M2 Chip Wildly Inconsistent Export Times

Report · Oct 31, 2023

I recently bought a Macbook with the M2 Max chip and 32GB of memory. It works well in many respects, but exporting video using either Premiere or Media Encoder is incredibly frustrating. Videos shot on the same cameras with the same settings (in the same room!) will sometimes encode in minutes, then sometimes in hours. When things are slow and I open activity monitor, it shows that whichever program is exporting is barely using the CPU and only using a few of the 32 GB of memory. I have both programs set to use up to 29 GB. Even when it starts exporting quickly the computer sometimes seems to "lose interest" in the export. It will have been humming along with the fan, moving quickly, then suddenly just slow down. You can hear the fan stop and computer seem to be idle and then the estimated time remaining skyrockets as the export slows to a crawl.

I have no idea what's causing this or what to do about it. I've tried changing every setting I can think of and experimenting. It feels like magic or fate whether a video will whiz by or take it's time. Any advice would be appreciated.

Report · Nov 03, 2023

Hi John,

Could you share:

1. A spin dump of PremierePro when its seemingly doing nothing. You can obtain this via Activity Monitor > Select "Adobe Premiere Pro" > Three dots menu > Spindump > Save

2. A minimal project that reproduces the issue, with footage from the same camera, and the export settings saved.

3. MacOS version

4. PremierePro version.

You can upload these somewhere and message me directly with a link. Alternatively, we can provide a link for you to upload the files.

Report · Nov 03, 2023

Hi, I have Mac Studio with M1 Max processor with 32 Gb RAM and have same problem. It start from version V.22 and stay till now-latest V24 in each version iteration (V22.1, V22.2...etc), I test all of them.

As you can see, from the link below I report this problem on Jun 2022

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/mac-studio-problem/idc-p/13763474#M8924

This is another link that I described again problem with render, but no one answer.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/mac-studio-problems-not-fixed-over-year/idi-p/13776...

Here is another link with screen recording to show this strange render behavior, and Kevin-Monahan, report that he was able to recreate this problem.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/m1-max-export-problems/m-p/13922403/page/3#M...

So for me this problem wasnt fix for Year and half.

I recently bought a Macbook with the M2 Max chip and 32GB of memory. It works well in many respects, but exporting video using either Premiere or Media Encoder is incredibly frustrating. Videos shot on the same cameras with the same settings (in the same room!) will sometimes encode in minutes, then sometimes in hours. When things are slow and I open activity monitor, it shows that whichever program is exporting is barely using the CPU and only using a few of the 32 GB of memory. I have both programs set to use up to 29 GB. Even when it starts exporting quickly the computer sometimes seems to "lose interest" in the export. It will have been humming along with the fan, moving quickly, then suddenly just slow down. You can hear the fan stop and computer seem to be idle and then the estimated time remaining skyrockets as the export slows to a crawl.

I have no idea what's causing this or what to do about it. I've tried changing every setting I can think of and experimenting. It feels like magic or fate whether a video will whiz by or take it's time. Any advice would be appreciated.

By @johnk35469288