PPro CS5 GUI on mac really jerky

Report · Mar 22, 2011

Moving clips around on the timeline of CS5 on the mac is like playing Russian roullette; you never know where the clip is actually going to fall. It's like the interface has a refresh rate of 5fps or something. It seems to take forever for clips to snap against each other, and this lag causes the user to think something is wrong and then move the clips around more than necessary.

Please please tell me that this will be addressed in a point release. I don't want to have to pay to upgrade for a solution to a problem that should never have made it to a full release.

Report · Jul 02, 2011

Exactly the same problem here on my Mac Pro 12 core, but not on my Macbook Pro so it has something to do with individual machines. Seems silly that the top spec mac is less responsive than my 3 yr old macbook in the GUI.

Core 2 Duo 2.66 Macbook Pro with 4GB Ram

12 core 2.93Ghz Mac Pro, 16G Ram with CUDA enabled Nvidia Quadro 4000.

I was hoping CS5.5 might address this but after trying the demo it's still the same.

Paul.

Report · Jul 02, 2011

Paul .. Do you have the Master Suite 5.5 ?

I have a 12 Core 32 GB Mac.

I would like to share tips .. and help confirm possible bugs to .. now and in the future ..

Are you game?

Report · Jul 02, 2011

Pharther, up for troubleshooting but my Mac is at the office so only on it during the day.

Report · Jul 12, 2011

I'm having this same problem with CS 5.5.

Priorly I was using CS 5 on my Dell Precision and didn't have this problem at all. Only since I've switched to a Mac.

First off, due to employer demand, I had to switch over my 8 year long stretch of using a PC for Adobe products over to a new Mac Pro. I was adamantly against this but seeing as I don't run the place, I was overruled.

About a month ago the beast arrived. And as a note, I configured a way more powerful PC configuration for less than 1/2 price, but I digress.

The Mac Pro is 12 core (2 x 2.66ghz 6 Core Intel Xeon) with 32gb of RAM (Eight sticks of 4gb at 1333mhz) a NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac with the Mercury Engine enabled, the Apple Solid State 500gb drive for the main drive and three - 3 terrabyte Hitachi 7200 drives as individual disks.

I'm using OS 10.6.7.

I have all programs on the SSD.

I use a separate 3TB drive for my media.

I use a seperate 3TB drive for cache.

I use the third drive for previews.

And yet Premiere Pro CS 5.5 is laggy. There is literally a 1/2 second to full second lag when I am repositioning clips on the timeline. If I move too fast around the timeline the playback is jerky, laggy and unresponsive.

How can this be???? My old Dell Precision 6400 laptop was more responsive than this!

I'm not editing 4K or even 2K RED files. I'm editing DSLR Canon 5D 1080p footage.

What have I done wrong?

This ******* computer should be able to launch the space shuttle let alone edit HD-DSLR footage!

Please assist. After 4 weeks of this I literally am going insane.

I use the Mac Activity Monitor Utility and the processors don't even go above 15%. I haven't used Macs since 2003 so I'm certain the problem is my error, I just don't know how to find and fix it.

I'm assuming that the problem is coming from not having a RAID disk system for storing of media. If that is the case I would rather do an external RAID drive solution and if you have any recommendations it would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Dare

Report · Jul 12, 2011

I've been reading through the forums on this and decided to try and look over anything that's changed, or I might be doing wrong.

First I seperated out Media Cache, Media, Previews all onto seperate drives.

The next thing is that I was working on a project that was upconverted from PrPro CS 5.

I re-booted the computer and then opened up a new CS 5.5 project and I pulled a bunch of media into it via the Media Browswer and noticed an immediate speed increase in timeline shifting of clips. In fact I would go so far as to say that the problem is gone.

I then went back to my actual work project and again the timeline lagging showed up.I also have about 5 hours of footage in this project with more than 3,000 Canon H.264 clips not to mention about 1000 .wav audio files and maybe 30 or so dynamic linked sequences to After Effects. So the project is definitely heavy. And the problem immediately shows up once again.

