Premiere not utilising full network speed and runs slow with footage on a NAS

[Brandon5]

Hi everyone, for several reasons I have no choice but to edit from a network server on our local network. Despite the performance increase from having the footage stored locally, with the size of our projects this is just not possible. However I’ve noticed that despite having fully spec'd out servers and network infrastructure e.g 100GP/S networking and fully ssd server arrays, Premiere runs far slower on the media server than having the footage stored locally. From testing, there is no bottlenecks from the desktop to the server, Premiere just doesn’t seem to want to use the full 100gb/s bandwidth, the network drives are faster than the local drive and its mostly one editor at a time accessing the files. Is there any way to force Premiere to perform better over the network, optimise it or prioritise it.

This is a issue that has been plaguing us for years that we have fully kitted out machines but the software just isn’t quite working with me.

appreciate your time and effort for reading

[Ben Insler]

Hi @Brandon5 .  Thanks for calling this out.

Are you able to achieve better performance from the same network stored clips if you play them outside of Premiere Pro, in another piece of software that can play back video like the bundled Windows Video Player?

This would help us confirm whether or not this is related to Premiere Pro directly, or to the location where the media is stored.

[Mitch W]

I'd recommend you try running a free utility like AJA System Test (https://www.aja.com/products/aja-system-test) to see what your actual read/write speed are from the NAS. It will tell you if it's fast enough for media you're trying to play back. From the task manager reading you showed, you looked like your Z:/ was only getting between 32.7 MB/s and 75.5 MB/s throughput (which is obviously not ideal).

[Brandon5]

@Ben Insler after trying DaVinci to test i can confirm that the clips stored on the network perform about the same as the ones stored on the local ssd. 

[Brandon5]

@Mitch W 

Thanks for this suggestion, I went for the black magic utility as it provides a bit more info. The array of drives on the NAS are able to deliver about 9GB/ps,

[Kevin-Monahan]

Updating the status of this bug report.

[DMO]

I have the same problems.  Manual file transfers and speed testing seem to push the limits of the NAS itself (RAID HDD with M2 SSD cache).  I've experimented with mapping the NAS to a drive letter as well as linking to it through Windows Network and Sharing Center.

This is an example, with a 1 GB file.  The NAS is connected to the computer through 10 Gbe Network with all Cat 8 cabling, set to Full Duplex, with jumbo packets enabled.

Here's an example test result with 4 GB file.  The results can vary, I have other network activities going on at the moment through my network adapter so these numbers could probably be even higher.

Monitoring the network performance through Task Manager shows corresponding data, the 10Gbe adapter is moving stuff around between 3.5 and 9 Gbps.

When I hit play in a Premiere timeline or try to export something, I'm waiting for ages while network traffic putters along at sub gigabit speed (like 100-200 Mbps, yes I mean megabits so we're talking about 10 MB, maybe 15-25 MB per second).   Sometimes there are spikes around 800 Mbps to 1 Gbps, but such events are fleeting and rare.  Even if we consider the duplex function of the disk and adapter reading and writing across the network (when exporting media to the NAS that is derived from media sources on the NAS) we're talking about an average speed in the  neighborhood of 20-30 MB/s.

The point being that, Premiere (and perhaps other Adobe applications, I haven't noticed as much sluggishness in AfterEffects compositions) is woefully slow and utilizes only a fraction of the available hardware's performance.

I even have M2 SSD's for my local Adobe Cache (Samsung 990 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe 2TB and 4TB) which could be utilized if Premiere is going to struggle with accessing data across network, but it just stores peak files and metadata? I can't recall off the top of my head but it's all relavtively small little things in there.

For what it's worth the CPU is a Core i7 14700k on a 790 chipset motherboard with PCIe 5 and 4 capability, DDR5 128 GB RAM.  I also have an Nvidia RTX 3080Ti, I've experimented with using that for acceleration and well as just Software Only Mercury Playback; neither setting seems to improve the delays.

[johannesk47159831]

Hi Kevin,

has there ever been any solution to this problem/bug?

We just switched to a NAS and we're facing the same issues as described above, leading us to not being able to use the NAS in combination with Premiere Pro (projects take really long to open, up to 30 minutes).

We'd really appreciate help here.

Best,

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey Johannes,

What's the AJA system test telling you as far as your R/W performance? Let me know!

Thanks,
Kevin

[johannesk47159831]

Hi Kevin,

please see the R/W data here (this screenshot is with 16GB file size but it's not different for 1GB):

Thanks for your help,

Best regards. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @johannesk47159831,

Thanks for the screenshot. Has this always been an issue, or is this more recent. For example, did you have the same trouble with version 24? Let me know. I'll inform the team.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Brandon5]

Hi Kevin,

Just chipping in to share my experience this seams to be a pretty consistent bug with even the most recent version of premiere pro, I’ve also had this issue with some older version of premiere 21, 22 etc.

