Premiere Pro 23.1 performance issues after upgrading (macOS Ventura on iMac with Xeon CPU)

[Kasper Garam]

After the latest updates (23.0 and 23.1.) Premieres interface has been painfully laggy and slow for me too. Playback works fine even with multiple effects applied, but the interface lags at all times so much, it's basically unusable. I have had major issues with getting work done because of this and there are many conversations online about this issue.

I am on an iMac Pro 2017, 3 GHz 10-core Intel Xeon W, Raden Pro Vega 56 8Gt and 32 Gt RAM running Mac OS Ventura 13.1. I also have a Macbook Pro 14" M1 Pro that has no issues at all, so the issue is only there with the iMac Pro. I know it's not the best video editing computer out there, but it has worked perfectly fine before these updates, but now it's just pure rubbish.

Mod note: Branched and moved. Title was changed to reflect the case.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey, Kasper, 

Happy Holidays. I am sorry you're experiencing trouble with your iMac. The first troubleshooting steps would be to reset preferences and delete Media Cache from Preferences after choosing File > Close All Projects. Have you tried those things yet?

Apart from that, because of its Xeon CPU, the iMac probably has trouble with long GOP-based footage (H.264 or HEVC, usually in a .mp4 container). Is that the footage you are working with?

Your MacBook Pro is better suited for hardware decoding (playback and overall handling) of such footage because of its graphics capabilities. For the iMac, try ProRes Proxy proxies for that footage for the best results.

You can also try editing with the previous version until your current projects are complete.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Kasper Garam]

Hello!
I'm sorry, I only saw your reply now. I have tried resetting preferences and cleaning caches. No solutions there.

The footage I am working on is XAVC-I pretty much all of the time, so its all-intra and not long GOP. It doesn't seem to be an issue with the footage, since the playback is perfectly fine at all times. The issue is with the interface and the UI of Premiere. The same issues are there even with proxies.

Thanks for the reply!