Premiere Pro CC 2017 lag

[jacka33804176]

Since i have updated to the Premiere Pro CC 2017 update, the whole software is laggy, the preview is on the lowest possible quality and is impossible to edit with as it lags so bad. And rendering previews takes about 5 times longer too. The software was completely fine before the update and had no issue's. Thanks

[R Neil Haugen]

A core-i5 with DDR3 and a 775m isn't particularly a "hot" rig, granted. And Lumetri is a heavy user of resources. if you're applying multiple instances of Lumetri on a clip or stacking them in Adjustment layers, it can start to bog things pretty fast. At that point, more CPU cores/threads & clocking frequency adjustments, faster RAM, and newer GPUs with lots of CUDA cores and 4GB of vRAM or better become ... useful.

It's been quite some time since Apple has actually upgraded the motherboards & other hardware of their rigs, and I know a lot of colorists (about THE most Mac-centric sphere of post-processing) are abandoning Macs and going into dual-boot Win/Linux machines. Apple has finally announced some new hardware is coming but we'll see how good it is ... sometime in the future.

More recent RAM and a 1060 or higher GPU with 4GB ​might​ make things better ... or not.

You might check on the Hardware forum also.

Neil

https://forums.adobe.com/community/premiere/hardware_forum

[stephenh71804362]

Hi there again,

yes the iMac i5 is not really up to the job if she is going to start adding multiple fx etc... I recently had to help friends with finishing a long form docu project - they had an iMac as well with thunderbolt raid... long story short a lot of 4k GoPro files in sequences with HD material... it got very tedious ...but managed to get it done by transferring it to my home studio...

A lot of friends & colleagues are going back to 2010 12core Macpros upgraded to 3.46ghz processors... I have 2 of these in our studio facility with 48gb of ram in each - they are reliable - fast and with a USB 3 card pretty much all you need for most tasks that we encounter ie 4k films - fx heavy TVC's - long form documentary etc etc .... I think I would find switching to PC a bit too daunting after years in macland...

anyway had a very happy ending to the 2017 PP lost data issues we had ... Adobe were very accommodating with their resolutions

cheers steve

[carolg33842891]

Thanks everyone for the knowledge and advice, I should have come to the forum earlier. I realise now that I'm not alone with this problem, and there are possible workarounds. Just as a footnote; I'm getting the same problem on a newer iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch - 4 GHz Intel Core i7 - 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 - AMD Radeon R9 M390 2048 MB), so I guess anything less than a MacPro will have the same issues.

Like you Steve, the idea of switching to a PC makes me shiver... anyone got 5K spare for a new iMac pro?

Thanks again everyone.

Carol

[stephenh71804362]

Hi Carol,

Have you had an Adobe support engineer do a troubleshoot on your system... you allow them access to your machine and they do a little poking around your troublesome project - I was having an issue with slow horrible responses while editing, I had virtually given up. Then I was blown away by what the technician did in a matter of minutes to tune up my system...

Like having a virtual home visit from the doctor

ǝuoɥdı ʎɯ ɯoɹɟ ʇuǝs

[carolg33842891]

Hi Steve, I've had very long online chats with both Apple and Adobe, and yes, an Adobe bod accessed my Mac and tried a few things - with no performance improvement unfortunately. As the problem occurs on both iMacs I use (I originated the project on each so different projects created), it must be, as others have suggested, an under-spec'd Mac problem.

Thanks for the suggestion though Steve.

[truthseekers]

carolg33842891

Hi Carol, as you are new to all of this I did you a video tutorial on what Previews are all about and what Proxies are all about and how this might get you over the hump of what your doing. I realise to 99% of people on here this is all very well know stuff and no news to them... but I still meet a lot of people who dont know what Proxies are. This video should make it easy to understand and perhaps youll get much more out of your Mac using some of these tips...

Created just for you Carol click to watch:  Premiere Pro CC jerky or laggy WATCH THIS FIX - YouTube

[R Neil Haugen]

Nice job on the tutorial!

I've got just one comment ... rather than using an H.264 ingestion preset, an intraframe codec for proxies like the Cineform preset that ships with PrPro is even easier on the computers subsystems and will play back better on most machines.

It's not as small a file-size on disk, but is much easier on the CPU than an interframe H.264 codec.

