Dropping frames in Premiere Pro 2020 in all footage

[ProfessorWebneck]

As the title says, I am dropping frames on all footage in Premiere Pro 2020. I put an unedited, no effects, no graphics clip into the sequence timeline, hit the space bar and get a very choppy playback. It consistently drops frames. It has been an issue for a few months now, but wasn't an issue before that.

I am running Premiere Pro on an Eluktroniks RP-17.

Ryzen 7 4800H

Nvidia RTX 2060 Mobile (110 Watt variant)

16 GB of 3200 Ram

1TB Intel M.2

I have created proxies and gone to Pro Res for editing and I have the same issue. I have searched high and low across Google for answers to no avail. I still have the same issue. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Professor, 

Apologies, because this should work. You might try some basic troubleshooting:

• Trash Preferences: restart the app with Alt pressed down.
• Delete Media Cache with all projects closed from Preferences > Media Cache.
• Try a new project
• Try different source media, like ProRes LT at 1080 frame size. No 4K or drone footage.
• Place media on a separate high speed media drive

Report back after trying these things.

Thanks,
Kevin

[ProfessorWebneck]

When I reset the preferences the video started to playback smoothly. Thanks for that. I hadn't seen that mentioned elsewhere. 

Now, I can get back to smooth video editing lol.

[Lotte Orum]

restarting holding down alt key worked like a charm. Thank you.

[Lotte Orum]

It worked, but I literally had to keep doing this and eventually it stopped working.

It must be a bug, never had this issue before, then suddenly after updating Premiere Pro and Media Encoder it's rubbish. I even render directly from Premiere Pro, same issue. 1 - 2 frames goes blank and that's it. We pay way too much for Adobe to spent time on this ....

[Lotte Orum]

My clever daughter advised me to check Geforce driver updates, and sure enough there was one, after installing it, EVERYTHING works !!! 

[FlyingFourFun]

In addition to what Kevin suggested here is some things to consisder when workign from a laptop;

First, can you elborate on the dropped frames?  does it only happen when you start to play video, then it stops or all the time?   

1) Turn off windows power management, put it into high performance mode, not balanced, not power saver etc.  Often when you plug in your laptop to the power suppy, it will switch to performance mode, but not always.  Being that is a gaming laptop ( i had to look it up, never heard of it). it should be designed to run in performance mode, but never assume.

2) The memory, 16GB to be honest is sketchy.  Can you get at least 32GB in there?

3) video cards for laptops are not the same as for a desktop, despite the model numbers.  They are designed (as you indicated by the 110w) to run cooler, which is less power draw, which is less performance.  I dont think your issues are related to the video card, but check settings for it.  I know I have settings for my desktop Nvidia for performance mode, balanced etc.  

4) Do your Bios/driver updates and windows updates.  Often these updates can improve performance for things likly choppy playback.

5) make sure there is no pending windows updates, if there is complete them and restart (shuting down is not as good a a restart, always restart - its counter intititive but always use restart when installng or changing software).

The other suggestions like a seperate drive fro your video projects are also solid.  The OS tends to have lots of little reads / writes to the drive that can interupt the smooth playback of video.  Also; same companies use a lower performance NVME drive, you didnt mention what you model you had, so a higher quality one might be a really big help to fix the choppy play back.   Also; with 16GB of memory, I assume you system page file (swaping of memory to disk) is active, and this will contribute to challanges of playing back video without dropped frames.

The other issue that can occur, and its not thought of often, is the SSD/NVME drives have a max amount of writes (measures in TB), then the drive starts to slow down dramaticaly.  I cant tell how old your laptop or drive is, but there is often tools from the manafacture that will allow you to measure these effects.

Overall, that system should work...  however, if you can upgrade the memory, conisder that step.

[ProfessorWebneck]

I understand the whole laptops use less power and the video cards are less powerful but everything was working fine until about 3 months ago. I wasn't having any issues what so ever and then all of a sudden playback became very choppy and dropped frames consistently, no matter what. 

What the guy suggested above worked. So we are good to go. I'll look into buy some more ram to put into it. 

Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it. 

[FlyingFourFun]

That great news!  an easy fix is ideal, Kevin has probably seen everything possible go wrong, and how to fix it.  Pretty smart guy...  Please mark his response as "correct" if you have not already.

As for the memory, if its 'affordable, it will be worth it (32GB or less, dont go crazy unless its cheap).  But, if it was workign good before, dont worry too much.  As they add stuff to premier, you may need it, and you might sneak in a bit of speed if you do.   But at the end of the day, if your happy with the speed, they avoid spending the cash.

[ProfessorWebneck]

I have no clue how to mark it corrected.