Low CPU/Memory usage - Premiere Interface lags while playback is just fine.

[Al Such]

Hello,

I'm working on a video file which will eventually be about an hour and a half long, made up of several h.264 clips. Independently, they edited just fine with transitions and such. Now, I've stuck a few of them together to form about 10 minutes of my final product, and suddenly my Premiere interface is moving at an absolute crawl. Strangely, playback of the video is working as it always has. It's literally moving around on the timeline which is laggy, unresponsive, or straight up impossible. Additionally, parts of the program like the graphics pane or even the view selector at the top of the window aren't rendering at all while editing this specific file.

I've got Premiere using all but 3 of my 32GB of RAM, and yet in Task Manager my computer isn't being utilized past 20%. Can anyone help me explain why I can play back video in premiere at 100% with little stuttering, but the program itself is otherwise unusable?

Processor: Intel Xeon E5-2060 @2GHz

RAM: 32GB
Graphics Card: AMD Firepro V4900 1GB GDDR5 Video Card
Premiere Pro 2020

[basil1891]

Try to reset your workspace

[Al Such]

Sorry, no dice. Thanks for trying though!

[basil1891]

Window > Workspaces > Reset to saved layout ?

[Andy 1968]

4K H.264 will do that if you have continues frames selected. The video below might be helpful.

I posted the wrong video prior. The correct video is now up. It might help some people.

[Al Such]

Sorry, that seems to be fixing a different issue than the one I've had. The video playback itself is fine, it's literally manipulating UI items that is laggy.

I've found that if I un-dock the things I need, like the effects pane and timeline, I can use them without issue. Not a permanent solution, but have you heard of this problem before?

[RjL190365 · Accepted solution]

Here's the problem:

The UI does not take full advantage of a multi-core CPU. In fact, the UI is mostly single-threaded.

Exacerbating that problem is the relatively low single-threaded performance and the slow clock speed of your CPU. There has never been an E5-2060 at all. I think you meant E5-2620 or E5-2650. Neither of which even reaches 3 GHz, let alone 4+ GHz, even with a single core in use.

[Al Such]

This seems to be the best explanation of my issue. Thanks! Also you're correct, my processor is an E5-2620. Typo there.

Thanks!

[Levi5FAA]

I'm having this same problem too! It specifically starts when I import a second clip into my project.

[basil1891]

@Levi5FAA Have you tried "Window > Workspaces > Reset to saved layout" ?

[Al Such]

A temporary fix for me involved undocking the panels I needed - they became responsive without issue after this.

[basil1891]

@Al Such 

Try on/off the "Mercury Transmit" option (Preferences > Playback > Enable Mercury Transmit)

If you are working with 2+ monitors, try if a single display setup has same issue

[RyanBDart]

True! it worked for me too by closing panels and imeditaly came back to "noraml" that can be used. 

comands are now reponding fast as use to. 

Thanks for sharing this.