PPro CS5 GUI on mac really jerky

[yuki.P]

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.

[jasonvp]

Paul Joy (UK) wrote:

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?

Could very well be limited to the new Nehalem/Westmere architecture in the Macs, given how completely different it is from the previous Xeon family.  I guess we'd have to come across a counter-example of a 3,1 or prior Mac Pro having the same issue to disprove that theory.

I'm infinitely curious to see if the new OS that Apple's about to release makes any difference for you or anyone else that's having the problem.  I realize that upgrading a production machine is probably a non-starter for a lot of folks in industry.  I'll be upgrading mine the moment Apple releases it.  I'd recommend someone set aside a Mac they're having trouble with, upgrade to Lion when it comes out, and try again.  It may make a difference, it may be a complete waste of time.  Since I can't reproduce the problem with my older hardware, my upgrading to Lion won't much help this.

jas

[needles27]

A shot in the dark - I am based in San Francisco, and I wonder if the Adobe employees monitoring this thread would be available or interested for me to bring my machine in and see this problem firsthand, and possibly do some troubleshooting for the benefit of everyone.  

[Paul_Joy__UK_]

That would be great although I'd be really surprised if a company the size of Adobe only has a four year old mac sitting in the corner to test their very expensive suites of software on. Maybe my vision of a special apple test room with white glass walls jam packed with every incarnation of the mac ever made may be a little overkill, but I'm sure they must have access to a mac that's less then two years old.

If it is just the one grubby iMac from 1998 sitting in the corner that nobody wants to sit in then please invite needles

[Butch2oc]

Hi all,

Just to let you know that since I originally posted this issue (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/785985) I had a few people respond with similar problems.

I went down the "Adobe Support Road" with Americas T2, I managed to get them to recreate issue and they have come back to me

saying that it's a bug and my lengthy customer support portal has been labeled withdrawn.

Don't know if anyone can access it but the case number is 0182049590.

I have received a message from Keith requesting me to provide any feedback I may have on offer... so...

It's good to hear other people are now raising this issue because I hate it, you need a monitor with a res higher that 1920x1080

to get around it by using the fill to screen mode. I am sick of cutting and pasting (as this is much faster than grabbing instances and moving them).

Just in case some of you don't know... if you have a monitor that can give a display res of 2048 x 1152 you will get some joy out of your box.

If you display your timeline in a window at full screen then the instances turn grey (i.e. do not show clip name etc) and can move around very quickly.

I still believe it is purley a display resolution thing... Adobe knows about it.

I was asked by adobe to upgrade to 5.5 to see if this fixed the issue, I suggested they did this to the system they had replicating the problem. I have not heard back but I now have 5.5 and will upgrade my system soon (when not so busy) and let you know.

I would also like to ad that I have found installing adobe clean is the way to go and not upgrading on top of the previous version as this avoids other issues.

When I rebuilt previously I produced a clone with just the OS + mail & net settings etc.

I then added adobe ONLY and produced another clone.

I then added all other software/plugins etc and produced another clone.

All great for finding faults quickly and for doing clean installs when needed.

I really hope adobe gets onto this because they are going to get a lot more macs using adobe now that final cut has lowered it's guard, it would be a shame

for people to be turned off adobe because of 1 bug/fault/??????.

Maybe if ALL (not just a few) of us put in a bug report again this issue may get looked at with a little more intent.

Are we in?

[lasvideo]

I dont have any of the display issues mentioned, but the monitor resolution issue caused me to check out my 2  27" HD Cinema displays (Mac).

They are displaying  at only 1920 by 1200 which is the biggest option.

Here are the details of the system which may explain why Im not having issues with this monitor resolution...or not

Im on a
Mac Pro 3.1
Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3.2 GHz
OSX 10.6.7
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital Raid array clocked at 745 mps.& Areca controller
ATI 3870 Graphics card.
USB wired mouse
No blue tooth anything

No lag with h.264 (but I do drop resolution to 1/2 resolution for real time playback)
No lag with full format red R3D files  (also drop playback  to 1/4 resolution for real time playback)
All other formats (Prores, P2, AVCHD, DVCPro HD, etc) playback fine at full resolution

Not sure if this is helpful ,but I thought I would share.

[Keith Moreau]

Thanks Butch2oc for reporting this. For me the lag problem is identical with Pro 5. and 5.5. So I don't think you'll see a difference. So it too how long to have Adobe admit and repro the problem, haven't you been dealing with this since last year? Wow. What display do you have?

