Premiere Pro 2020 Choppy / Stuttering Playback in Program Monitor ONLY

[NATHAN - SHOTCUT]

First off, i'm using a Mac Mini (2018) running Mojave.... 3.2 GHz Intel Core i7 w/ 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4 Memory and a Radeon RX Vega 64 8 GB which is running through a Razor Core X.

I've never had any issues editing or playing back footage using Premiere Pro 2019. Occasionally if playing back 6K footage i've had to knock the plaback quality down to 1/2, however this computer runs like a breeze.

I've upgraded to PP2020 and since updating I'm experiencing choppy playback when playing back the timeline. No effects. No changes to footage. Doesn't mattter if I playback at 1/8, 1/4 or 1/2....it stutters.

If I simply preview the clip from the project in the source monitor (not off the timeline) it plays back perfectly at FULL QUALITY. Once I drag that clip into the timeline and playback the program monitor i've got issues. It's simply unwatchable and impossible to edit with.

This is only 1920 x 1080 Pro Res 422 footage, nothing crazy. The project worked perfectly in Premiere Pro 2019 and still does without any stuttering.

I have attempted to simply update the project in 2020, as well as importing the legacy project and then finally starting a whole new project and importing the footage again to see if it was a migration issue.

Nothing is working.

I'll be using PP2019 until this gets sorted, however I'm wondering if anyone else is having similar issues? I've attached a download link to a screen capture of how the issue looks here >>> https://we.tl/t-4uFeLm1gl9Playback Issue - Screen Capture 

[NATHAN - SHOTCUT]

Hi Kevin,

I can confirm I did try this when it was first posted... using this > https://blogs.adobe.com/kevinmonahan/2014/09/10/premiere-pro-cc-freezing-on-startup-or-crashing-whil...

I changed all of the users to read/write even though the main user profile was already set to it - also clicked the apply to all enclosed folders options - reset the system.... still the same result unfortunately.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sorry, following the exact steps on my blog worked perfectly for me. Perhaps others on this post can check, as well.

Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Nath,

I will continue to suggest things to try. I really hope we can solve this for you. I still suspect it has something to do with permissions. I had the identical issue on my Mojave system, but my High Sierra system did not exhibit the issue. 

There might be something we do not know about you are setup with these multiple Macs. Are these Macs connected to each other in a network by any chance? Is there any other possible thing you can share with us regarding your setups? 

I'm editing personal projects over the weekend on 2020 now that I have it working well. I'll see if I experience any similar issues.

Thanks,
Kevin

[chitaroni]

Well the good news is that I did the permissions fixing exercise you outlined on my 2019 Macbook Pro on Catalina and it seems to have worked! Thanks

[Kevin-Monahan]

So great, chitaroni! Thanks for letting me know. I hope Azzie and Nath also found solutions too.

Cheers and be well,

Kevin

[NATHAN - SHOTCUT]

I haven't yet, but I may be doing the permissions reset wrong?? I followed the instructions, restarted etc but still the same issue. Could there be something I'm doing wrong. Kevin can you do a screen capture of the process so I can ensure I'm copying it exactly as you're doing it?

[AzzieScott]

Hey guys I don't want this to get lost in the sea of comments but this is the issue im having with playback. Im curious to see if this same issue is causing the playback problems the other users are having. Please check this video i created and try and if this is your root cause. Its something going on with the source monitor hogging resources from program monitor. 

** Adobe still hasn't fixed this by the way** 

[video]

[성오박45394277]

OMG it works. it finally works. I really hate Apple messing up so many things with their PERMISSION RULES. It really do mess up so so many things.

Anyway thanks for your support 😞

[Mikko0101]

Yes, I belive that the stutter issues are more (or at least partly) Windows than Premiere related. I changed/added permissions for my own Windows account to Full, deleted a strange "Unknown Account-----" permissions altogether, throughout the drive and folder my Premiere footage and related stuff were located, and lo and behold - the stutter was (almost) gone! The rest, though; I suspect to be due to my older CPU and only 8 Gigs of RAM. Nevertheless, playing with permissions made a world of difference and brought me back on the brink of utter despair to a looming hope. When I say the issue might be Windows related is because other applications have become very slow to start to begin with, and are not as smooth as before. Moreover, it seems that if I have a dual-boot system (with W7 and W10), the permissions get altered somehow if I use the same drive and/or folder and/or files on both Windows. But that might just be me, so don't take my word for it.

[Strillogy]

I wanted to add my voice to the others on this forum.  I'm running a fairly well spec'd MacPro and Premiere 2020 is full of issues with playback.  ProRes 422 (which used to be perfect) is now having major issues (even when set to 1/4 - 1/8 res).  H264 files in the timeline completely fail to play or stutter the entire time and glitch constantly (not an issue in 2019).  I'm even running into issues now when rendering out H264 files (with a mixed timeline of prores and h264 clips).  It hangs on every h264 clip or renders flashing/glitchy frames. Resetting permissions did absolutely nothing to make this better.

