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James30609036g4e1
Participating Frequently
December 27, 2023
Question

Why is Premiere Pro unusably slow on my virtually brand new Macbook Pro

  • December 27, 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 745 views

I virtually cannot use my Macbook Pro to edit on Premiere Pro. Every time I make a cut or try and move a clip it pauses for a few seconds, but this is an absolute nightmare for any editing at all, the playhead also moves on its own and only stops when I click (all quite hard to explain I know). It's just the fact that it is super slow and very laggy, causing an unreal amount of editing errors I am not working with crazy files or anything major - just footage from an A7SIII. I have an M2 MAX Macbook Pro 2023 - with 96GB RAM with 2TB of storage. There is no way that this should be lagging. I have taken loads of measures to check whether it is the MacBook and removed every extra app until it is virtually factory default. I've cleared the cache and allocated all of the RAM it allows to Premiere Pro and still no luck at all. Does anyone have any experience with these problems and Premiere Pro/MacBooks being unbelievably slow or any tips? As I'm thinking of switching to a different editing software. 

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    4 replies

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 28, 2023

    Are you able to spot any clues in Activity Monitor, such as suspiciously high usage of CPU or GPU?

     

    I have a lower end Sony (A7c), but I am scrubbing and playing some clips from it in a Premiere Pro sequence on my (much weaker than yours) M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 32GB Unified Memory, and have no significant lags at Full preview resolution, reasonably responsive when scrubbing though not instant. MediaInfo says the clips I’m viewing are “XAVC (XAVC/mp42/iso2)” at 3840 x 2160 px and 29.97 fps, bitrate about 100Mb/sec. However, my A7c files might be less demanding than those from an A7sIII.

     

    When scrubbing and playing those clips in Premiere Pro, Activity Monitor is showing no more than 50% of GPU usage, and over 60% CPU is idle. What do you see?

    J
    James30609036g4e1Author
    Participating Frequently
    December 29, 2023

    Unfortunately, there is no suspicious activity on that front. The playback is actually ok and the scrubbing through is pretty good, so I'm not sure if it might be a glitch of some sort with the latest version of the software, as it appears to only be whenever I try and move a clip, when I trim a clip or when I cut a clip. As soon as that happens, it becomes unusably slow and I have to wait a while before scrubbing through footage goes back to normal, but then I can't cut or move clips otherwise it all slows down again - I hope that makes some sort of sense, sorry I know it is really hard to explain these issues using only words! 

    The other rather strange thing that happens is that after all of these problems occur, there mouse acts as though it is being pressed down, the selection box appears as if the mouse if being clicked and held to select multiple clips in the timeline and only disappears when I click a few times. Worth noting that none of this ever happened in the previous version of Premiere Pro... 

    Richard van den Boogaard
    Community Expert
    Richard van den BoogaardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 29, 2023

    The PPro project file may have gotten corrupt.

     

    Try this: open a new project and import the previous project inside the new one. Also, delete all the preview files.

    Christian.Z
    Community Expert
    Christian.ZCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 27, 2023

    XAVC 10 bit coming for sony A7 cameras is the satan of all files. However, if it is located on a external fast speed SSD it should be fine, otherwise, proxy is your best friend

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    December 27, 2023

    RemoteIndex is correct on the footage from that camera ... so many users think that high K count and RAW would be a lot harder than their prosumer rig shooting a "normal" say UHD long-GOP.

     

    The reality is most computers can handle 6k Red RAW or 8k ProRes 444 much easier than 4K XAVC. As the XAVC is typically a long-GOP encoding format.

     

    Another thing is that setting the Preferences/audio hardware default input to "none" somehow helps playback on a lot of machines. And past that, I know some Mac users who are pro editors who had to go into their security settings, as their Mac crippled what Premiere was allowed to do.

     

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
    Remote Index
    Remote Index
    December 27, 2023

    Hello James etc.,

     

    Sounds frustrating.

     

    I will note that "footage from an A7SIII" is not a technical spec. Listing the format (codec, resolution, frame rate) as well as where the media is stored will help others help you.

     

    In the meantime, my suspicion is that you're working with XAVC media and my first step in troubleshooting would be transcoding some media (to ProRes or other editing friendly format) to see if that makes a difference.

     

    R.

    J
    James30609036g4e1Author
    Participating Frequently
    December 27, 2023

    Hey R, 

     

    Firstly thank you so much for the response,

     

    Secondly, apologies, I did realise after that I should've mentioned the tech specs of the footage - they are below in case it helps with any other ideas/suggestions but in the meantime I'll transcode some footage into different formats. 

    XAVC S 4K - 25P 140mbps 4:2:2 10bit in S-Log3 S Cine

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