GH4/5 4K playback delay on 5K iMac

[Anthony Rizzuto]

I run Premiere 12.0.1 on a 27" 5K maxed iMac.  Have been cutting a bit more 4K stuff from GH4 & GH5 lately and I’m finding a bit of a lag/delay in playing from timeline and loading current frame at playhead.

I’ve found this has happened in the past if I’m using the drive I’m editing on for transferring data etc. at the same time…so I’m assuming maybe it’s a drive issue?  Once play begins, it’s generally smooth both on the app interface preview and also via the Blackmagic intesity preview on the LCD monitor.  Delay is still there if not using mercury transmit to Blackmagic.  Can be a 2-3 second delay between pressing play/space and the footage actually playing.

Drive issue or something else??

If it is to do with drives...

I currently have one (spinning) media drive in a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure (along with other drives for general files, masters etc.).  My question is if I was to try to increase read speed by say striping 2 (preferably) or 3 drives in the enclosure as RAID 0…should this be any quicker than just using a single solid state drive as the media/edit drive?  Probably the question is more about 2 RAID 0 spinning drives vs 1 SSD.

I'm sure I have the hardware to play this media without these painful delays!?!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Anthony Rizzuto,

What happens if you transcode some sample footage to ProRes 422? Is the performance snappier? Let us know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Anthony Rizzuto]

Did a quick test and ProRes 422 is definitely more responsive, even when scaling frame size in 1080 timeline.  Surely this is not the only solution though!?! I often have projects with hours of footage, so transcoding isn't really ideal.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Anthony Rizzuto,

so transcoding isn't really ideal.

What isn't ideal and what works are often the case. I go with what works and deal with the rest until I can buy a better computer system or shoot footage with a lower overhead. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I think you'll have to either transcode or use proxies to have a good editing workflow/pipeline.

Regards,
Kevin

[Anthony Rizzuto]

So do you think that a faster/more efficient media drive setup such as 4 x drives in RAID5 array would make any difference then?

I was assuming that my single media drive could also be a bottleneck.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Could be. Your bottleneck may not be with your drives, it may have to do with the CPU/RAM/GPU, effects you have applied, the sequence settings you have chosen, many things, etc.

We need more info on your workflow to make a full diagnosis. IMO, any LongGOP footage needs to be transcoded unless you have a beast of a system. iMacs are OK, but I wouldn't say they're not always up to the "heavy lift."

Thanks,
Kevin

[Kristian Gabriel]

I own the GH5 and it is true that the format still runs a little rough in Premiere. Kevin is correct on the Prores, transcoding is your best option. We use mostly Cineform or Prores and everything works way better. We actually use a lot of Cineform because it seems to run even smoother on our machines. We also discovered that it is mainly the 10-Bit that causes the most pain. Lagging timelines and overall poor performance seems to be the result.

[Richard TOULON]

Hi,

2 more things.

1/ Can you tell us if the option " Enable accelarated Intel H264 decoding is activated ? Just for a test, try uncheck it and restart ( Restart your computer and not only Premiere ).

2/ Can you have a try with an external SSD plugged to a thunderbolt port?

There is an update for the GH5 for internal interframe codec that could be the solution. I don't know if it will fit your needs but you should have a better playback for sure.

Give us your feedback.

[Anthony Rizzuto]

Where is "Enable accelarated Intel H264 decoding" setting - I can't seem to find that option in Preferences...is it still in this version of PP?

[Richard TOULON]

@Where is "Enable accelarated Intel H264 decoding" setting - I can't seem to find that option in Preferences...is it still in this version of PP?

Preferences / Media.

Just test but I don't think it come from here but we never know.

Also try to deselect " High quality playback" in your program monitor settings.

[Anthony Rizzuto]

haha sorry still can't see that setting option!  See screenshot of my preference pane...

[Richard TOULON]

Alright, it should mean that this option is PC only. If any Mac user can confirm ?

I never pay attention to this option on the Mac I have used so far and because Mac has Intel processors, I thought this option was for sure in Premiere on Mac.

[bartw74066726]

Hi Anthony,

I had the same problem with 4K GH5 footage in Premiere 13.0 on a 2017 5K iMac (4,2 Ghz i7 with 24Gb RAM).

I followed riklards advice and found this in my Preferences -> Media:

After checking this box, and restarting, my 4K footage plays back smoothly at full quality.

Maybe try updating to the newest version of Premiere and see if you have this checkbox then?

[yenaphe]

GH5, by "default" encodes in a long gop h265 structure that is very heavy to decode and can put a strain on the cpu if not hardware decoded.

In the latest firmware, Panasonic engineers added an option for an all intra video codec. This is the prefered option as it is simpler to decode and is in fact made for editing (unlike h264/h265 which are delivery codecs)

[davids19419774]

Macs are just slow at this, we have a brand new one at work (cost a fortune) and it's terrible with 4k have to transcode everything which takes a long time.

At home I spent 1000 upgrading my computer (probably 1,500 total price) and it's a beast in comparison, can edit hour long 4k footage with no slowing down whatsoever. Swap to PC