PPro CS5 GUI on mac really jerky

[parkerbri]

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.

[AtonMusic]

1st off, I only saw this thread after writing my own. Sorry.

However, this thread seem to be splitting into TWO very different directions.

1) Heavy Moving of Movie Regions

2) Jittery playback

I dont have jitter in my playback neither did OP (Original Poster).

However, I have huge trouble moving about a video-clip in the time line.

I have 32GB of correct RAM installed in my Mac which is blazingly fast and does not exhibit this odd behavior with any others app I have ever used.

If you have been using other applications where you have to move a region about in a timeline, you have come to expect that THAT region move according to your hand's movement on the mouse. Well, in PPRO, I feel like I have to drag the mouse a YARD for the region to move an inch.... Feels as if the app is applying superglue to the region to tease the user

Perhaps, the idea behind PPRO is to have the regions move like that... Only, that would NOT be up to standard. Standard being what 99.9% of all other apps including AfterEffects are conforming to. Imagine an image would move about like that in Photoshop when wanting to drag it about. Crazy.

PS - I am on OS X Snow Leopard (Latest Greatest) so I cant tell whether the Windows world is afflicted !

[jeremy d.]

Perhaps, the idea behind PPRO is to have the regions move like that...

Nope.

Aside from the slight grabbing done by Snap, moving clips around the timeline should be practically immediate.

[AtonMusic]

Hi Jeremy,

here, when snapping is turned on, the region goes all kind of places (Tries to snap) which is expected (By me at least)

however, when turning off snapping and just attempting to drag the region from i.e. left to right it feels like it wants to stick to the position where it was previous located. I work fast and scoot regions about all the time. 50% of time I drop the region where I 'thought' it would be in the correct location (Based on the graphical region-representation) but after letting go, the region will position itself differently.

At the moment I am resorting to alt+arrow-moving the region to get rid of this nuisance!!!

Jeremy, if you want to get the feel that would LOVE to be in PPRO then do this

1) Open AE

2) Create a new Comp

3) Create a new null and set in & outpoint so that it is shorter than the comp... (So that you can drag it about)

4) Drag it from left to right etc etc etc... and take note of that feeling.

Now, go into PPRO and start dragging. You will immediately feel that something is wrong (or better yet, NOT conforming to standard)

AE is conforming to a standard that I have come to know the past 10 working with either NLEs and DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) Pretty much, ANY app that has a timeline and regions to move about in it...

PS - Dont wanna coma across as if PPRO aint GREAT. It IS.... Perhaps, THE MOST intuitive NLE I have ever worked with. However, this little drag-thing is really a nuisance...

To OP...

THere a MANY ways of positioning a region in PPRO...

Grab a cup of cappuccino and take a close look at all the shortcuts available.

There is but ONE missing and I would call it 'Move Clip to PlayHead'

I would JUMP HOOPS to get that short cut. Basically, all it would do is to place a video clip's (already in the timeline) start or end point right at the playhead. That feature would save my life --- HEY... If I have MISSED it and it is already possible, PLEASE -- Make my day and tell me how

You can find one 'Move Playhead to Cursor' which is saving me hours per day.

You will have to assign your own key to it (Not pre-assigned) but what it will do is that where ever your mouse cursor is hovering it will place the playhead. and THAT get really fun if you keep the shortcut depressed. That enables Turbo-shuttling with the mouse as Jog. (Little off topic, sorry)

Anyway, the point is that in the keycommands there are stuff hidden that can change your workflow. I.e. Opt+LeftArrow will move the selected clip left in time. If you, like me, a lot times wanna drag the clip about 5 frames you are really getting frustrated by PPRO and mouse-dragging. Instead, select the clip and hit opt+Left Arrow 5 times OR opt+sht+LeftArrow to move the clip 5 frames left !

[Flexy]

Yes I am referring to the timeline lag. I don't have an issue with the

jittery playback. I notice the problem especially when moving a clip from an

upper layer to a lower layer - a time code tip appears then there is a hand

with a no entry sign over it making it impossible to drop the clip in the

correct place . This along with a long delay moving clips. This was

especially noticeable when I was working on a large project that was over an

hour long, but even in short projects the delay is very frustrating.

[lightprism]

Are you sure you sure you installed the exact correct memory when you increased the memory?

That was my problem - my early 2008 Intel 3,1 required 800Mhz memory but my IT guy supplied 32gig of 667Mhz memory. When I switched out the new 667Mhz memory back to my original 8gb of 800Mhz memory, my "jerky" playback went away. And with only 8gig of ram, I am able to do many tracks composited on top of each other all with varying effects in real time playback at full res. The timeline is very responsive as well.

Looking at the different Intel Macs from 3,1 onward, there are several different specs for ram at various Mhz ratings.

