A very slow working adobe premier pro... is my MacBook powerful enough for it?

[Guest]

Good afternoon,

New member to the forum:

I’ve had 2 MacBooks over time and recently upgraded to a 2015 in hope my MacBook would work faster when using adobe premier pro cc 2014. However is doesn’t seem to be the case and i’m not too sure if my settings is correct..

I have recently taken up a hobby of editing movies (best parts)

Sample movies: 

30.00fps 1920x1080 = perfect fast forward and edit 

29.97fps 3840x2160 = very slow freezes when try to fast forward to cut clips 

29.97fps 1920x1080 =  works decent

59.94fps 1920x1080 =  struggle can’t keep up

23.97fps 1920x1080 = struggle can’t keep up

Macbook Pro (13 inch Early 2015)

macOS: High Sierra

Processor: 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory: 16GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Graphics: Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB

Is my MacBook too slow? I tried to get one with the best specs in my budget.

Thanks for your help

[John V Knowles]

Hi AntD1,

Couple things may be happening here:

1. You didn't mention what drive your media is on. If you're playing the clips from the laptop drive, try putting them on fast external storage like a Thunderbolt drive or RAID. In a perfect setup, the main drive of your computer is only handling the OS and the Premiere application, with everything else (Project, media, caches, previews) split off onto other drives.
2.  While the GPU isn't as crucial as CPU power, it's still necessary. And unfortunately you bought a model with a really weak GPU -- the Intel Iris Graphics are notoriously underpowered. The variant 2015 model with the discrete AMD card would have been a better investment. And you can't upgrade this 😞

I have a 2014 MBP and I don't have issues cutting these types of footage. I generally work with fast external storage and I have a discrete Nvidia GPU, so my guess is that's where you're seeing the performance hit.

WM

[Guest]

Great info WM, 

The media is normally on a standard external hard drive. and copy it onto my 500SSD on my macbook then try to edit...

Would closing programs and creating less space on my macbook help? Wish i got a discrete GPU...

Thanks for help again

[Kevin-Monahan]

Ant,

Thanks for your note. Your machine does not meet system requirements. Sorry. That is probably why you are getting poor performance. A five year old computer is not what I'd be looking to buy to run current software. It's obsolete from the get go. Sorry to tell you.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Guest]

Thank you Kevin for the reply, 

A bit sad, I've only recently pruchased this macbook pro (regardless of year) I thought it still had good specs.. is there anything i could do? currently using adobe premier pro 2014 

[jkataky]

That is so rediculous though.. I could HD footage lightning fast in Avid or even final cut 10 years ago.. The problem is not the machine it is adobe premiere being terribly ineffecient software. 

Premiere is the biggest scam in the post production industry. It is utter garbage.

[Michael Grenadier]

can't say I agree with you.  if you're interested in trying to solve your issues in Premiere, post back.  Every editing program has it's pluses and minuses and it takes work to get the most out of your hardware.   Have you tried the proxy workflow using an all i-frame format like prores proxy.  Works great.  

[Alina5EF8]

If the system is too old, I do not understand why Adobe Premiere Pro lists the GPUs that work sucesfully for PP and 

• Intel® Iris™ Graphics 6100  -  is on the list.  Why put it on the list, if PP still doesn't work?? 

[Michael Grenadier]

do not abandon all hope.  My 2 edit systems consist of a 2009 macpro tower and a 2012 macbookpro.  Not ideal, to say the least.  However, I manage to make them both work without serious issues (although rendering and exporting are not as fast as I would like).   If you can master the proxy workflow you'll find your system can still be usable.  It's not particularly simple or intuitive but it works.  I've cut 4 camera multicamera projects with both 4k and 1080 elements without any serious issues.    If you're going to try the proxy workflow, test your workflow before creating all the proxies to make sure everything's working properly.