Neil

[truthseekers]

Re Cineforms use on the timeline as a super "easy of on processor" codec.. I agree 100% I loved Cineform. However if your working in anything higher than 1080 with cineform I was finding a gigantic increase in Cineform render times. We are not talking a few times slower, but like 100 times slower. So to render 1 hour of footage to Cineform would have taken me about 4 hours now it would take 400 hours on 4k, which means its just no good.   DHXHD is like greased lightning and almost real time turn around, so whereas Cineform is much smaller and even easier on Premiere than DNXHD-MXF the times to get a Cineform file were not pracitical for me... in 1080 and 4k... well... I could cycle to the moon faster. A lot of people have moaned about Cineform of late... ive tried many reinstalls of it and never got anywhere, its only good for 1080. Lets not get into whos at fault for Cineform not working debates... wink wink. But R NEil if you have a simple way for me to fix Cineform im all ears. ( I am PC based)

So its worth bearing in mind, convert all your footage to Intraframe Cineform or my fave for speed DNX-HD and drag that onto the timeline and see Premiere speed up... just like R Neil Just said... Id back that as I sometimes have to do it. Especially if your doing a Multicam edit.

[R Neil Haugen]

Good info on the relative rendering times. I know Eric Bowens of ADK says from their testing, that DNxHR is the most modernly optimized codec, and is even a bit more efficient than ProRes.

Neil

[Jairo_Martinez]

My lagging problem went away with the new update 11.1.2... Good stuff because i was about to cancel this subscription..

[R Neil Haugen]

Glad to hear that!

Neil

[Jairo_Martinez]

Ok I think I spoke too soon after importing about 7 clips it the lagging started again... I am thinking of Cancelling my subscription and not have to deal with the waiting... So frustrating

[R Neil Haugen]

What's your hardware and disc-setup? Are you using proxies? And what media & effects are you using?

Neil

[Jairo_Martinez]

iMac Retina 5K 27Inch late 2015 3.2GHz Inter Core i5, 24GB DDR3, AMD Radeon R9 M390 2048MB, 1TB Internal, 8TB External.

There is got to be a software issue, GH4 Footage does not Exibit this behavior only Footage from my Drone Inspire 2. H264.

Final Cut Pro X has zero issues playing back footage...

[carolg33842891]

Hi Matthew, thanks for the video tutorial. Really helpful and easy to follow. I'm sure there's plenty of other people out there that will appreciate this information. For someone who is teaching themselves Premiere by watching, listening and reading how others do things, this level of explanation is great.

Thanks again,

Carol

[truthseekers]

Carol, one last thing to double check. Again its so obvious it could be overlooked. Do you have MERCURY PLAYBACK turned on... as this utilises your GPU on your graphics card and can make perfomance real time in many cases. With it off it sure will jerk a lot on playback.

To check go to menu:  FILE   >    PROJECT SETTINGS  >>   GENERAL.

Make sure its set to   MERCURY PLABACK HARDWARE  "cuda or openCL" either is good)... thats fine.
If its set to MERCURY PLAYBACK SOFTWARE - this is very bad...

Select the right one and click OK and it it asks is it OK to delete Preview files etc say "YES" or "OK TO DELETE" (words to that effect). DOnt worry it wont harm your project, those files are then regenerated.

In the case that it is set to SOFTWARE mode and no HARDWARE mode is available let us know so we cantry and see why.

I would have imagined that Premiee engineers would have checked this but you never know.

[R Neil Haugen]

Good to hear you're working good.

A couple colorists I know who teach both via their own subscription service and seem to lead the Post Production World stuff at NAB and as far afield as China have been Macophones. TOTALLY Mac-centric in everything from computers to phones to 'devices' to ... apps ... their lives were scheduled and held together by the coddling (and busy-bodied) hands of Apple.

But needing something that could actually work slickly with 6k/up media from mixed sources with Resolve feeding 3/4 monitors, the scope-box setup on a different monitor, and two client monitor/projection systems ... and three roll-outs from Cupertino without even a mention of D-top activity ... they've had PC's built.

And were shocked ... shocked! ... to find that everything they did on a Mac, had an app that could actually do that in a PC!

I've been happy to "welcome" them to individuality & freedom with a little gentle razzing ... ahem ... but they've found that going out on their own without the baby-blanket of Cupertino guiding their every step, they found ... Life.

And far more beefy computers for less price, totally customizable to their needs and desires ...

Neil

[truthseekers]

carolg33842891

You asked why is it lagging when you put multiple effects  one on top of another on top of another. There is your answer, too many effects on top of one another. Nobody on a PC or Mac can expect to get past maybe one instance of Lumetri and one other effect before it lags. So buying a better mac or PC wont help.