May be a long shot, but make sure the exact right ram is installed for your specific Mac - my error has cost me many hours of agony that is not over yet.

Another suggestion supplied by Kevin Monohan that set me on the track of solution is to boot from the Leopard Install Disc1 with the D key held down (not Snow Leopard). This starts up the Mac in a Hardware Test Application (it is explained on the disc in a text document). It will go thru your hardware starting at the memory and detect if there is a problem. Be sure you check off the "Extended" text box. This test, had I done it after the memory install, would have saved me tens of hours of searching in the wrong directions.

The other idea is to be sure you have all your codecs installed - when I did a clean install of Snow Leopard to get to 64 bit, I erased FCP and in doing so many of my codecs were deleted. I installed CCS5.5 and not FCP and many of these codecs were missing. When I then reinstalled FCP I got my missing codecs back.

Finally, there is an issue of needing the older Quicktime 7 variant versus the new Quicktime 10 for CS5.5 - maybe one of the Adobe folks could go into this explanation.

Good luck - I am really liking CS5.5 after I have gotten the machine right - coming off of FCP render hell. Just

[Flexy]

Thanks for this. I tried taking out all the RAM and just installed the RAM

supplied with the machine 8 gigs. This has made no difference. I tried

holding down the "D" key with the installs disk inserted but this did not

work maybe as I am on Snow Leopard. Will look into Quicktime latter. Many

thanks for your input.

[jeremy d.]

Someone should try dragging a clip onto the New Item icon and create a new sequence from that.

I would also like to know if matching Bars and Tone do the same thing.

What about the Optimaize Rendering settings in Prefs>Memory?

I am also curious to know if this is happening with 5.5 on a system where CS5 had been performing properly. (Maybe someone mentioned this particular situation already, but I missed it.)

[AtonMusic]

Jeremy,

another FEEL suggestion.

In PPRO

1) Click on the Playhead and start dragging it about in the timeline. No Lag, whatsoever...

Right after that, start dragging a region. You will instantly feel a lag or stickyness.

[jeremy d.]

I understand what your'e seeing, and I understand what you're expecting. There is no disconnect there. What I'm saying is, I and most other people are not having the same problems. I am seeing the same response time that I see in all of the other apps.

[AtonMusic]

Hi,

I just tried this "problem" on my laptop (OS X) = Same Thing!

Installed the trial on a third Mac (8Core Harpertown) all running Snow Leopard = Same issue

I went to a fellow video editor (around the corner) OS X = Same Thing

I Highly doubt that you and the other Mac users arent having these problems. Perhaps, this lag is normal to you.

And therefor goes un-noticed.

Either that or I have been highly unlucky installing this app on 3 Macs and so has my friend.

I am having no trouble besides that with PPRO. Superfast screen redraw etc etc etc.

[jeremy d.]

I am perplexed.

I'll keep looking, maybe someone around here is seeing the same thing.

[parkerbri]

If you have been using other applications where you have to move a region about in a timeline, you have come to expect that THAT region move according to your hand's movement on the mouse. Well, in PPRO, I feel like I have to drag the mouse a YARD for the region to move an inch.... Feels as if the app is applying superglue to the region to tease the user

Aton has very eloquently described the same issue that I have been trying to describe. And I can vouch that it isn't standard Premiere behavior. I have been using Premiere on both the mac and PC since before it joined the production suite, and have never seen such a laggy interface. I think that it started from cs4 on the mac. I havent used cs4 or cs5 on windows so I cant compare, but cs3 on windows is smooth as silk.

Source material or codec or sequence settings are entirely irrelevant. It is the underlying interface that is laggy. It's like with actionscript if you told a timer to update every 100 miliseconds instead of every 10 milliseconds; the animation that relies on that timer will appear to playback jerky. The realworld effect is of course as Aton described, you never know where the clip is going to land. Often (as he stated, over 50% of the time) the clip lands 5 frames either side of where you intended to put it, overwriting the clips that were there before. Turning off snapping doesnt fix the problem, because the problem isnt the snapping, it's the refresh rate of the timeline interface.

[AtonMusic]

buraihan wrote:

Turning off snapping doesnt fix the problem, because the problem isnt the snapping, it's the refresh rate of the timeline interface.

Funny thing is that if you grab the playhead and move that about (left to right / right to left) there is NO lag whatsoever.

So if this is a screen-redraw / refresh/rate issue then it ONLY applies when a clip-region has been grabbed !

[needles27-5wuo1M]

I'm also experiencing this very problem - 2009 (4,1) MacPro, 32GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4870.  This is my first time with PPro (Just switched from FCP) and it feels like I'm editing in Molasses - clips are ending up overwriting and flying away down the timeline, because I let go of the mouse and the clips are lagging behind from where I was targeting. I'm figuring this can't be right! My timeline so far has been H.264 footage from a 5D.  I am thinking about recording this behavior and posting to YouTube so people can see what we are talking about.  Would this be useful, at least to get a visual?