My specs are:

os 10.15.2

3.2ghz 16 core

160gb ram

32gb AMD Radeon Pro Vega II

[thnord]

@strillogy

I'm happy to help, but first I want to clarify if you are experiencing the same issue as the others in this thread. The issue in question being that the files DO work in the Source Monitor, but when played in the Program Monitor with the same setttings they get poor playback performance. If you are seeing poor performance in both cases then this is likely due to another issue and the fix proposed by Kevin would not work. The reason I mention this is because I've recently been investigating some H.264-specific playback issues and wonder if your files might be more related to what I've been looking in to. As a quick test can you try disabling Hardware Acceleration decoding, deleting the media cache, then trying those files again? 

To disable Hardware Acceleration:
1. Go to the Premiere Pro menu and choose Preferences

2. Go to the Media section

3. Disable "Enable hardware accelerated decoding (requires restart)"
4. Close Premiere

To delete the Media Cache:
1. Go to Macintosh HD⁩ ▸ ⁨Users⁩ ▸ ⁨username ▸ ⁨Library⁩ ▸ ⁨Application Support⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe⁩ ▸ Common

2. Delete the Media Cache Files folder

The relaunch Premiere and try playing your files. Please note the behavior and let me know if that makes it better or worse. It may also be helpful to look at a sample file so please let me know if that is possible. 

[RafaelGonzalezDP]

I have the same issue with playback with a brand new macbook pro. I am very dissapointed of this issue Adobe. You gotta it fix this problem as soon as possible. 

my system:

2.4 ghz 8-core Intel i9

64gb 2667 Mhz DDR4

AMD Radeon Pro 5500m 8GB Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Looking forward to hear from you soon.

[thnord]

Were you able to try Kevin's solution he posted earlier? If not, give it a try and let us know if it worked for you. 

[NATHAN - SHOTCUT]

Kevin's solution did not work for me even after the latest 2020 update. Although all my settings were already Read/Write, I still unlocked the gear and applied to again to all enclosed folders followed byy closing the lock.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? 

[whatsarobinson]

If you resize your timeline window down to a sliver where you can't even see your playhead anymore, does the program monitor still stutter? I have playback issues that stem from the timeline not being able to draw in realtime on higher res displays. I wonder if it's the same for you...

[NATHAN - SHOTCUT]

Tried this as well....no change for me.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Try clearing the Source Monitor of any clips. 

Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi,

Our Senior Tech suggest to remove all clips from the Source Monitor menu: Source panel menu (three line menu) > Close All.
That seems to fix the issue for some of our enterprise customers. Please try it.

Thanks,
Kevin

[NATHAN - SHOTCUT]

Unfortunately no change Kevin.

[RYNRYNRYN]

WOW I am literally having the same issue here! It works SO MUCH better when switching to "Software Only" renderer, which does not make sense.

[emoryp55434976]

Yesterday I wrapped and exported a dense project with huge 6k raw files. Today premier is lagging horribly over a single 300mb file on the timeline. I have a good computer, everything was smooth sailing 24 hours ago, this makes no sense adobe. 

SPECS:

-2.3 GHz Intel Core i9

-32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

-Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

[chitaroni]

So initially the permissions repair process got me up and running - but then last night it started doing it all over again. Source Monitor plays fine, Program monitor drops frames constantly. 

I came back to this thread to see if anything had been figured out - and I tried Kevin's "close all" trick and that works...

But - that's terribly annoying to have to close all every time I open a clip in the source monitor. Is this something we can expect to have fixed in an update soon?

[chitaroni]

Ok so a bit of an update - problem still persists on my  2019 Macbook Pro  2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB.

Like I mentioned before, this problem does not occur on my iMac pro, nor on my older generation (late 2014) macbook pro. 

I can get the timeline to play fine if I close video that is loaded into the source window. (basically having nothing open in the source window)... but I went and tried a few things. It turns out the timeline only slows down if I have CERTAIN types of video open in my source window. It works fine with ProRes 4K footage, it works fine with H264 footage of either HD or 4K resolution. Music files, images, totally fine. But where the problem seems to be happening is if I have R3D files open in my source window. Red raw video files, which is predominantly what I work with... I'm not sure if this changes anything from the troubleshooting side. But that's more info to enter into the equation. 

[aerophoenix1]

My issue persists with h.264. I used handbrake to encode my video. Did it several times. Used different presets. I went h.265 as well. I reinstall to literally every version of Adobe Premiere that CC allows,  and still when I scrub through the timeline, it chugs the CPU at 100 Percent and doesn't use a single bit of my GPU. What doesnt make sense though, is that my 4th Gen i5 with an iGPU can play and edit the videos at full quality. I'm wondering, has everyone had the same issue with processors that don't have an iGPU?

[aerophoenix1]

Hey. I recall editing from my old laptop with Adobe Premier 2016. This laptop was using a 4th Gen Intel i5 Processor and using only the iGPU with 8gb of ram and a 5400 hdd. Now with my r5-3600, 1070ti and 16gb of ram i can't edit a simple video? I can't scrub through the timeline at all using the late 2019 versions of PP and same goes for all versions of 2020. Has anyone had a fix yet?? Or do I have to buy Vegas Pro?