Slow playback in in Pr 2024 - tested slow in XAVC S -but fast in Resolve

[boywho]

Please can you improve Pr playback it is awful, in Resovle playback is fast and smooth like butter.  I only tested (XAVC S) but please see my experience below.

The machines I was testing were the Macbook Pro Max M3 (14 core) The playback of footage was very, very slow; the file codec was Sony 4K XAVC S.  In fact, it was painfully slow on PC and very slow on Mac.  

I tried external SSD playback and internal SSD playback, both of which were the same and awful.  After seeking advice I spoke to an editor using Resolve, saying they can get up to about 5-7 without any loss of playback in Davinic Resolve, and that it was just an Adobe Premiere Pro problem. 

I decided to test this for myself and found Resolve playback smoothly like butter; it was effortless in playing back 5 clips and multi clips.  The codec or other files were not the problem, the mac or pc was not the problem, it was clearly the Adobe software.

Although this is great for my review of the M3 for my youtube channel it is terrible for my day to day editing and use that has clearly been costing me money.  The results are so staggering different my surprised Adobe is allowing this to happen.  I'd be happy to work with you on solving this.

[RjL190365]

Here's the problem:

Adobe, and most other NLEs, have a lot of trouble handling XAVC-S material, especially 10-bit 4:2:2, well. You see, most NLEs have for several years treated H.264 as "legacy", and thus permanently locks hardware acceleration support to 8-bit 4:2:0. Period.

[Kyle Plumadore]

Can you provide a sample project/media that reproduces this problem?

If you need a place to upload to I can provide one.

[MyerPj]

FWIW: My 12th gen I9, plays back my AX53 files (UHD/100Mbs) just fine, and I was doing something with it earlier in the week and I marveled at how good it was. Adobe has put in some efforts at improved playback. I'm not sure what you are seeing. And as for your friend 😐