What you need to do is the following:   Pull your render clip bars around that area you are working on and hit the ENTER KEY which will render that block and then you wait a while whilst the computer chugs away at rendering that bit... and when its finished, hey presto its now playing at full speed showing you what the effect will look like. If you make any changes youll need to PREVIEW render it again.
Or if your feeling really clever... render out just that chunk and reimport it and you can add a few more laters of effects on real time and either preview again or render that chunk again. Preview renders are your friend... do a youtube search on this. Heres one I found which keeps it simple for you: How to Render Preview in Premiere Pro CS5.5 HD Tutorial (2012) - YouTube

Also notice on your timebar there are colours above your clips... red = will lag and jump because of lots of effects - these bits like to be preview rendered before smooth play... and green = will play smoothly as is. Thats what the colours mean. When you have preview rendered remember to save the project and when you load up the project again your preview renders will be reloaded. If you do lots of preview renders then when you do your final total full length render of the whole project notice that in the render screen there is a tick box for "use previews" which will then use those pre rendered buts you did, so can save a lot of time on your final render by using these pre rendered pieces.

Also check out making "proxies" for your video before trying to edit. For help on making proxies again please hunt down youtube for tutorial videos. This way you could easily edit at 4k to 8k movie on a low end Mac or PC... because your viewing and editing it in a lower resolution but the end renders are using the full resolution files and output full resolution... Proxies can make things a LOT less laggy!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jack A,

Since i have updated to the Premiere Pro CC 2017 update, the whole software is laggy, the preview is on the lowest possible quality and is impossible to edit with as it lags so bad. And rendering previews takes about 5 times longer too. The software was completely fine before the update and had no issue's. Thanks

It's possible that you no longer meet the system requirements or have an underpowered computer which could handle the previous version, but does not have enough power for the current version given the same media.

We are not sure because you have not returned to the thread with more info. Unfortunately, this post has turned into a dumping ground for all playback performance issues on all computers, and that's no good either.

If you do not return to this thread, I'll have to lock it and assume that you've either fixed your issue or you have forgotten about this issue and moved on.

Others reaching this post with the same issue should create a new post with specific information about their situation.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Dara_O_Neill]

I suppose one man's "dumping ground" is another man's trouble shooting conversation.

I was going to spend money I don't have to buy a new SSD hard drive and type out a huge email detailing my lagging problem and my very speedy computer specs. Instead I tried downloading DaVinci Resolve, for free, and everything works perfectly. Playback even works with no lag from spinning drives.

The timeline I'm using to test isn't OTT but it does have 4k footage, multiple layered fx, colour grading and animated overlays - basically the kind of timeline we bought a higher spec computer for and expected our software to be able to handle. To be told we need to invest in more SSDs, and that our machines are too slow, is rubbish.

I am seriously frustrated and disappointed knowing I now have to learn new software... and probably kiss Adobe goodbye after 20+ years of being a fanboy.

[R Neil Haugen]

Understand your frustrations.

Question though ... have you been using the PrPro proxy media & icon for switching? On my machine, that's been rather slick. Anytime I need to see full-res it's just a click, and editing is smooth also. But some have had troubles even with the proxies ... and I'm curious if you have?

Neil

[Dara_O_Neill]

I use a computer that is more than fast enough to work with footage without requiring proxies so why would I waste my time (and money)?

[R Neil Haugen]

Very informative answer ... thanks!

"wasting time with proxies" ... sounds more like mine's bigger 'n yours, but to each their own. I don't think of tools quite the same way. Just that they work.

I'd asked partly because Resolve is known as a resource hog to blow PrPro away on most machines, which is why most colorists have rigs that are rather ... amazing. But on some machines, it does seem to run on far less hardware than others. So ... my curiosity. On mine, PrPro is definitely smoother to use than Resolve, especially with proxies ... which is such an easy tool, I don't understand the attitude of many on this.

Neil

[Dara_O_Neill]

Sorry if my answer was curt, it was born of frustration. I know my computer is fast enough to easily playback video without proxies - so that is what I want my software to achieve. I think it is the very least to ask that our software make the best use of our hardware and vice versa. Otherwise what's the point in paying to update anything?

If you invested time and money in a new machine, and because of a software update it performed worse than your much older machine, you might feel differently.

[Bill Gehrke]

Why don't you try my hardware Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) and see how well tuned your system is running.