After Premiere regains window focus, when playing the timeline it hangs for 5 seconds before playing

[QuietTouch]

I've been facing a really strange issue with Premiere Pro, I'm not entirely sure when it started happening, but it's been an issue now for maybe around 6 months to a year. (Also this is my first time posting to the community, so let me know if I need to give more information on my issue)

I record videos using OBS (AVC H264 or HEVC H265 with a CBR of roughly 45Mbps and CFR (constant frame rate) at 60fps and then import them into Adobe Premiere as MP4 after using OBS's built-in remux MKV to MP4 feature. This does result in fairly large files, but in the past this has given me good results when editing in Premiere. My system is able to play back and scrub through these files very smoothly. There is one bizarre issue though that I honestly don't know what could be causing it. When I click out of Premiere and click back into it and attempt to play the timeline Premiere will hang for 5 seconds before playing the timeline (spinning up the fans in my PC too). This only happens when I previously clicked out of Premiere (to, for example, respond to a message or to look something up in a browser, you get the idea) it will always have that delay of 5 seconds when I try to play the timeline again. It doesn't happen at all when I stay in Premiere, it'll be smooth and responsive all day long, but as soon as Premiere loses focus for whatever reason it'll have that 5 second delay when I come back and hit play again. Obviously this can happen 100s of times throughout an editing session and can get super frustrating after a while. I also don't see this issue with other software like Da Vinci Resolve (same codecs/file types and sizes)

Codecs and File Information:

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main@L6.2@Main
Codec ID                                 : hev1
Codec ID/Info                            : High Efficiency Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1 h 29 min
Bit rate                                 : 45.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 2 560 pixels
Height                                   : 1 440 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 60.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.203
Stream size                              : 28.0 GiB (99%)
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Codec configuration box                  : hvcC

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 h 29 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 152 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 97.2 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Game
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 h 29 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 2 271 b/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.45 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Discord
Default                                  : No
Alternate group                          : 1

Audio #3
ID                                       : 4
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 h 29 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 54.9 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 35.1 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Mic
Default                                  : No
Alternate group                          : 1

Audio #4
ID                                       : 5
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 h 29 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 160 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 102 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Mic - No Filters
Default                                  : No
Alternate group                          : 1

Audio #5
ID                                       : 6
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 h 29 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 2 271 b/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.45 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Spotify & Firefox
Default                                  : No
Alternate group                          : 1

Example timeline where I experience the issue, I split out audio from different sources in the file so that's why there are so many audio channels. It's basically just one video file with no cuts, really nothing too weird here.

System Specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5950X
RAM: 64GB Ram @ 3600MHZ
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Storage: SSD (Samsung 970 Evo) and HDD (Seagate IronWolf 7200RPM) - From both doesn't seem to matter
OS: Windows 11

Things I've tried:
Clearing render cache from within Premiere (no difference, same issue)
Using global effects mute toggle (no difference, same issue)
Deleting audio channels from timeline (no difference, same issue)
Setting Audio Input to No-Input (no difference, same issue)
Setting quality to quarter/half/full (no difference, same issue)
Closing Lumetri Scopes panel, I rarely use it anyway (no difference, same issue)
I've noticed that for some reason remuxing the file from MKV to MP4 in OBS causes it to come out with VFR (Variable Framerate). I tried converting the file from VFR to CFR (some improvement, but same issue)

Additional Notes:
I'm not super keen on the extra encoding + storage cost associated with generating proxies, but it does seem to improve the situation. I'd rather use GPU encoding in OBS since CPU encoding can be rather taxing on a system, but that limits me to basically AVC H264/HEVC H265 or AV1(which afaik Premiere can't handle yet) in OBS

Findings:
I'm relatively certain that this is a bug in Premiere maybe related to demuxing of the MP4 file, and not something I'm doing wrong specifically. The fact that it only happens when I click out of Premiere and back in is very strange to me. If it was really something with the file itself, would it not happen every time you click play? It should be able to just play the timeline the way it does when Premiere stays in focus. A lot of similar issues I've seen seem to suggest that it has something to do with my audio configuration in Premiere, but I'm honestly not sure about that... maybe H264/H265 is just not good for editing after all? Weirdly, a smaller file (1 minute and 20 seconds) with a similar recording setup does not present this issue.

I'm interested in hearing any suggestions as I feel like I've considered almost everything at this point...

Thank you for your time!

[QuietTouch]

I'm still experiencing this issue, but I noticed one thing that may be of interest. After having done something outside of Premiere for a bit, and then clicking back in my CPU will flair up at around 15% utilization by Premiere for about 5 seconds. During this time, if you click play on the timeline (or press space) the video won't play. If you wait for Premiere to calm back down to 0% utilization then the video will immediately play when you press play. This tells me that Premiere is doing something weird when it loses and regains focus and that it is not something I am doing wrong specifically...

I also noticed this happening when I rendered the footage between the in-out points (eg. the bar on the timeline is green). I've also seen it happening with proxies as well. It also happens when my footage is on an SSD. Very frustrating issue.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @QuietTouch,

I'm Kevin from support, and I'm a moderator here. Thanks for filing your bug report and for providing the screenshot. It sounds like you are still having trouble with your source footage. Since you suspect the audio might be the issue, you might try rendering it before playing it back. That could work. Are you operating with 2K sequence settings or HD ones? 2K to HD scaling can introduce performance issues. If you are not doing so, you might try a sequence that matches your footage properties.

Have you considered transcoding your OBS-acquired footage on ingest? Once transcoded, footage originating from video streams operates much more reliably. Footage from video streams always seems to be at the heart of many support cases. As an editor, I like removing poorly performing media from the equation. You can delete these intermediate files after the project has wrapped. There is no added time to the process as the transcoding on the ingest process occurs in the background.

An adjustment in your workflow might be the key to solving this annoying problem. I hope the advice helps. Sorry for the frustration.

Thanks,
Kevin

[QuietTouch · Accepted solution]

Hey Kevin,

I'm not doing any scaling on the footage in this case. It's 1440p video in 1440p project so that should be fine.

I tried rendering the audio with sequence -> render audio, but it just starts to play the project from the beginning with nothing else seemingly happening. Not sure if that is how this should work as I've never really used this feature in the past. Do I wait for it to play through the whole project?

Anyway, I can confirm that using proxies on ingest with ProRes Quicktime does resolve the issue for me... (RIP Free space xD)

Thanks for getting back to me!