New Premiere Pro Still "Not Responding" During h.264 Imports

[jasonvp]

Hey folks -

There are a number of threads about this same topic as it relates to previous version of Premiere.  With today's release and the improved h.265/h.265 handling, I was hoping it would be alleviated.  It hasn't.  It may have been improved a teeny bit, but it's still an issue.

Problem: Importing a 5.5 - 6GB h.264 file (4K/59.94 FPS) causes Premiere to go "Not Responding".  The import dialog box stays up, the status bar doesn't move, and both the dialog box and Premiere's title bar say "Not Responding".  While this is happening, one core of my OC'd 7900X goes right to 100%.  Another core is around 50-70%, and the rest are at or near idle. 

This lasts for approximately 1 minute and 20 seconds per file imported, give or take.  I can't do a single thing with Premiere while the import is happening; I have to just sit and wait for it to respond to the operating system again.

Once the file is installed, I have another lag associated with putting it on the timeline.  Putting that large file on the time line does NOT cause Premiere to go unresponsive.  But I can't do anything with the timeline until... something finishes.  I'm not sure what Premiere is doing, but it again sends a core (or two) to 100% while I wait.  This one lasts for far longer than 1:20; sometimes it's four to five minutes.

Yes: I know h.264 files are highly compressed.

Yes: I know that using a transcoded (and significantly larger!) file format would potentially smooth things out.

No: I don't want to, nor should need to transcode.  I didn't need to worry about this previously.

The system specs are here:  https://www.jasonvanpatten.com/gaming-rig/   

Storage is set up as:

• HDD mirror - media pool/imports
• SSD mirror - project files
• M.2 drive - scratch space
• NVMe (sys drive) - export drive

It doesn't matter where I put the import media.  I can even put it on the super-fast NVMe drive and it makes no difference at all.  I've run the new System Compat Report in Premiere and: nothing found.  I'm kinda at a loss here.  This didn't used to be a problem with Premiere.  I'm still suspecting that there's some poisonous interraction between Premiere a fully-patched Windows 10 OS, but that's just a hunch.

[R Neil Haugen]

Please post all this on their UserVoice system. That goes directly to the engineers and they want this sort of data in detail.

I spent some time here at Adobe MAX yesterday with Program Manager Patrick Palmer and the newish stability/performance head engineer Ivo.

He wants this information anytime any user has such an issue.

Neil

[jasonvp]

I've already done it Neil; I did that last week or so and it's received basically no views.  While I understand the goal of the UserVoice system, I think there's way too much going on there for Adobe to pick everything up.

[R Neil Haugen]

Easy misunderstanding of their system. EVERY filing on UserVoice gets looked at by engineers. If they want additional details they will post replies.

But their accessing the post doesn't show from the user end ... because it isn't accessed internally by the forum. It's gone directly into their incoming issues que.

Neil

[jasonvp]

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/38955043-bug-premiere-pro-2...

Second filing on the problem.

[R Neil Haugen]

Anyone else experiencing this, please go to the link to the UserVoice report by Jason and post your own details.

Neil

[Kevin-Monahan]

Jason,

This appears to be a known issue with very large files.

I'm going to try and press for a fix here.  If you want to appeal to the fastest growing segment of video editors and potential users of our tools, you need to optimize your software to handle Long GOP Variable Rrame Rate streams of various lengths, including those files that are very large. 

Kevin

[jasonvp]

Thanks Kevin, I appreciate the help.

[nich0]

when can we expect a fix?

stupid me deleted 13.1.x so i cannot rollback to 13.1.3

[jasonvp]

Update on this:  Thanks to Kevin, Adobe's L2 tech support folks contacted me directly this morning and pulled some debugging info from my PC along with an example file that trips Premiere up.  They were clearly able to see Premiere going "Not Responding" while trying it on my machine (screen sharing).  Let's see if they can repro it in-house.

[jasonvp]

Another update on this: the crew at Adobe's Teir 2 have reproduced the issue.  So I'm glad to know I'm not crazy.  Or... at least... not as it pertains to this topic. 😄

Way too early to know about an ETA to a fix/patch/etc, of course.  But we got past the first step which is Adobe reproducing it.  Cool.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey Jason,

Oh, glad they finally got to you. Let me go "pile on" to this bug....adding customer comments, forum threads helps amp it up. First, I gotta find it! 🙂

1967 Datsun 411 Bluebird SSSBTW, got the Datsun running again....

Kevin

[jasonvp]

Awesome, glad to see the Datsun is functioning properly. 🙂

As time permits (I do have a day job, of course) I'll find related threads and DM them to you.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Had to rebuild my existing starter as starters for this particular model, are rarer than hen's teeth!

I tracked down the bug and it appears that the customer name indicated is yours on the bug. Cool. Looks like Yash contacted you. He's a good T2. 

Thanks for your help in gaining traction for this bug. I really, really, hope we can get a fix in for you. For those of us in support: (Caroline, Colin, Rameez, Sumeet, Shivangi and the rest of the crew) we are pushing very hard on this specific problem. We have grown our concerns as we are the ones aware of how large the gaming and streaming community has grown.