I switched again to the new file. And played around some more. No problem.

I switched back to the old file and let the new media database load. Suddenly way faster. Huh? What what what?

I've had this problem for a month and it suddenly just vanished? The only thing I can nail it down to is switching the caches, previews and media to different drives.

Media playback is still laggy at times, but I'm willing to ascribe that to not having a RAID drive set-up. But for now the MASSIVELY FRUSTRATING OH MY GOD I WANT TO BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST THE DESK timeline lag seems to have dissappeared. I'll be editing for a few hours and see if it shows back up. For the moment I'm so happy I could cry... ok not really. But definitely relieved.

Best,

Dare

Report · Jul 13, 2011

It's interesting that moving your cache files seems to have made a difference. From what I can see when using the timeline there's no relationship between drive access and the laggyness at all. I use iStat which runs in the menu bar and shows detailed information about drive usage. All of my drives (2 x HD's and 2 SSD's) are idle when dragging the clips around.

I'm not sure if it's related but another aspect that seems to have similar performance issues is the display of thumbnails in the project window. On a large project I can wait up to a minute for 100 or so thumbnails to load up, during that time neither the drives or the CPU's are being taxed and there's plenty of memory available. I just wondered if the two might be related.

Report · Jul 13, 2011

Paul -

Paul Joy (UK) wrote:
I'm not sure if it's related but another aspect that seems to have similar performance issues is the display of thumbnails in the project window. On a large project I can wait up to a minute for 100 or so thumbnails to load up, during that time neither the drives or the CPU's are being taxed and there's plenty of memory available. I just wondered if the two might be related.

I have to say: this still sounds like a cache issue, and your cache is definitely a drive thing. Even if the drives aren't being taxed, there's something going on with the filesystem access through the Adobe software. Has to be...

jas

Report · Jul 13, 2011

I had another random thought (scary...). Is there any chance you can reformat your cache drive with a non-journaled version of the Mac OS Extended filesystem? I'm wondering if all the random reads/writes are overwhelming the journal on the filesystem somehow?

If you don't have an extra disk to throw at it, then don't bother. The test is destructive, of course.

jas

Report · Jul 13, 2011

Hi Jason.

Just to highlight how little the drives are being accessed I've created the following screencast. I also show how there's similar performance issues in loading video thumbnails in the project window. These may not be related issues but it's interesting that in both cases the macs resources are not working hard at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzbJ_CcHN4o

Paul

Report · Jul 12, 2011

So I think the problem is probably a combination of things, but the Wacom element definitely is a contributor. I just procured an Intuos 4 to try this out on the mac, and it seems to be pokey with the pen. I think the pen mode sends more mouse events than a mouse and floods the UI to be constantly redrawing.

For anyone with a Wacom, try this out as a test and let me know what you see: try opening the Wacom control panel and switch the pen into mouse mode, then try the test again. For me at least, it seems a lot more fluid in mouse mode.

(I haven't tried the tablet out on Win yet, that'll be next.)

Report · Jul 12, 2011

Footnote: for those experiencing the issue, I'd also like to know whether there's a 3rd party I/O card in the system, and if so, which one, what drivers, etc.

Report · Jul 13, 2011

I have SAID THIS TIME AND TIME AGAIN FOR MONTHS AND ADOBE AND WACOM DENY ANY PROBLEM!

I have had no recent reply from Wacom or Adobe upon such matters ... whereas I sent them these links.

A standard USB mouse solved my problems .. for the most part

Report · Jul 13, 2011

@Paul - I've posted a couple of specific questions for you at your blog.

Cheers

Report · Jul 13, 2011

Perhaps we should all chip in and purchase a Mac Pro for the Adobe Premiere Pro team.

That way they could experience what we're all talking about.

The responses from adobe in this thread at least suggests that they are not in possession of a Mac.

Hard to fathom considering the fact that PPRO 5.5 is Mac compatible.

