MXF Sony XAVC-I Playback Problem

[Robert Cherouny Visuals]

4K MXF XAVC-I files shot on my Sony FX-9 are basically impossible to edit on my new MacBook Pro. I have a 4 month old MacBook Pro M1 Pro Max, 32GB Ram (28 GB allotted to Premiere Pro and never run other programs while editing to be safe anyway), 2 TB internal SSD drive. Have a Benq 27" 4K monitor hooked up to HDMI out from laptop.  All media and project files are on 4 TB Sandisk Extreme Pro USB C SSD drive (not even close to 1/4 full). Almost Nothing else on the machine. 4K MXF footage shot on Sony FX-9 is totally unplayable and uneditable once tossed into a timeline and then totally slow to even retrieve media for playback in preview window. Error Retrieving Frame messages everywhere on timeline playback. Usually edit 4K in 1920x1080 timeline and set 4k footage to frame size to allow punching in. Same problem whether or not footage is set to frame size or left at full 4k raster. Tried all kinds of fixes - turning off GPU acceleration, changing playback resolution (tried full, and 1/2), etc...Running on PP 22.5 and watching for every update.  My footage is copied to my edit drive using Sony's Catalyst Browse, which preserves the camera file structure. I have no idea what to try next. My late 2014 MBP worked way better than this trainwreck!!! Adobe, please help!!!

[Andy 1968]

Some variations of XAVC (H.264) are very hard to playback without Quick Sync or Nvnenc. On the PC side many people are experiencing performance issues. When switching to 1/2 and 1/4 resolution the CPU and GPU usage do not scale like they used. I posted a video link below of my computer's poor performance. 

[Robert Cherouny Visuals]

Thanks for your reply. I watched your video link. I'm not sure this all exactly the same issue, but maybe related. Since the M1 Mack doesn't use Intel hardware, I doubt the options you mentioned will work here. Hoping someone from Adobe is monitoring this thread and will offer help, or someone else who has insight into how the new M1 machines are working with 4K MXF Sony XAVC files...

[R Neil Haugen]

Your media is long-GOP, and 4k to boot. Really hard on the hardware unless you've got the right bits. And yes, some of the Intel chips (but not all) do a lot better than other CPUs at this.

Maybe @Warren Heaton could pop in, I think he's got more knowledge on the newer Macs than I do.

Neil

[Robert Cherouny Visuals]

Thanks, Warren. I know long GOP 4K can tax a system, but this is nuts. And, actually, on the FX-9 and other Sony pro cams, XAVC has a variety of flavors, including XAVC-I (which is an all Intraframe flavor and should be easier to edit) and XAVC-L (Long-GOP). I'm experiencing the same problem with both flavors, and I'm actually editing something else right now that is only 1920x1080, and still a bit laggy and getting the same "Error Retrieving Frame" issues with some of the cuts that are in a simple 3-cam multi-camera timeline. Crazy...I just unininstalled and re-installed PP, too. No help...

[Robert Cherouny Visuals]

Although, to you point, I would add, that for the moment, it looks like the situation appears to be worse with the Long-GOP stuff...I haven't done a apples to apples comparison yet though on that

[Andy 1968]

The M1 chips do have something similar to Quick Sync and Nvenc. Keep in mind FCPX Supports more variations of H.264/265 than Premiere Pro.