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WontYouPleaseHelpMe
Known Participant
August 20, 2025
Question

Premiere Pro horrendous in handling DJI footage compared to Davinci resole

  • August 20, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 634 views

Adobe your handling of 4K H.264 is terrrible. Scrubing and playing stutters. Yes I know how to make a sequence that matches my footage. Proxies are a miserable waste of time and generally do not work well. I just found that free Davinci Resolve leaves you all in the dust. Timelines with H.264 - mixed frame rates etc. like butter. Also PP trim mode isn't ready for primetime by a long shot. Do better or like the Fleetwood Mac song "... been there one time, been there two times, never going back again." I don't need the aggravation and hours of fruitless extra work. 

 

Please note I have a smoking hot Mac Studio fully decked out. It's not me and it's not my hardware.

 

This from a Perplexity AI search on why Davinci beats the tar out of Premiere pro with H.264/265 

 

Free DaVinci Resolve is widely praised for handling H.264 video more efficiently than Adobe Premiere Pro due to several core reasons:

  • Superior GPU Utilization: DaVinci Resolve was originally designed as a color grading and finishing tool, so its codebase makes heavier use of GPU acceleration even in its free version. This gives it a real-time playback and export advantage over Premiere Pro, which relies more on CPU for H.264 decoding and encoding.

  • Smoother Playback and Faster Exports: Benchmarks show that DaVinci Resolve can export H.264 footage faster and play it back more smoothly than Premiere Pro on identical hardware. For example, Resolve consistently finishes H.264 exports in less time compared to Premiere.

  • Efficient Media Engine: The architecture of DaVinci Resolve appears tuned for compressed formats like H.264, resulting in less CPU and GPU load during timeline playback and exports when compared to Premiere Pro.

  • Free Version Power: DaVinci Resolve’s free edition includes robust H.264 support and hardware acceleration out of the box, with no paywall for these features. Adobe Premiere Pro's hardware acceleration for H.264 can be less effective and sometimes requires careful setup, and users have long reported sluggish performance and slow exports, especially on Windows hardware.

  • Stability and Optimization: User and expert reports consistently mention that DaVinci Resolve is less prone to bugs and system slowdowns with H.264 sources, whereas Premiere Pro can have stability issues and less optimized playback, forcing editors to rely more on creating proxies.

In summary: DaVinci Resolve’s architecture, free GPU acceleration, and lean media engine give it a clear edge in H.264 workflow efficiency, making it an excellent choice for editors working extensively with compressed media.

2 replies

H
Harley5E53
Participating Frequently
September 17, 2025

This is a known RTX 5000 series issue. Adobe, you gotta fix it. We can't buy RTX 4080 laptops anywhere anymore. We need this to work. See the test between RTX 4060 and RTX 5080 I made here: https://youtu.be/9BuZIaFfYAg

R Neil Haugen
R Neil Haugen
Legend
September 17, 2025

It's a known Nvidia issue. There is an Nvidia rep posting on this forum who says they hope to have a driver with an actual fix for the many problems with 50 series cards across all video post apps out September 30.

 

Yea, it's a royal pain.

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    August 20, 2025

    I'm a long-time user of both Premiere and Resolve (Studio). And I'm heavily tied into colorists, as I teach Premiere and Resolve color and other things professionally. So I spend most of my time at NAB around pro colorists. Mostly based in Resolve, though of course a number are Baselight users.

     

    And I'm on both the Adobe and BlackMagic forums daily, again, for over a decade.

     

    Much of your criticism is quite fair, and well stated. I won't comment on the first few things, other than noting that both apps have holes. Try ProRes RAW in Resolve ... and don't hold your breath. Ain't gonna happen ... and their staffers simply won't talk about it.

     

    They are coded differently for GPU use, certainly ... as all the pro video post apps use hardware differently from any other. And each app does better with something the other doesn't. To be expected, really.

     

    So ... use the app that works for you, now. They are all just tools ... fancy hammers. I never look at the brand of the hammers I have. Why should I? They work for what I need ... and I've got like 10 different hammers in a rather extensive shop.

     

    As to performance and stability ... once upon a time, Resolve had that hands down. Now? Um ... not so much. As BlackMagic has pursued the Adobe dream of being one complete ecosystem for all workflows on all hardware over the last three major versions, they've had a lot more both buggy behavior and hardware based performance struggles.

     

    Baselight is by far the most stable of the pro apps, because ... their system is "closed".

     

    You buy the computer from them, for currently three models, $13,000 to $19,000 for the computer alone. You never, ever!!!!! add any apps to that machine as it comes from them. And on top of this, you pay like a $1500 yearly licensing fee.

     

    Now, for that, you get an awesome grading app and rock-solid stability.

     

     

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
    W
    WontYouPleaseHelpMeAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 20, 2025

    Thanks for the great reply. I only started using Resolve on a whim from a post. I would have loved to stay on Premiere Pro but that is impossible for my Drone footage. PP proxy worflow is worse than oral surgery. I want nothing to do with it. Even on my cheaper iMac Resovle still is great with 4K H.264 (multiple frame rates on the same timeline) Premiere Pro not so much. Am I to understand Premiere Pro handles the higher level pro codecs like Pro res better and Resolve free handles H.264 best?Is there a reason PP cannot handle H.264 well ? Is it a choice ? I don't get it. I have always done long form in Avid because of the superior trim mode but would use Premiere Pro if that could be addressed also. Coud Premiere Pro emulate Avid's trim mode or buy it from them? 

     

    Thanks again

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    August 21, 2025

    It's just different ways of writing code for the app. And priorities and such. The reasonings behind features and capabilities of all these apps are pretty deeply held internal discussions, and we users simply won't ever know.

     

    And it's not difference for "higher" formats/codecs, just which ones each team has prioritized. Admittedly, DJI creates new uses of the long-GOP options with each new drone that push the boundaries of what is both "legal" and possible to do under the specs. BlackMagic has done a better job of keeping up with the crazy folks at DJI.

     

    But they haven't prioritized some other things as much. Premiere has a ton more user-settable keyboard shorts than Resolve. And probably, in many ways, comes closer to Avid's working modes for many workflows. But for some workflows in Avid, Resolve is actually closer to the same operation.

     

    Use what works ... Avid, Premiere, Resolve, they can all be made to work for about anything. But whichever floats your boat and gets those deliverables out, you have to choose. Gotta make a living, right?

     

    I've a good friend who thinks Resolve has the most intuitive UI ever in any app, and good for him. After all these years, I still forget where they've buried some of the context menus that he thinks are pretty obviously and correctly placed. Different strokes for different folks.

     

    You can't create the custom workspaces in Resolve that you can in Premiere ... I've got nine, btw ... and Premiere allows control surface makers full access to the entire API, so my Tangent Elements panel not only does color, but audio track mixing, resizing/rotation/positioning of screen elements, about anything you do in Premiere.

     

    In BlackMagic Land, as their business model uses Resolve as a loss-leader to get people into their hardware ecosystem ... my Elements panel is strictly limited to the controls Resolve devs mapped for it a decade back. Most of my knobs and buttons are 'dark' most of the time, the menu system is weird, and it isn't changeable nor will BlackMagic ever improve that usage.

     

    Because they want you to buy their panels, of course. But their panels only work in one page. So you have to have a couple pieces for editing at 3-500 each, a color panel for at least a couple grand, a Fairlight audio panel for 3-10 grand ... and figure out where you put them on the desk while you're doing other tasks.

     

    Nope, not my cuppa joe. But again, I got friends totally loving it. Whatever ... these are all tools. All built differently, all with joys and faults.

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
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