Looking forward to your PMs. They can be from anywhere too, like Reddit, etc., not only here.

[jasonvp]

I don't imagine it's easy to get parts for that model, no.  I'm glad you have the patience to do a rebuild like that.  I suspect I'd just assemble interesting combinations of my favorite 4-letter words and announce them all for my neighbors to hear.  🙂

I'm glad to hear that the processes are moving internally.  My correspondence with the support folks was quite pleasant and useful, and it's good to know they got all the stuff they needed from me/my PC/etc.  I'm happy to help as and where I can.  And it's definitely a positive to see acceptance of the gaming/streaming/YouTube profession.  Many still may not believe it's an actual profession, but a lot of those guys (and gals) make way more money per day than most of us might in a year.  Which is silly, but, a reality.  That, by definition, makes them professionals.

The first good step in this direction was the work we did a year or two ago getting VFR videos in Pr.  While VFR is poop for the most part, it's just "a thing" in this world.  And with Premiere now able to work with them (and I had some small contribution to that... ;-)) that's a good thing.

You should have a small collection of PMs already waiting for you.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Weeding through them now. Digging out. Digging out.

The starter got rebuilt by my buddy, Datsun Mike. It takes a village with a car like that. It's fun to push the limits and do stupid things like drive it to AZ and back.

I am sending you another PM. I hope we can get this fixed soon.

Cheers,
Kevin

[R Neil Haugen]

You got that thing running ... again?

Ha. You know, I actually saw a Datsun 240Z go by a couple weeks past, in pretty good shape. Those were amazing cars when I was in college, incredibly cheap for the sports-handling performance and 'cool' factor look.

But ... unfortunately ... not a lot of good-quality metal involved, and most didn't last long. But ... they are pretty darn cool!

This old thing of yours ... that would be a kick to see it go by.

Neil

[Kevin-Monahan]

Somewhere in the Arizona desertYes, the Bluebird flies again. Thanks to Datsun Mike, ZCG Rob, and the Southwest/LA 411 Crew.

Really working hard to squash bugs. Thanks for your assistance, as always.

Cheers,
Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Super rare RHD Bluebird SSS 2-doorBTW, I also had a 240Z in college. I beat the hell out of it. I was actually looking for one when I came across this ugly duckling. I drove a white Bluebird 411 in high school and J.C. I will get a 240Z some day. I better hurry up as the price of these cars is now through the roof, and for just the reasons you mentioned. Unfortunately, "the kids" want to drop LS motors in 'em. Sacrilege for purists like myself.

[jasonvp]

Glad you had a great Christmas trip and your Datsun is up and running again.  Here's what I was doing during my Christmas break: getting this monster integrated into my work space. 🙂

[jasonvp]

I just got a new 2019 Mac Pro and migrated all of my editing to it, away from my PC.  Sure enough, the long-GOP lag problem exists on the Mac version of Pr as well.  The same thing happens: Pr goes "not responding" while it's first importing an h.264 file it hasn't seen.  As soon as it finishes inhaling the file, all is well.

[R Neil Haugen]

Jason,

Thanks for posting info here. Your testing is always so clean and controlled ... and has enough details to understand what you're talking about. Solid.

I routinely work with a number of colorits and 'hang' on LGG and a couple other places. The new Mac is intriguing, as like any of these tools, there's quite a number of options as to what to get. And they all have implications that aren't necessarily obvious going in. Fascinating discussions, but in general a pretty good machine. Some frustrations I've heard to do with

Apple banning Nvidia in toto of course, as some folks still could use Nvidia for certain apps better than AMD. Ah well.

Neil

[jasonvp]

Neil -

Thanks for the kind comments.  I'm more than happy to help as much as time allows of course; seeing as how this isn't my day job, as it were.  Heh.  But, long 2-week vacations give us time to play around.  🙂

This new Mac is a monster, and I've made it even more so from a storage perspective, which I'll get to.  The AMD Vega II GPU is an excellent GPU for work-horse stuff, assuming your software supports it.  Apple's FCPX does, wonderfully.  Pr doesn't seem to have a problem with it either.  32GB of RAM that I quickly upgraded to 96GB at a fraction of Apple's cost.  16-core Xeon humming along under the covers.  And the 1TB hardware RAID0 system drive that... is sorta slow.  Heh.  I can get maybe 3GB/sec throughput out of it according to the BlackMagic disk test.

I call that "slow" with a chuckle because I added two x16 PCI-E cards from HighPoint to the Mac.  Each has 4 2TB Samsung NVMe drives on it.  Both cards are working together in a hardware RAID01 setup, and I can get ~10GB/sec(!!) throughput on reads, and a little less on writes (since it's doing 2 copies).

Yeah... that should be fast enough to edit... anything.  😉

It does suck that Apple and NVidia had their falling out.  And I don't ever expect that to be patched up given the respective companies' stubbornness.  Both are at fault, and neither is willing to say, "Sorry, let's kiss and make up."