How can I improve my laptop performances?

[Gianmarco5CFC]

I'm trying to improve my laptop performances during editing sessions.

In the picture above, you have the typical timeline of one of my videotutorials.

THEY ARE ALL MOGRT TITLES EXCEPT VIDEOTRACK 1 AND 2 (videos at 1080p). 

Usually I edit by my desktop, from which I don't have any kind of problems... anyway, my laptop is a bit more in difficulty in order to manage this kind of timeline.

MY LAPTOP SPECS:

CPU: I7-8550U

GPU: NVDIA MX150

RAM: 16GB

I' ve activated 1/4 resolution and proxyes, and the engine I use is Mercury (cuda).

I record original videos in obs using h264 codec. 

MOGRT presets are created in premiere (version 14.0 actually)

My questions are:

1) Does it exist a better video format to record my videos, in order to edit  them in premiere without stressing the machine?

2) Are mogrt so heavy to manage? There is some way to optimize them?

3) Do you have any suggestions to improve my laptop performances?

4) there is anything I can do?

[Gianmarco5CFC]

Mogrts created in premiere 14.0 

Actually I'm using the newest premiere version 23.0

[R Neil Haugen]

You're trying twenty (20!) video tracks on a laptop? I can't even imagine what you would do with 20 mogrts/graphics stacked up on a clip ... are they all active?

That's a real ton of timeline data for Premiere to manage. And on an old (8th gen.) CPU with only 4 cores, and 16GB of RAM ... not much area for Premiere to manage data. And cores/threads for processing it.

Neil

[Gianmarco5CFC]

Hi Neil, thanks for your reply 🙂 .

Videotracks are all Active.

Does the videotracks spend resources even if they are empty? In such case I could obtain something de activating the empty tracks... 

Actually yes, I edit tutorials, with Just One real videotrack at 1080p, all the others are reserved to texts and rectangles that appear during the tutorial itself in order to emphasize concepts 🙂 .

Actually... Yes, my machine is managing everything... And not as dramatically as It could seem 🙂 

As I said, mogrts are very basic PR mogrts, with Just One text, or rectangle, per each. Not the AE heavy mogrts. 

Do you have some Tips for me in order to manage all the stuff 🙂 ?

Aldo some documents or references could be good for me, I would study them with pleasure 🙂 

Regarding yout question: yes, they are all Active. Moreover: I've noticed that, when Premiere begin to behave stucked, everything goes very good of I close the program and open It again. And I've totally got not idea of why!

I know that I am an extreme case, but I Need to optimize Just a bit more... 

Maybe recording the tutoria in some other format (actually I record them in mp4) , that Is lighter to' be read by the machine during editing session?

Maybe I can activate some Nvidia options in control panel, in order to move some of the load from the CPU to the GPU?

[R Neil Haugen]

You've got a lot of stuff there that Pr has to track. Every item on the sequence only exists as metadata ... that's what a sequence is, in reality, simply metadata about the assets that are in use (actual clips) and about all the effects applied to them.

Premiere needs to have all that in active cache, whether RAM or disc cache files. And as you move down a sequence, especially with low RAM count (and anything under 32GB of RAM is "low" these days ... ) Premiere is constantly having to move stuff to RAM to cache to RAM to cache ...

So that's why restarting can help. Cleans the RAM- cache files out.

Neil

[Gianmarco5CFC]

Interesting. Is it possible to do that, without closing and reopening the program?

I would be interested in studying how Premiere works from a "computer science" point of view (sorry for my bad english, I hope you'll understand)  in terms of resources usage and so on... if someone knows about some guides like this, I would appreciate a lot 😃 

[R Neil Haugen]

Nope, they don't have a 'refresh' option for anything, and several things like say what's in a LUT folder could certainly use one.

An NLE like Premiere is basically a data tool. Everything you do until you do a render or export operation is simply done in files of metadata. They have metadata files for the Project panel storing all the data of the assets of the project. They have metadata files for sequences, storing what is done on that sequence. As in the bits of clips/assets used, plus effects with X settings applied to each clip.

In playback, they simply take the metadata for the project file assets and the current sequence, and create the image that would be the result of the addition of the assets and the effects chosen.

Edit: And this is why an NLE is so different in performance than a video player. A player simply plays a file. An NLE has to create the screen image from gathering metadata and applying that to at times multiple bits from several different video files. It's a LOT more load on the computer.

But no "pixels on disc" are actually created until you do a preview or render/export process.

Neil

[Gianmarco5CFC]

Thanks for the explanation Neil 😃

[Warren Heaton · Accepted solution]

If your recording software supports ProRes, use that instead of MP4.

In your current project, make a duplicate of your Sequence and add "_ProResLT" to the name.  Use Render and Replace to transcode your MP4 files Apple ProRes 422 LT and change your Sequence Video Previews to Custom QuickTime Apple ProRes 422 LT.  

With your current laptop, if more RAM can be installed then do it.

With your next laptop, get a faster processor (if you were to buy a new laptop tomorrow, go with an i9).

If you are no longer making changes to a MOGRT, you can nest it, export the resulting Sequence with alpha, and then replace the nested Sequence in the Timeline (or disable it and place the rendered MOV above it).

It looks like your use of graphics has gotten complex enough that it's time to start using using After Effects in your workflow.

[Gianmarco5CFC]

Warren, thanks a lot for your help! I'll make use of all your precious suggestions 😃 😃 .

I was going to evaluate After effects, but at the moment I don't see the benefits in using it... I will explore anyway. Thanks again 😃