Laggy playback and pixelated rendered timeline quality

[JW KMS]

Hi there, over the last few months I've had terrible experiences with Premiere Pro. I used a custom PC in 2021 and the rendered timeline played back was very pixelated, my 4k footage and sequence looked like 720p tops. I ended up switching over to a 14" Macbook M1 Pro at the beginning of this year, and I still have the same problem. I also am having issues with terrible playback performance with 1080 60p 422 10bit footage on a 4k timeline. My machine should not have an issue whatsoever with that codec (Panasonic S1 & S5), not sure what the deal is. Looking for a solution to this/these massive issues. (Also having issues with insane amounts of memory leakage, like PP is using 100gb of RAM)

[Carlos Ziade]

can you elaborate more on your workflow?

why use 1080 footage on a 4K Timeline?

when working with 4K footage, it is always best to go for proxy workflows.

Did you try to use GoPro CineForm(YUV 10 bit) as preview file format from sequence settings?

did you try reset the preferences for Premiere Pro?

[JW KMS]

Sure,

First I created a 3480 x 2160 sequence. I then import my 1080 60p footage (as well as a couple of 4k clips). I add the 1080 footage to the 4k timeline, and right-click the clip to "scale to frame", so my 1080 clip fits perfecftly into the 4k frame. I'll adjust color, and then render the timeline for smooth playback (I shouldn't even have to do this with the power of my machine). When I playback, it's very pixelated and "artifacty", like I said, it looks like 720p footage at best, but on export it looks completely fine. 

The reason I use 1080 on a 4k timeline is to bypass YouTubes compression algorithm's on 1080p files, I don't want my film to be compressed to death, therefore I try to get a reasonable bitrate compression from YT's 4k compression algo. 

I have no problem editing in FCPX & DaVinci resolve, they work great. The reason I bought this machine is so I don't have to rely on Proxy workflows to cut/edit my films.

Preferences have been reset many times. I have not tried GoPro CineForm for the preview file format, I'll try that and see if it helps with the pixelated rendered playback and get back to you.

[JW KMS]

Also, the 4k timeline is 23.978p.

[JW KMS · Accepted solution]

I switched my preview settings, I never knew how to do that. I always saw that it was greyed out but never knew why. It seemed that the "DSLR" sequence preset locked me into the specific preview settings, so I just changed it over to "custom" and I could change my resolution and preview codec, my render previews look good now, thanks!

[Carlos Ziade]

Welcome!