Graphics Issue on my macbook pro 2016 when using premiere

Report · Mar 04, 2017

Hi Rameez,

Unfortunately the GPU issues with Premiere never really stop.

OpenCL and Metal renderer will cause a problem with Premiere Pro CC 2017 (Latest version) on Mac Sierra (10.12.3)

when using Red footage (.R3D files). If you apply effects from their Lumetri color panel the exported file will flicker strangely. Its most visible when using the vignette effect.

Heres an example with OpenCL:

A005 C001 03022K 001 1 on Vimeo

And this is the render with Metal:

A005 C001 03022K 001 on Vimeo

Its only visible on the rendered files NOT in Premiere preview.

Ive testet it on two machines (MacBook Pro Late 2013 and MacBook Pro 2016 with Radeon 460 card) . It happens on both machines when using OpenCL or Metal with Premiere. It doesn't happen when I set the render engine to CUDA (which I can of course only do on the 2013 Macbook with an NVIDIA card) or "Software only" mode.

Ive contacted Apple support over this, but they seemed very indifferent. The senior support guy I talked to didn't even know Premiere Pro....Any suggestions ? Thank you

Report · Mar 06, 2017

Hi schmollywood,

I've branched your post into a new discussion so that we can help you troubleshoot this issue.

Thank you for providing the examples!

Please allow me some time to recreate this issue with some sample R3D files on a MacBook Pro (Mid 2015). I'll let you know about my findings.

Ive contacted Apple support over this, but they seemed very indifferent. The senior support guy I talked to didn't even know Premiere Pro....Any suggestions ? Thank you

I apologize for your bad support experience! Could you provide me the case number of your interaction with support?

Additionally, could you try cleaning media cache files and check if that helps? FAQ: How to clean media cache files?

Best,

Rameez

Report · Mar 07, 2017

Hi RameezKhan, I did clean the media cache and even trashed preferences etc. Nothing worked. As for Adobe support I had 4 sessions. They were all closed by Adobe support after trying out all sort of steps with remote screens etc. The final answer of all of them are: "seems like a GPU driver issue". As I mentioned before I also contacted Apple support who were completely useless. The senior support guy never heard of "Premiere Pro CC" ... So here are the case numbers of the Adobe support sessions:

0188676507

0188678081

0188721457

0188722096

Report · Mar 07, 2017

RameezKhan I was talking to your colleague Kevin Monahan in the meantime who asked me to try exporting the RED files without scaling in their original size (in my case 5K) with the Lumetri effect applied and see what happens. As a matter of fact the export of the file without downscaling the 5K to HD (e.g. h.265) works flawless.

That means the error only happens if RED files (4k or 5k in my case) only show the error when they are exported in a smaller resolution. I hope this helps to solve the problem. Thank you

Report · Mar 08, 2017

Thanks for providing all the information, schmollywood!

I exported the following variants (after applying Lumetri LUT and Vignette) in my test:

H.264 at 1080p - No flickering (OpenCL)

H.264 at 1080p - No flickering (Metal)

H.265 at 1080p - No flickering (OpenCL)

H.265 at 720p- No flickering (Metal)

Unless I did anything differently, something is going on here!

I'll ask Kevin to repro this on his machine and I'm glad that his suggestion helped.

I'm sure your information will be valuable for us.

Thanks,

Rameez

Report · Mar 08, 2017

That is indeed very strange. Can I somehow send you one of the Red files (about 1GB) so you can try with this ? Its one of the files that flickered after exporting it in any of the codecs you tried. Thank you

Report · Mar 08, 2017

Sure!

You can send it via WeTransfer or upload it to Google Drive or any Cloud Storage.

Thanks,

Rameez

Report · Apr 11, 2017

Hi schmollywood,

Have you uploaded the files & sent to us? Please let us know the status.

Thanks,

Vidya