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Participating Frequently
December 18, 2021
Question

Performance Issues with Premiere Pro on MacBook Pro with Apple M1 Max

  • December 18, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 5767 views

I just bought the new Apple 16" Macbook Pro with M1 Max chip.   Supposedly this thing is a beast!

 

But I think I must have something misconfigured, because it won't even play one of my GoPro 5K videos without jumping and stuttering in Premiere Pro (I'm just viewing the video in the source window, so havne't even applied any effects, scaling etc.  and it is STILL jumpy.

 

It's a clean install.  Premiere Pro is v 22.11

Mac is running V12.01 OS, Apple M1 Max chip and 64GB memory.  Running off internal SD drive which is super fast.

 

What can be causing this?  Any ideas?

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1 reply

Jeff Bugbee
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 18, 2021

this certainly shouldn't be happening. Can you show the specs of this file? Preferably using Mediainfo in treeview.

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download/Mac_OS

 

Participating Frequently
December 27, 2021

Hey Jeff

 

Thanks for your reply. I have attached two different file specs,  one is the original gopro file, and the other is a GoPro file that I transcoded into ProRes 422.

 

I was expecting that the M1 Max Pro would be able to smash through a HEVC GoPro file.

 

And when I transcoded the GoPro file into ProRes, it played nicely when scrubbing etc.  But as soon as I applied a colour grading effect, I could see it start to get choppy in just regular playback.  THIS REALLY surprised me because I thought the processor was optimised for ProRes. 

That is why I'm wondering if there is some other setting not right.

 

Thanks in advance.

Participating Frequently
December 27, 2021

Checked both of those settings... they are the same as your screenshot.  I unchecked the preference to "enable hardware accelerated decoding" and restarted but no noticeable difference.

 

On the Project settings, I had no option to change the value that is in there (Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration Metal).

 

Perhaps my expectations were too high?  I thought with this chip I'd be able to at least play back fluidly even when applying some pretty standard effects (colour grade, sharpening etc.)

 

I noticed one particular effect that seems to make the clip judder a lot is when I apply a Sharpen effect and use an elliptical mask with a feather on it (to focus the sharpening more towards the centre).   This effect seems to cause a lot of dropped frames on playback.