Not to hijack the thread, but what issues have you seen with having 5.0 and 5.5 on the same machine, because I want to have both at the same time and I haven't noticed anything bad having both.

[Butch2oc]

I have a display that can only go as high as 1920 x 1080 (BenQ Monitors) the monitors that give rapid performance are old Dells that can give a max res of 2048 x 1152. When we swap monitors (even just one of them) the poor response follows with the monitor that can only go to 1920 x 1080. The only way I can get good (not rapid) performance with the 1920 x 1080 monitors is to reduce timeline size dramatically, but all of you are on to that from my previous posts.

The support portal service was good as far as response time but sometimes they kept asking me to do the same thing, it was like they never read my responses... anyway... maybe all with this issue should bombard adobe with bug reports.

ps thanks for the info re 5.5, I won't be rushing then.

Cheers

[LFedit]

It looks like something to do with the architecture of the new mac pros, as we have multiple reports of Macpro3.1 systems not being plagued with this slow GUI.  Having edited on both a 3.1 and 4.1 system, the 3.1 system without CUDA is SO much easier to edit H.264 material than the 4.1 system with a Nvidia 4000 card. Hopefully this can help adobe find a solution.  Also, I just got a support case opened and will update anything that comes of that.

[Cutwithray]

Todd,

Have you guys at Adobe been able to isolate the problem yet? Please keep us posted?

Ray

[yuki.P]

My 3,1 MAc Pro has the problem pretty bad so I dont think it is related to the generation of the device.

[needles27]

The issue seems to be fixed for me (Finally!) - and the only thing I can think that changed is upgrading my system to Lion.  Has anyone else done the upgrade to Lion and either seen this issue resolved, or is still seeing it occur? 

It may be another reason for the fix, but Lion is the only major change I can think of that I made to my system.  I will continue to test to see if it happens again in other timelines/codecs/etc, but for now things are great.

[Cutwithray]

Thats encouraging news. We havent heard anything from Adobe on this issue since Jul 27, 2011. Todd any new developments on this problem? If Lion is the answer and all the apps from the Production Premium are now compatible then I would say Lion might be the answer. I would really like to get a patch for this if possible.

Ray

[Keith Moreau]

Hi Paul

Thanks for posting the evidence that the problem isn't necessarily endemic to all Macs. This is a great clue for Adobe. However, We have to categorize that the problem will still occur in the  MacPro3.,1 model as well, which is the one I have and have been using. The configuration is similar to Jason Van Patten's, Mac Pro early 2008, with 24GB RAM, nVidia Quadro 4000 Mac card, SSD startup drive, multiple eSata RAID media and cache drives. The problem also occurs with my very new MacBook Pro 2011.

Architecturally, your 2006 Mac Pro is the most different than the 2008 and later macs, though, it being one of the first Intel based Macs, and does have a different memory architecture, as well as many other big differences with newer Macs.

I have yet to completely remove 3rd party stuff. Interestingly I do have a Wacom tablet connect, but having put it into "Mouse Mode" it made no difference. I also just upgraded to 10.6.8, installed the new nVidia drivers that were required for 10.6.8, but the lag is still there. Everything else on my Mac seems a bit snapper with 10.6.8 and new Nvidia drives, but the laggy timeline is still present.

The fact that Jason does have the problem with his Mac Pro 2008 (which is the same as mine) is encouraging to me. When I have time, I'm going to create a separate boot drive with a basic Mac OS system + PPro to see what happens.

[Paul_Joy__UK_]

Thanks Keith, I guess that's the end of the theory that it may be related to the mac architecture then. It's useful to know you both have the same model of mac with differing results though, might be useful for further investigation.

[jasonvp]

Paul Joy (UK) wrote:

Thanks Keith, I guess that's the end of the theory that it may be related to the mac architecture then. It's useful to know you both have the same model of mac with differing results though, might be useful for further investigation.

If it's any help, the complete system is:

Mac Pro 3,1 with 2x3.2GHz Harpertown Xeons - 8 cores in total

10G RAM

OEM 340G system disk (OS, apps)

second Seagate 750G SATA disk (user home directories, work space)

OEM nVidia 8800GT video card

2xDell 24" widescreen LCD panels

Microsoft ergo USB keyboard

Logitech wireless USB mouse

And that's it.  No external storage, no RAID, nothing of the sort.  It's currently running 10.6.8 and as I mentioned previously will be bumped to Lion as soon as it's available.

jas

[jasonvp]

Keith -

Keith Moreau wrote:

I have yet to completely remove 3rd party stuff. Interestingly I do have a Wacom tablet connect, but having put it into "Mouse Mode" it made no difference.