Dont get me wrong... Even with this OVER-MAGNETIC timeline, ppro is still my baby and beats the living H outa FCP and FCPx, however since adobe are now trying to get a hold of all the FCPx users, I would strongly suggest that they fix this problem.

Imagine someone demoing PPRO 5.5 on a Mac... Having to deal with this WEIRD timeline that offers NO FEEL whatsoever... They would think twice about leaving FCPx.

One buddy of mine who is a LONG time FCP user freaked out as FCPx came out and had me show him PPRO. He loved it and downloaded the DEMO.

Next day, he called me and asked me about THIS very problem of the timeline being so insanely HEAVY to drag a clip around inside.

I said "That is just the way it is..."

"... and there is no hope of improvement since adobe engineers arent even able to tell that they have a problem"

He said " Wow" -- "Guess I am not going to jump ship just yet"

Without that clip-in-timeline-heavy-as-hell-to-drag-around problem, he would purchased the whole master suite in a second.

Adobe.... Please wake up and take this FINE piece of craft and make it even greater ;-)))))

Report · Jul 13, 2011

Perhaps we should all chip in and purchase a Mac Pro for the Adobe Premiere Pro team.
That way they could experience what we're all talking about.
The responses from adobe in this thread at least suggests that they are not in possession of a Mac.
Hard to fathom considering the fact that PPRO 5.5 is Mac compatible.

Perhaps you could read posts #80 and #81? Based on the quote above, you haven't read those yet. If you could provide the information requested in those posts, that would be helpful.

Thanks,

-Jeff

Report · Jul 13, 2011

Hi again,

This is the system I am running:

MacPro 4,1. Dual Quad Core Intel Xeon. 2.66GHz. 16GB DDR3 ECC 1066MHz RAM. OSX 10.6.8. NVidia GTX 285. AJA Kona LHi. Wacom intuos4 PTK-840.

All the latest drivers.

The following is a list of the different permutations and setups that I have been trying:

Having separate physical drives for project, preview, cache and media.

Uninstalling Wacom tablet and using a mouse.

Changing shared memory amounts in PPro.

While initially there might be some improvement, say when you are using a mouse, as you keep working with the project it gradually gets worse and back to its 'normal' lagging ways. I might add the initial improvement for me was not that great anyway. Noticeable, but not great.

Whichever way you want to cut it, PPro just does not perform the way it does (as far as timeline clip dragging goes) on a Windows machine or, I might add, the way FCP works and drags clips around on the exact same MacPro I am typing on now.

Report · Jul 13, 2011

Furthermore, I would just like to add. . .

I love Premiere Pro. I want to keep editing on it.

At our govt dept where I work we switched to Final Cut Pro for a couple of years, believing it to be the "industry standard" after using PPro since version 1.5 and while I did find that that FCP had more effects I just didn't like editing on it as much. Especially for longer form projects. Too many quirks that I could never get used to . . . and so after this FCPX debacle we decided to throw our lot back in with the Adobe suite, which was fine with me, only to now find this major problem while editing on a MacPro (we had windows XP machines before).

I really don't want to have to switch back over to Windows and we do not have the budget to buy 4 new PC's so if we could just fix this 'little' issue I'd be as happy as a pig in poo. . .

. . . Although the playback when using an AJA sequence with their Adobe utilities leaves something to be desired but that's not an issue for here . . .

Regs,

Alex

Report · Jul 13, 2011

AJ, Im just jumping in here to see if I can help at all. I see a lot of info about your system, but what I dont see in your last few postings is what you are playing your footage back from. Forgive me if you have already communicated this info. I know for all NLEs it is crucial to have a fast external raid array for playback of all media. My Maxx Digital when speed tested with AJAs utility rates at about 745 mps (megabytes per second). Slow playback can create a bottleneck just like not having enough ram and cause jerky playback.

And if this doesnt help, call up Adobe Tech support. They really helped me out, and maybe they can help you as well. ITS FREE! If you really love working with PrP, maximize your potential for problem solving your situation by getting some experts to assist you.

Report · Jul 13, 2011

Thanks lasvideo, please feel free to jump away.

