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

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
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?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Jeff Bugbee

Community Expert

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

B

Brentbat123Author

Participating Frequently

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.

Jeff Bugbee

Community Expert

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.

The H.265 file will not play back well regardless. H265 is not an editing codec, M1 chip or not.

The ProRes file should give you better performance, which it sounds like it is. But after applying effects, performance goes down. Again, this is expected on a 5K video file with a bit rate of 2Gb/s (!!!). Like the other Jeff said, you would benefit greatly from a Proxy workflow. Remember, the M1 chip is not an end-all solution that'll just chew through anything you throw at it. There are still restrictions.

Another question is are you running the M1 optimized version of Premiere or using the Intel version through Rosetta?

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