Mac Mini M2 Pro 512/16 - Performance issues

[screenname_abc]

Mac Mini M2 Pro - 512/16

Samsung T5 2TB thunderbolt

Project size Approx 1.3TB

r/w time Approx 400 MBPS

(about standard for this setup).

save files/cache to same drive

Brand new Mac mini and Premier install.  My project is fairly large, mainly iPhone and GoPro footage.  Nothing I would consider excessive.  2 weeks worth, broke down into days.  Each day separated with bins holding no more than around 100 clips per bin.  Usually edit 2-3 days in a timeline, one timeline at a time open for a few days.

Standard long(ish) form edit - about 20 mins - with montages and dialogue sequences.

Video

usually 1-2 layers video, 4K.  Mainly cutting, no mintages, very limited fades.  

Graphics

Occasional basic mortg text graphics.  Single LUT on adjustment later.

Audio

1+2 footage audio

3+4 voice over

5+6 music

Ultimately a fairly standard TV type edit using common codecs.

Don't want to sound rude or arrogant - I have about 30 years TV, commercials editing experience across Avid and Prem.  Rarely post on these forums because they usually say wrong codecs, proxies, pro res.  I usually find a way.  Work on all types of systems from home (this one) to production houses, corporate, etc.

However, want to just point out a few things with new system as it's really not close to what I was hoping.

Load time for project around 20 - 30 mins before I can start editing.

Extending clips with arrow tool in timeline etc about 2-3s lag on every click.

Finding I'm having to change my editing style for first time in a decade or so by having to cut and then drag over excess clip to save lag using arrow tool.

I'm an editor not s tech guy but started to watch a few settings and seems CC running about 7GB memory before I open Prem.

Processor settling around 50-60% but regularly running up to 500% and taking forever to drop back down to reasonable load.

Memory often hitting 30-40GB.

Now failing to export within Premiere.  Have to use encoder.

Find myself having to quite often restart Prem, taking avbiut an hour to relaly get back to speed each time.

Was editing these projects on an old iMac 2015 i7 1TB SSD and 32GB Ram at home and really not seeing much benefit in the new M2 system.

Is this the new standard?

I read about the term memory leak.  I really don't want to go down a pointless rabbit hole if it's just a bad couplingnof computer/software.  I'll get a different computer.

As a pre-requisite I expect to not have to regularly delete preferences, be able to use my own workspace layout and not have to encode everything to Pro Res in 2023 lol.

Don't want to sound rude, not posted here in a few years but Adobe...I've supported Premiere for many many years.  Big migration from Avid over a decade ago.  Was one of the first making TV content with Prem back in the 1990's.  I really don't expect to be spending seconds to simply trim a clip in 2023 😂

And any basic fixes for the above?

Screen shots of activity monitor after an hour for system to settle and basic playback and some I took about 15 mins into a project loading on day 2 of the new pairing.

It's primarily a single video track with LUT on adjustment layer.

Hope you can help.

Thanks

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi there @screenname_abc,

Thanks for the note and all the info you provided. Very helpful. It sounds like you are experiencing a similar issue to others in this thread: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/issues-with-premiere-23-5-on-m2-ultra-studio/idc-p/...

"We've identified an issue where disabling the MacOS system setting "Displays have separate Spaces" under "Desktop & Dock" degrades playback performance. By default this setting is enabled.

We're still working on an official resolution but in the meantime you can try re-enabling that setting as a workaround (requires system reboot to take effect) "

Could you take a look there and see if the workaround helps your project spring back to life. 

If that doesn't help, you can take a look at some other things to try. Your project sounds pretty large. What a lot of people do these days is set up something called a "Production." This is a function where you break up large projects into many smaller projects that are all tied together. I have a setup like this for a personal project containing thousands of assets. In your case, you'd break up the project into 14 projects, one for each shooting day. You'd have another project containing only the sequence you are working on. You might have another project for "test" sequences, B-roll sequences, virtual KEM rolls, another one for your graphics, another for your audio selects, etc. You would mainly work in the main sequence project, and since all these other assets are within other projects, the main project loads very quickly. The whole project becomes a lot more nimble and easy to deal with. Try it out.

The footage contained in your project can also eat up a lot of resources, especially if it is 4K H.264 or HEVC footage with variable frame rates, or is, say, 10-bit 4:2:2 footage. iPhone footage can have variable frame rates, so that's worth checking on. These Long GOP variants are potential system and project performance bottle necks, like jacking up your RAM usage. In that spirit, you jokingly said that you should not have to transcode to ProRes these days, but it's what I do recommend for optimal performance in large projects. ProRes proxies can also do well.

You can press any key at launch to access the Reset Options dialog box where you can troubleshoot by resetting preferences, deleting media cache, and booting without any plug-ins. Faulty media cache can sometimes cause issues that you described. Media cache issues can crop up after updating Premiere Pro. I always delete media cache and video preview files between versions. 

Let us know what occurs after trying these things. Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers,
Kevin