Here's an experiment you can try prior to nuking your system from orbit:  remove the Wacom tablet drivers completely from your OS, and disconnect the device from your Mac.  Pop a generic USB wired/wireless mouse on and try again.  See if the laggyness persists...

jas

[Paul_Joy__UK_]

Jason, just out of interest when you had the laggyness with the wacom installed was it just the clips that lagged while the cursor still responded as normal, or was the actual cursor slow to respond as well.

Just trying out figure out if there might be two different problems there.

[jasonvp]

Paul Joy (UK) wrote:

Jason, just out of interest when you had the laggyness with the wacom installed was it just the clips that lagged while the cursor still responded as normal, or was the actual cursor slow to respond as well.

Wrong guy.  I've never had the laggyness or the Wacom installed.  I'm just following a sub-trend in these discussions regarding the Wacom, and seeing that as one of the potential influencing differences between my 3,1 Mac Pro and Keith's.  So it was just a shot-in-the-dark suggestion is all.

Sorry if I confused anyone.

jas

[Keith Moreau]

I may give it a try, first I'm going to try other stuff. I have a special 'clean' external drive I use with a very 'clean' OS X and apps.

However, it seems the Wacom, though it may have an effect for some, for others, since they don't have a tablet, may not be the issue. However I wouldn't rule out that there might be some 'mouse-related' USB stuff going on. I actually have USB Overdrive kernel extension installed on most of my Macs in order to help customize a multi-button mouse with a scroll wheel, helps tremendously with video editing, using the scroll button when depressed, for example, to zoom in and out around the playhead.

I think the main issue here is though that FCP and other apps don't experience laggyness on the PPro affected systems. There is something specific in PPro that is sensitive to something that other apps aren't. I really do think that once Adobe engineering can get several Macs with PPro on them and just try the simple "black video drag around timeline test," they'll find at least one with the problem and be able to fix it. It seems really, really common, obviously, like it's the norm, and responsive behavior is the exception.

[Paul_Joy__UK_]

Sorry for the confusion Jason.

A moment ago I thought I'd solved it. I swapped my Quadro 4000 out for the ATI 4870 that's in my Mac Pro 1,1 and immediately the Mac booted and I did the black video test things were really snappy, easily as fast as the older mac. Keen to report this I swapped the cards back, booted back up and went to Premiere expecting to see the lag again and it was still snappy.

There's obviously something happening over time here, I'm not sure if you guys also see an improvement after a reboot but I think the only way I'm going to be sure is to run the mac with the ATI card for a while and see if it slows down.

[Wil Renczes]

My mac tower is pretty much brand new, as my previous one died recently.

  Model Name: Mac Pro

  Model Identifier: MacPro5,1

  Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon

  Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz

  Number Of Processors: 2

  Total Number Of Cores: 12

That's with an ATI 5770, with 6 Gigs of RAM at the moment, running on 10.6.7.  And, again, I'm not seeing lag like the original post, my drag response time looks like Paul's video #4.

Ironically, I was about to swap in a Quadro to see if that would make a difference here.

[Keith Moreau]

I just swapped out my Quadro 4000 for my original ATI, launched PPro 5.5, still had laggy behavior. Swapped back the Quadro 4000, still laggy.

Tried using Cocktail, which I do often when PPro gets laggy, as it does when I work on it for a time, and delete caches. Rebooted, this sped up the lagginess a bit but it's not gone and nowhere near Paul's 'no-lag' video.

[SAVP Edit 1]

Just as another example, here is my lag. This is normal but can get worse the larger the project.

http://youtu.be/EPYTYCZbVaM

[Cutwithray]

That video is the same as my rig. It doesn't matter what type of project or footage type. I have spared no expense on my rig and invested a large amount of dollars to have the best user experience. Comparing the MAC to the PC, the PC seems to be very very snappy and the MAC currently is not. I need Final Cut as well as Premiere so I cannot switch over to the PC (nor would I want too)

I keep going back to the 12 Core and the ram configuration or the Quadro 4000. I have no tablet to interfere.

Ray

[Paul_Joy__UK_]

I think it's interesting that we still haven't had a single Mac user on an up to date system saying that they don't have this issue. That's the nature of support forums I guess but after nearly 2000 views I'm starting to wonder if it's actually the same for everybody.

If you're reading this and you don't have a laggy timeline please chime in, it would be a big help.