding so late!

Mandicreally, thanks for suggesting pre-rendering and proxies. I just tried rendering and the project is playing a lot smoother, even at full res with Lumetri. And, like you, I've got a Panasonic G85, so 4k30 100mbps footage. Man, once you jump to 4k, you can't go back!

To the others who suggested proxies, I'm taking a look into using them now, and I think they'll be a big help, especially when I'm attempting to edit 4k footage later this month on my XPS 13!

Again, I appreciate everyone's help and support. Your tips are going to make it a lot easier for me to edit these projects.

Zachary

kglad
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 25, 2018