Cheers

Brandon

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks for letting me know, Brandon. I hope the team will respond shortly.

Cheers,
Kevin

[johannesk47159831]

I tried versions 25, 24, and 23. Same result.

And I know, this probably doesn't help (neither us nor you) but... Davinci Resolve opens in seconds from the same storage location with the exact same media files. I also plugged a machine directly in the server, to make sure it's not an issue with the switch configuration etc, still the same problem, I'm afraid.

Thanks for the help, plese let me know if you need any more specs from our side.

[CoMo-Tech]

Our TV department was using an older version of Premiere, but when we upgraded the computers and OS to Windows 11, they upgraded to the newest version of Premiere. 

Our TV department came to me with this same rendering performance issue using Windows Adobe Premiere 2025, except instead of the share being on a NAS it is a Windows 2016 file server.  For all intent and purpose they are the same.

I did the AJA test and Microsoft's diskspd.exe that includes a random read/write, and I could saturate the network connection. 
When watching the network on the PC, while opening and saving projects, the link is fully utilized. Playback and general editing performance over the network is good.  However, just as reported by others, when a project is rendered, there is spike in network traffic, then nothing for a long time, then some more spikes and eventually it complete.  
After spending considerable time looking at the workstation, network, and server, I decided to try something different.

On the PC, I setup a file share, and mapped a drive to that local share.  The media files where copied over, a new project created, all on this local PC file share.  When the project was rendered, the same issue occurred!
Since my test excludes any possible network interactions, or problems, I'm convinced that newer Adobe Premiere for Windows has a problem rendering when the project/media files are located on a file share.

In lieu of having a file server or NAS, this setting up the local file share is an excellent way to test and verify this problem on a Windows PC.

Please advise.

[Kevin-Monahan]

OK, I'll move this to the bugs forum for troubleshooting.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Rach McIntire]

Hi @CoMo-Tech, 
Thanks for bringing this back to our attention.  Can you give me a few more details so we can try to reproduce this issue?  What version of Premiere is the one your team updated to?  Can you tell me more about your computer specs?  I'd love to be able to reproduce this behavior.  If you have time, please give the team a few more details. See: How do I write a bug report?  

I hope we can help you soon. Sorry for the frustration! 

[CoMo-Tech]

Issue - We are encountering hanging when working on projects on a Windows network file share. No multi-user editing on projects.
When copying a file to or from the server, there is is no hesitation and the speed is as expected.

Steps to reproduce - To rule out the network, as a test, I setup a network share on the computer running Premiere.

On the computer, in a Command Prompt:

NET SHARE APPRO=c:\temp /grant:everyone,CHANGE
NET USE Z: \\MyComputerName\APPRO

(Replace MyComputerName with the name of the computer testing on.)

Copying files to from the local share (Z:) is exceedingly fast (3.52 GB/s).

We copied the media files and created a new project on the local file share Z: drive.

Expected result - Rendering and Export should occure nearly as fast as on the C: , depending on the video lenght.

Actual result - Despite the share being local, rendering and exporting paused and took serveral minutes to process. Less of a concern but more evidence, playing the video and move the moving blue line would occasionally pause or delay.

The results of the test yielded pauses and delays consistant with the production share.

Adobe Premiere Pro version - version 25.2.3 (Build 4)

Operating system - Windows 11 Pro 23H2 22631.5335
GPU driver version - 32.0.15.7159 - NVIDIA RTX A2000 GPU Memeory 21.8GB Dedicated 6.0G Shared GPU 15.8GB
Video format - Codec MP4 - H264 1920x1080
Comparative information helps us understand more about when the issue occurs:
Does it affect all projects or only some projects? All Projects.
Does it affect new projects? The same
When did the problem begin? After Upgrading to Windows 11 to Adobe Premiere Pro 2025.

The issue occures on dedicated desktops and laptops the same.

I will collect a video of the issue to demonstrate what we are experiencing.

[CoMo-Tech]

Hello, I'm following up on this, to see if there has been any progress on this issue?

[CoMo-Tech]

I asked our video department to regression test 2024 and see if the same issue is present.   This was their response:

"Ok, so I tested everything with the 2024 Premiere Pro and I didn't have any of the render problems we currently have
One of our core features though, the Adobe Library, which is cloud based sharing software we store all our motion assets on couldn't be accessed in the older version.

Would it be helpful if I do some screen captures of the problems so that we can add them in a post to the Adobe blog?"

It is obvious some change to 2025 is causing this problem.   Please advise.