Now in Beta: Smoother, faster timeline

[Fergus H]

Hi all,

We're excited to get your feedback on a significant improvement to Premiere Pro's timeline.  We've made changes to how thumbnails display, making the timeline smoother and snappier. 

What’s New?

This release changes how thumbnails are displayed, reducing flicker. Because of this, multiple ways in which you interact with the timeline are faster and more stable.  

Zooming in and out of the timeline (especially using the zoom scroll bars)

Performing trim, slip, slide, ripple, and other edit operations

Remember that you can also toggle between different thumbnail display modes: head only, head + tail, or continuous, using the timeline display settings menu (the hamburger icon just to the right of the sequence name in the timeline panel). This gives you more control over how thumbnails appear based on your editing needs.

These improvements are designed to reduce visual noise and help you stay focused on your edit, especially in complex sequences with lots of cuts.

Why It Matters

Thumbnail flickering has been a long-standing frustration for many editors. Whether you're fine-tuning a cut or navigating a dense timeline, stable thumbnails make it easier to stay oriented and confident in your edits. This update is part of our ongoing effort to improve the editing experience by making improvements that improve how Premiere Pro feels.

Try It Out!

The improved thumbnail behavior is available now in the latest Beta build of Premiere Pro. Try zooming with the scroll bars, toggling thumbnail modes, and performing your usual edits. You should notice a smoother, snappier, and more stable experience. We’d love to hear how it feels in your workflow.

[Alex367466572b5i]

Is this smoothness due to the GPU?

[Adolfo H.]

Hi @Alex367466572b5i , this is not GPU dependant.

[DJP2014]

Nice. Appreciate all efforts to imporve the core editing experience.

In a similar vein would like to see Adobe stop waveforms from flickering in the source window when the in or out point command is held down during playback.

[Tom_edit]

I'd love to see a smoothness update for large timelines...

[FlyingFourFun]

Are you going to add color managment to these timeline thumbnails also?  I am not in a position to try the beta, but I know in the production version they are not color managed, and they really should be.  Since Adobe is focused in the timeline with thsi feature, I hope you add the color management to it also.

[Fergus H]

@FlyingFourFun the short answer is yes! In fact, the smoother timeline performance discussed in this thread actually came about because of work we are doing to GPU accelerate thumbnail display, which is a prerequisite for making them color managed. I don't have a date to share with you on when that change is coming but it's part of some bigger things we are doing in the area of color. Stay tuned! 

Regards,

Fergus

[FlyingFourFun]

I am glad to here that color managemnt is comming to the timeline thumbs - really didnt enjoy the blown out images while working - hopefuly they are in prod soon....  I may break down and run the beta in the mean time....  Just trying to get my hands on a 5090 still, and didnt want to introduce any new things while testing the 5090....

Thanks

[Alex367466572b5i]

@Fergus H 
"this is not GPU dependant"
"GPU accelerate thumbnail display"
???

[Fergus H]

@Alex367466572b5i the two answers are not mutually exclusive; both are true. There has been in bug in Premiere Pro for a while that causes thumbnails to flicker. That bug was not GPU relatated but it did effectively block us from enabling other options that do benefit from the GPU. Put another way, if we hadn't fixed the flickering bug, we could have enabled the other options but their appearance would have been unpleasant. 

Regards,

Fergus

[Alex367466572b5i]

@Fergus H 

Who wants to buy a workstation for Premiere Pro now. CPU/GPU... RTX50/iGPU... for LongGOP AMD Radeon video cards? AVX512? And you have to guess riddles, read between the lines and wait for years for bug fixes with the disk subsystem and RAM, problems with decoding.

You sell and develop software! But this software is installed on workstations that are assembled by people who have nowhere to get information about what is best for Adobe. And they also have to read: "this is not GPU dependant" & "GPU accelerate thumbnail display" & "the two answers are not mutually exclusive; both are true"...

[FlyingFourFun]

If it helps you, Puget Systems does a great job identify the core parts that get Premier working well... and many other apps.  They seem to offer a great deal of self serve information, sell systems or you can pay for consulting directly if your not in the USA and want direct help from their technical people.

[Alex367466572b5i]

@FlyingFourFun They even stopped testing Premiere Pro in their articles, because of problems with the benchmark. Even they can't set up anything for their articles... what can we say about ordinary assemblers.
Assembling a normal workstation for Adobe is already magic, and the carriage can turn into a pumpkin after any software update.

[FlyingFourFun]

Thats too bad, they were a very relaible source for this info all in one place, and very detailed.  GLad they still have pugent bench at least.

[FlyingFourFun]

@Fergus H I just installed the Beta version of PP tonight, and ran some test on a project I was having jittery play back.  I was intrigued by the prospect the beta might play back smooth with the proxy's I was having issues with.  Sure enough, my playback with proxy enabled has been resolved with no manual work around.

But

I was also looking at the color management of the thumbs, and I can tell you they are not colored managed...  do I need to turn it on?  or should it be on by default? or is it not in the Beta release yet?  as a re read your note, I think you may have said color managed thumbs was still on the road map...  just wanted to confirm this detail.

As an aside, the new timeline is in fact really smooth, responsive - I am now finally able to turn on continues thumbs and have it usable!  first time in years actually.

Also

I am again, after years of not being able to, I can now play back the project at 2x, 3x and 4x without issues - not sure exactly what happened in the beta to allow this compared to the production version - but I am honestly surprised....  pretty excited to see what else has improved over the next few days of working with it.

[caden_9513]

It feels so much better in the timeline. Big update!!

[Haidar2715951626v4]

Can we have this cached on the disk please? so it will not generate the thumbnail everytime you open the project along with the bin thumbnails please just like the audio pek files and the ablilty to chose where to save the thumbnails along with the video files or in spacific folder/drive. Thank you.