Nearly all our stuff is SD XDCam MXF files. We have heaps of archive beta SP and SX stuff too though, as well as DVCam and miniDV. All our media is played off an Infortrend Eonstor A08S-C2132 raid 5 array that has 8 x 500GB drives in it.

You can see this problem though, just when dragging an internally generated black video file around on the timeline so I don't reckon it's much to do with the source media.

I still believe that caching has something to do with it though, just not sure how??

Report · Jul 13, 2011

I think it would be great for an Adobe employee, product manager, tech support, or engineer, to post a screen recording of them dragging clips around on the timeline. As many of the posters have mentioned, it seems to be an inherent problem with the Mac application, one that isn't present on the Windows platform. In fact, I've never actually seen any screen recording of Premiere Pro on the Mac where there dragging a clip wasn't laggy. I've even seen it a bit in the Premiere instructional videos on the Adobe site where there were done on a Mac. For me, as the project gets more complex, the problem gets worse, to the point where I have to be very slow with the mouse movements or the clip will not wind up where I want it. I think those of us Mac users working with PPro have developed a feel for it, kind of like a quarterback who throws to the spot where the receiver will be, not where he currently is, but honestly it's annoying.

For example, here's a clip from Walter Biscotti, a well known editor, who is just doing a screen recording to prove to himself that PPro can work for him instead of FCP 7. http://www.vimeo.com/25656933

If an Adobe rep can show any screen recording where this doesn't happen, then we can start trying to troubleshoot our individual situation and try to narrow down the problem, as seems to have been the approach until now, but actually I just think it's the way it works and Adobe hasn't seen the need to optimize until we brought it to their attention. Now that FCPX is out there are going to be a lot of 'switchers' trying out PPro this issue is going to come up more and more. With all it's faults, bugs, and instability, FCP is much, much more responsive than PPro on the Mac. It would be a 'home run' if Adobe could address this.

Report · Jul 14, 2011

@keith

This is a quick clip showing the procedure I went through doing the black video test on my 2010 12 core 2.93 Mac Pro.

Compare that to a similar test performed this morning using my Quad-core 2.66 Mac Pro from 2006

There is a huge improvement on the older machine so I can understand Adobe missing this until now. Hopefully we can keep the posts positive and work with the guys at Adobe to help them find the cause and correct it. I really appreciate that Adobe reps are involved both in this thread and over at my blog.

Report · Jul 14, 2011

Paul that is an amazing difference. Your last video above is the response I see on my old PC with CS4 and 4GB RAM on Windows XP. I have got nowhere near that level of response on any of my different setups on my MacPro.

Seriously, the best I get is the response your video above your last one is showing.

Report · Jul 14, 2011

Exactly. It's very tempting to edit on the five year old machine but the newer one does everything else a lot faster. There's something going on with the newer Macs that's causing the lag, I would imagine it must be something quite complex if the CPU, Graphics or memory architecture are to blame but hopefully the Adobe chaps can look into it.

Report · Jul 14, 2011

Paul -

Paul Joy (UK) wrote:
There is a huge improvement on the older machine so I can understand Adobe missing this until now. Hopefully we can keep the posts positive and work with the guys at Adobe to help them find the cause and correct it. I really appreciate that Adobe reps are involved both in this thread and over at my blog.

For what little it may be worth, I've done the exact same test on my 2008 Mac Pro 3,1, which is an 8-core 3.2GHz machine w/10G of RAM. Not a beast by any stretch at all. I see the exact same thing your second video shows: no lag. I'm using no RAID, hardware or software. Just the system disk where the application sits, and a second disk that I do all my work on. Also: it still has the OEM nVidia 8800 GT video card in it, which is, by today's standards, nothing special.

jas

Report · Jul 14, 2011

That's interesting Jason.

The Mac Pro I used (with no lag) is a 1,1 model. Your, 3,1 model is also fine.

The issue has been reported on both 4,1 and 5,1 Mac Pro's so maybe it's limited to those models?

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PPro CS5 GUI on mac really jerky