Apple Security Update Degraded Premiere Performance

Report · May 12, 2023

I have been working on a heavy project for several months now with multiple layers if 8k video on the following system:

Macbook Pro M1 Max 32 core GPU 64GB Mem

Although I was taxing the system I was still able to playback at a reduced quality. This project was put on the backburner for the last month with no changes to the project and now will not play properly. It wasnt great before I admit as i was at 1/16th quality however bow it is only updating the playback window every second or so. The only change to the system was the Apple emergency security update that came through about a week ago.

i was running Primeier version 23.3 and did go ahead and update to 23.4 but the issue persists.

Anyone else pushing the limits see a reduction in performance after the Apple update? Unfortunately deadline is early next week and this is a major label release. Any suggestions or help is greatly appreciated.

Report · May 12, 2023

update: I was anle to roll back the security update but it did not fix the issue. I also did the usual troubleshooting activities. Deleted the media cache deleted prefferences and deleted plugin cache. I also went back to prior saved versions and still the issue persists. Even disableing layers is not helping as much as you would expect. It stutters unless i am only running 1 layer when before I was significantly higher. Technically with nested sequences I was playing back 10 layers and in some spots 15. As I said I was pushing the system to its max. I will corcle back arround as I test and troubleshoot.

Report · May 12, 2023

Update 2

it was NOT the security update I reverted Premiere Pro to 23.2 and it has resolved the performance issue. I must have updated to 23.3 right before taking the break and didn't notice the issue. That said it is def a performance bug in Premiere Pro as of version 23.3.

A few notes comparing the two versions 23.3 and 23.4 were only using the cpu at arround 5-15% with no spikes and gpu usage of 95-98%.

23.2 is spiking the cpu when first hitting play to 90% then stabalizing at 30-35% with gpu usage at 85-88%. This leads me to beleive that something was shifted from CPU to GPU processing and it is now overdoing the GPU and not offloading some of it back to CPU. That said were any processess recently shifted from CPU to GPU? This project consists of mostly RED footage and I am utilizing blend modes and many nested sequences.

For now I will be sticking with version 23.2 and would love to know any resolutions for getting this performance back the next time I need to update. I would hate to miss out on new features. I appreciate the time of anyone who helps out!

Report · May 12, 2023

I just looked up the updates for 23.3 and it said that R3D footage was supposed to get a boost and unfortunately in my case the updates seriously defraded performance of R3D files with more than one layer.

Report · May 12, 2023

updates often demand more from system resources. Have you investigated Premiere's excellent proxy workflow? Can make an enormous difference in this sort of situation.

Report · May 13, 2023

I understand suggesting proxies however 23.3 was supposed to help with Red R3D files and instead degraded performance which makes me think it is a bug. This was in the 23.3 release notes "Premiere Pro now has significantly improved performance for RED R3D footage on Apple M1 and M2 Macs." After testing all day today to get to the bottom of this there is a significant hit to performance starting in version 23.3. Reverting back to 23.2 I can easily play 6 layers of 8k R3D files at 1/4 resolution but with 23.3 and 23.4 I can't even get it to play at 1/16 resolution. And even if I go down to 2 layers it is still stuttering.