Thanks to everyone for lending a hand.

[hiphopsuperman]

Wow, I will be following this thread very closely. I'm a pc man but will be making the switch to mac in the coming months. This is the first time I have heard of such problems and it seems to be affecting many users.

Needles, I myself would love to see this problem in action if you are willing to do a screen capture.

[AtonMusic]

I have seen this exact behavior in two editing facilities, yesterday.

Funny thing is, that those operating PPRO, although peeved about the heaviness, did NOT consider it a BUG. Just a lousy implementation.

Seems as if no one has bother reporting too much about this issue. I mean, PPRO IS working and one CAN drag about regions - only, the way PPRO handles THIS doe NOT at all conform with ANY standards ever set by any app.

I SURE would like a fix for this !

[jeremy d.]

OK, I have a hunch.

If someone posts a video, I'll take a look.

[needles27-5wuo1M]

Here is a quick upload of some timeline dragging:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3EUtMrLVE8

Not sure this is the best example of what we are seeing, but it will give an idea.  I can post more examples if this doesn't give a clear enough demo.

Equipment:

MacPro 4,1 8 core, 2.93 with 32 GB RAM and the ATI Radeon HD 4870, RAID 0

I also have a Kona LHi card, but doesn't seem to matter if I'm using it or not.

So far, I've only tried editing with H.264 files. 

Thank you everyone for trying to figure this one out. 

[jeremy d.]

OK, well my hunch was wrong. That's some serious lag, which I am definitely not seeing on any of my machines.

Have we all exhausted the various combinations of hardware/drivers/QT versions in this thread yet?

[Flexy]

Yes that's what I am seeing although not quite as bad but My spec is:-

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro5,1

Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz

Number Of Processors: 2

Total Number Of Cores: 12

L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB

L3 Cache (per processor): 12 MB

Memory: 28 GB

Processor Interconnect Speed: 6.4 GT/s

Boot ROM Version: MP51.007F.B03

SMC Version (system): 1.39f11

SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f11

I think the ATI Radeon HD 5770 may be to blame but I'm sure I read a post

from someone saying that they put a Nvidea quadra 4000 in there Mac pro

which made difference. I also read that a lot of PC users or rather

unimpressed with Ppro performance so maybe not just a Mac issue....

H264 isn't a good codec to edit with but it should not effect the lag issue

[markjpoggi]

Hi,

We're using 2 brand new Mac Pro towers with 2.4GHZ Quad-Core Xeon processors and 8 GB of RAM with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card.  We have a brand new (just purchased) install of CS5 which is completely up-to-date.  We're using the latest version of OSX.  Yet, we have serious and significant lag when dragging clips on the timeline.  We took one of the towers into Apple and they tested the computer including the RAM and the video card.  Everything checked out as functional.  We're definitely looking for a solution.  These systems we're supposed to make our work faster not slower. 

Regards,
Mark

[Powered_by_Design]

That sure is some lag.

I noticed that you dragged you Timeline Indicator around and you said it was OK but if you look there is allot of lag on that too.

When I more mine around I have a hard time getting pointer ahead of the red line and yours will be offset allot each time.

Its much worse when dragging video around but its there with the timeline indicator too.

create a new sequence and without any footage.

Just create some test Bars and Tones and maybe a color matte and see how it works with just those on there.

This way we can take the video out of the picture and see how it works with that.

upload a sample with that so we can see the difference.

Im guessing there will be lag even with this simple stuff but its just a guess.

that lag sure would make it hard working.

Good luck:  Glenn

[jeremy d.]

Also, try it with the Program Monitor closed.

[Guest]

Sorry for the delay .. but I have been busy in other posts ...

The problem I had similar was with my Wacom Bluetooth Tablet. ( This was while using PP 5.0 .. I have not tried it yet in 5.5 )

It seemed that the Mouse Click was over-running the coordinate buffer.

I found it by trying to frame a clip in the program monitor by click-hold-dragging it to change the X Y "Motion" coordinates.

This was in a previous post ( Maybe Search Wacom? )

Someone recalled a older issue whereas Wacom fixed the tablet driver.

I contacted Wacom and they provided no support.

After that .. I ran into bigger problems .. so I never solved it .. except using a USB mouse, which seemed to fix it at the time. ( or I used the X Y sliders instead .. I don't remember )

Maybe I will check today if the same issue returned / or never left.

[parkerbri]

Well I have a wacom connected but i dont use it to control PPro. I use a usb mouse connected to the keyboard to do that. I'll try disconnecting the wacom once to see if it has any effect.