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Premiere Timeline Lag

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
June 15, 2022
2 replies
3914 views

Massive lag in Premiere Timeline. No response to several clicks when selecting or click and dragging for example. Very disappointing considering this is on a brand new M1 Ultra Mac Studio. Specs below. As you’ll see in the screen recording, the timeline is unresponsive often for several seconds and is really hurting my speed and creative flow. I have tried running on Apple Silicon natively as well as using Rosetta. Both are laggy.

Premiere Version 22.4.9 (Build 57)

Playback resolution is 1/2

High Quality Playback is disabled

52 GB RAM available for Premiere

Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (Metal) selected

Could this be a hard drive issue? It seems like the timeline is lagging regardless, but I do have a ton of media for this project connected through two G-technology hard drives. The Main drive is G-tech thunderbolt. I tried moving the footage for this timeline to a SanDisk Extreme SSD but it did not improve the issue.

Workstation Specs

Mac Studio

Model Identifier: Mac13,2

Chip: Apple M1 Ultra

Total Number of Cores: 20 (16 performance and 4 efficiency)

Memory: 64 GB

System Firmware Version: 7429.81.3

OS Loader Version: 7429.81.3

Serial Number (system): WFG6GKK49R

Hardware UUID: EE8B29F8-F11F-5233-BB8B-5F704CF0F32B

Provisioning UDID: 00006002-001840240245801E

Activation Lock Status: Enabled

Premiere_Lag.zip

Correct answer MarekMularczyk

That is slightly odd for a new machine.

Have you tried resetting Premiere preferences?

MarekMularczyk

Correct answer

Community Expert

That is slightly odd for a new machine.

Have you tried resetting Premiere preferences?

Adobe Community ExpertAdobe Certified Professional

C

Corn DodgerAuthor

Participant

This worked! So far, much better after a preferences reset. I didn't even think of that since I had just installed a fresh version. Thanks for the suggestion.

MarekMularczyk

Community Expert

I'm glad I could help 😉

And happy it's working for you

Adobe Community ExpertAdobe Certified Professional

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Sorry to hear you're experiencing lag. That's always frustrating.

What file format are you editing? (I cannot make it out from the video.)

What are your Sequence Video Preview Settings?

It looks like you have yellow above your clips in the Timeline for a cuts-only edit. Is there any reason you're not using Smart Rendering? That is, something like ProRes 422 LT clips in a ProRes 422 LT timeline?

To test storage media bandwidth, have you run a benchmark utility like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (free from the macOS App Store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12)? Or have you tried using Project Manager to migrate one sequence to the internal storage for testing?

C

Corn DodgerAuthor

Participant

Thanks for these suggestions Warren! Resetting Premiere preferences seems to have fixed it so far, but I’m curious about your Smart Rendering tips for the future. I have a mix of media for this show: .MXF from Sony FS7 and FX6. MP4 from GoPro's and .MOV from Mavic 3.

I’m not sure I understand your recommendation for the yellow line and Smart Rendering, could you explain how to take advantage of that a bit more? Are you saying I should go Sequence > Render In to Out? Or make 422 LT proxies maybe? I’ve had success with proxies in the past but figured the M1 Ultra could handle this project.

Anything off with this video preview settings?

Format: I-Frame Only MPEG

Codec: MPEG I-Frame

1920x1080

Composite in Linear Color checked

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

@Corn Dodger

Yes, the Mac Studio M1 Ultra can handle most CODECs well; however, with four ProRes encode and decode engines it is specifically designed to handle ProRes exceptionally well. This is in addition to ProRes being for high-quality, high-performance editing even on modest workstations (even an i5 from 2017).

I'd transcode everything to ProRes (you can have Premiere Pro do this via the Ingest settings or transcode in Media Encoder or the Finder or Apple Compressor among other options) and set the Sequence Video Previews settings to match. You'll notice that the yellow line goes away for cuts-only editing. You'll also noticed yellow when it would have otherwise been red. Also, when you render previews and you export, things will be faster (hence the term "Smart Rendering").

If you're creating content for social media, I'd go with ProRes 422 LT for full resolution clips (ProRes 422 Proxy can be used for full resolution for social media if you're really tight on storage).

If you're creating content for broadcast/cable/streaming, ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ for full resolution clips.

If you're creating content for theatrical feature films, ProRes 422 HQ and ProRes 4444 for full resolution clips.

ProRes 422 Proxy is ideal for proxy resolution clips, it can also be used when exporting rough cuts for approval.

You want your source ProRes choice and Sequence ProRes choice to match to take best advantage of Smart Rendering speed gains.

More on Smart Rendering: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/faq-what-is-smart-rendering/td-p/10648488

More on ProRes: https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes.pdf

Based on the Sony cameras that are part of your workflow, I'd look into recording ProRes RAW as well. B&H Photo Video has a great article on it called "ProRes RAW Demystified: Learn Workflow from Capture to Export | B&H eXplora".

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