Crazy Slow Workflow in Premiere with big Project

[askrause22]

I am working on a feature documentary in Premiere (we have like 7TBs of footage) and it has been working so slowly that it is almost impossible to work. Everything is slow, playback, dragging, copy/pasting. I have tried almost everything I can think of and it is still so slow and crashes multiple times per day.

Here are some details:

Premiere 2019, version 13.1.5

4K, 10bit, 422, 23.997fps footage (with additional archival footage and downloaded footage of varying sizes)

720 Proxies (GoPro), 4K timeline

Late 2015 iMac

4 Ghz Quad Core i7, 32GB RAM

AMD Radeon R9 4GB graphics

Working off of a 10TB harddrive with 310mp/s read/write speed

Things I have tried/do:

• Proxies
• keeping my cache empty on a regular basis
• Keeping the rest of my computer totally clean of useless stuff
• Segmenting the 70 minute sequnce into 5 chapters (nested sequences), which helped reducing crashing, but didn't help the speed
• Going to try to work it in Premiere 2020 today; I am always nervous about changing software mid-project because it's hurt me before, but it's worth a shot
• Using GPU acceleration
• Optimizing for Performance

I am really at a loss and would love further suggestions. Will ocmment on how the new 2020 does after a day of working with it.

[Jeff Bugbee]

     "Working off of a 10TB harddrive with 310mp/s read/write speed"

How is this drive connected? I'm 90% sure this is your bottleneck.

Are you working exclusively with proxies or do you have full rez 4k footage on your timeline as well?

[askrause22]

I don't know if that's the problem, it's connected via a USB-C, to thunderbolt 2 cable. There was no discernable difference when we upgraded our hard drive from a 120mp/s drive to this in premiere. It works really fast when copying something to the drive via Finder too.

There is no full res 4K in the timeline. Everything above 720 resolution uses a proxy 

[Jeff Bugbee]

There is a HUGE difference between copying files and using a drive to edit.

What's the name and model of this drive? Are you on Mac or PC? What computer specs?

[askrause22]

Late 2015 iMac 5K retina

4 Ghz Quad Core i7, 32GB RAM

AMD Radeon R9 4GB graphics

Hard drive:

G Technology 10TB USB-C

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1333863-REG/g_technology_0g05378_professional_hard_drive_1000...

Sorry it's actually only 245 MB/s instead of 310 like I thought earlier

[Jeff Bugbee]

That is a 7200 rpm mechanical drive. Great for backups, not great for editing. That 245 MB/s is the max speed, not the average. A way to test if this drive is your bottleneck is by bringing some clips over to your local SSD and see if performance is better with all else being equal.

[askrause22]

So basicallt i have to get a big SSD or a RAID system for it to improve?

[Peru Bob]

Yes, try that first.

[Jeff Bugbee]

Unfortunately yes. Large media requires a beefy infastructure to work efficiently.

[askrause22]

Damn, I knew that would help, such a pricey necessity. thank you guys

[Basya1]

You probably need to transcode your footage.

I recommend using EditReady.