Premiere 24.0 Playback lags for 5+ seconds after hitting play

[MacStudioM1Ultra]

I'm on Mac Studio M1 Ultra, Sequoia 15.4.1, Premiere Pro 24.0.  Have been working on a feature for the past few months, but have started noticing on my assembly timeline playback is horrible -- when I hit play it routinely takes 5+ seconds before actually playing, then stutters when it plays.  Most of the timeline is rendered and it makes no difference if I change the playback quality.  I have tried deleting cache files and resetting workspaces.  It's really really killing me.  Have anyone solved this?

[Peru Bob]

Check the Audio Hardware Preferences. Default Audio Input should be set to No Input.

[MacStudioM1Ultra]

I did that just now but didn't seem to make a difference.

[Peru Bob]

Try resetting the preferences:
https://helpx.adobe.com/in/premiere-pro/using/reset-preferences.html

If that doesn't work, try creating a new project and import the old one into it.

[MacStudioM1Ultra]

only thing that got me decent playback was breaking an 83 minute film into 5 separate reels.  One of the reels still has lag in it and its the one with the most WARP STABILIZERS, so I'm theorizing that this is creating a problem.  But I haven't had time to prove this theory quite yet.

[PaulMurphy · Accepted solution]

Breaking a feature-length project into reels is essential for smoother performance and more manageable timelines.

If you're not already using Productions, I highly recommend converting your single project into a Production. This allows you to assign each reel to its own project, which improves stability and performance—especially for longer edits.

Warp Stabilizer can significantly increase project size and slow things down. To avoid this, consider applying stabilization in a separate project (within the Production), then use Clip > Render and Replace with Include Effects checked. After that, bring the rendered clip into your editing project. If you ever need to revert to the original, use Clip > Restore Unrendered.