iMac 5K lagging while editing 4K video in Premiere Pro

[danzaman13]

Hello all,

I recently started shooting 4K footage from my DJI Phantom 4 Pro drone and am having serious performance issues when trying to edit the footage in Premiere Pro CC 2017.

Here are my system specs, do you think I should be having severe lag issues?

iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015

4GHz Intel Core i7

32GB 1867 MHz DDR3 RAM

1TB Flash Storage SSD

AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096MB

I tried moving my cache folder on Premiere to an external hard drive, and also reduced playback to 1/16 resolution and still getting extreme lag when scrubbing the footage or trying to playback.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan

[R Neil Haugen]

Most drone footage is highly compressed, which places a lot of work on the CPU for de-encoding during playback. You may find it a better experience to have PrPro make proxies on ingest, perhaps using the Cineform option, so that the playback is much smoother.

Using a good 3rd generation SSD for system drive, and say m.2/NMe  or a fast Samsung EVO pro SSD for media/project files/cache files can help also. They are vastly faster at sustained data transfer, and in Bill Gehrke's testing (and he's the expert on such things) the 2017 versions (11.x builds) of PrPro seem much happier on 3rd generation SSD's than even a large fast hardware RAID array, as has been typical practice in the past.

And for externals ... the Samsung T3 drives over USB3 maintain sustained read/write speeds at or above most internal spinning-disc drives. Most other external SSD's don't match them.

Neil

[danzaman13]

Thanks for the response! Because I have an iMac and am stuck with the SSD that came with the machine, you're saying I could buy a couple Samsung T3 externals to used for cache/project files? I just started playing with proxies and it seems to help a lot. For some reason one of my clips still lags real bad even after Adobe Media Encoder processed both clips. The second clip is working blazing fast when I toggle proxy mode on. Any ideas what would prevent some clips from working and some not?

Is this the external hard drive you'd recommend for speed/performance? Would you just use one of these for cache files or buy multiple for working files/backups/etc.?

https://smile.amazon.com/Samsung-T3-Portable-SSD-MU-PT250B/dp/B01AVF6UQQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie...

[R Neil Haugen]

Yes, that's the critter. Bill Gehrke​ has tested them as very useful with PrPro 2017 and laptops.

As to why that one clip's proxy isn't working so well, huh. Might try selecting the original media clip in the Project panel, right-click, "make proxy" again.

And we'll see if someone else has an idea.

Neil

[Bill Gehrke]

danzaman13  wrote

Is this the external hard drive you'd recommend for speed/performance? Would you just use one of these for cache files or buy multiple for working files/backups/etc.?

Yes that is what I am using.  They are available in 250 and 500 GB plus 1TB and 2TB models.

I use all the Premiere Pro project files including media on a drive.  I have three drives currently but when when I am finished with a project I archive to hard disk drives and make space for new projects.  Unless you have very complex projects with hundreds of clips I find it easiest to leave the cache files on the default SSD boot drive and keep deleting them on a regular schedule

[danzaman13]

Thanks Bill. I picked up a 500GB Samsung T3 drive. Would you recommend putting the main video files on this that I'm trying to edi, as opposed to my internal SSD that my OS runs on? Between my SSD drives (one internal/one external-Samsung T3), I'm trying to figure out a workflow. Currently I have the Samsung T3 external just used for cache, but based on your comment above, I'm wondering if that's the best use of it.

[Bill Gehrke]

I have all my Project files and Media on the Samsung T3.  I leave the Media Cache in the default location on my boot SSD so it is handy to delete. Since I have a great desktop, when I finish editing I take the T3 to it and do final export, disc production and then archive on hard disk drives 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi danzaman,

I would transcode or use the proxy workflow with this kind of footage. Try a test and see if it works better.

Thanks,
Kevin

[mickspawn]

Kevin how do you transcode? i have the same problem

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

For most use of PrPro with drones & other long-GOP media devices ... such as DSLR/M-4/3 cameras produce ... using the process within PrPro's Media Browser to ​Ingest​ media while creating proxies is quite adequate. I would suggest the Cineform preset that comes with PrPro in the dialog box that clicking the Media Browser's wrench icon gets you too. In the options to create proxies. Do NOT use the H.264 one ... that will just create ​smaller​ long-GOP files, and the full intraframe Cineform files edit so much better.

To transcode, you can either use the Transcode option found by going through the wrench icon's setup options as listed above, or use Adobe Media Encoder. If you learn a little about using Media Encoder, you can quickly setup a "watch folder" with a specific transcode command set for it, so say you could drop a bunch of your drone files in that watch folder, and it would automatically transcode to whichever preset you want for codec, frame-size/rate, all that sort of thing, and when done, put the new files in a specific folder.

This can be useful when you've got a number of files ... and say want it to run while you're at lunch or overnight.

Neil

[mickspawn]

i read this and will analyze it more carefully later... i am a newbie to premiere pro so not sure yet how to use it properly.  is there a video guide??

i was told by adobe support to go to sequence, render in to out.  but i believe that is not the right method hence why i posted here.

[R Neil Haugen]

I'd suggest starting by going to the Adobe Help for PrPro, found in the "Help" menu. Go through whatever you can find on getting started and on things like ingesting & proxies & such.

Also ... there is so much to a program like PrPro that I highly recommend a subscription to lynda.com, as there are a number of excellent tutorial series with very good in-depth training on using PrPro ... and many other programs.

Neil

[sunderlandgreen201503]

People on DJI forum claims that he uses 27" iMac 2016, 32gb RAM, 4gb videocard, 2 external 1tb LaCie rugged HD SSD to edit 4K on Premiere with no problem.

[R Neil Haugen]

Given the nature of that highly compressed long-GOP DJI media, I'll bet he's using something like Cineform 1/2 or 1/4 res proxies, ​or​ ...he's not doing much in the way of stabilization, Lumetri, time-ramps, other hefty effects. It's just so demanding for CPU/RAM cores & threads. Besides doing any other work for the NLE.

Neil