Premiere Pro on M1 Max MacBook Pro is slow and wont function normally

[MadPlaid]

Look I cant believe I own an M1 Max Chip macbook Pro and I have problems with Adobe...This one is slow and wont run in a way that is functional. At this point I am looking for better programs that will run? 

Customer service is a joke, they don't call then lie, when I ask for compensation they end the chat and run..This company is going to CRAP!!!

Mod note: Your title was changed to reflect the actual problem you are having and for search purposes.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi there,

We're sorry about the poor experience. We can get this checked. Let us know the version of Premiere Pro, the type of media files you are working with (format/codec, frame rate & frame size) & the effects applied. We're here to help, just need more info.

Thanks,

Sumeet

[R Neil Haugen]

Some folks with M1s are getting fabulous performance, some aren't.

So it might very well be worth a bit of time in troubleshooting to puzzle out what is causing your rig to tank so bad. So adding in the details of the media, drives/drive connections, effects & such would help.

Neil

[MadPlaid]

I just had an hour long telephone conversation with Adobe Support with
remote access. They tried everything, even the Beta and none of the
versions of the programs worked, till we went all the way back to 15.4.1
2021. This isn't the only program I am having issues with, LR is buggy with
the brush tool.

But anyway I have simple 2k files and some 4k that are imported from a
network drive, once I add any graphic that is more than a title the
program, it runs slow, doesn't auto render and if I try to render it takes
several minutes to 30 minutes for 2minute long clips.

My OS Is Monterey 12.3.1 Macbook Pro M1 Max with 32gigs...I shouldn't be
having a single issue with the small files I am working on.

--
Christopher Anderson

[personal info deleted by mod]

[R Neil Haugen]

Hey, total sympathies. And ... one thing Kevin Monahan, a product support staffer who's around "here" a lot points out ... when going to Adobe's help system, always ask for the "video queue" anytime you get a live body either in chat or phone help. As that gets you by the generalists.

I don't know if you had a generalist or one of the video people ... their 'help' staff is at times incredibly good, and at times ... totally insufficient to the task.

So what's the format/codec of those files? Long-GOP files like H.264/5 can be a bear in an NLE, depending on various vagaries in how much H.264 encoding 'hardware' is built into the CPU and mobo. And that doesn't depend on cost or how 'cool' one's rig is, sometimes lesser gear does better. Which is about as frustrating as all get out.

So ... media matters, really. @Kevin-Monahan is also a pretty savvy Mac dude, so he might be able to get this sorted ... or determined what the issue is at least.

Neil

[Kevin-Monahan · Accepted solution]

Christopher,

I have simple 2k files and some 4k that are imported from a
network drive, once I add any graphic that is more than a title the
program, it runs slow, doesn't auto render and if I try to render it takes
several minutes to 30 minutes for 2minute long clips.

I suspect something is not right with this network drive.

Kevin

[RjL190365]

With these bugs, I am beginning to feel more and more like I had been throwing upgraded hardware at the problem. In fact, in Premiere my real-world editing performance isn't all that much better than what I had achieved with an old 4th-Gen or 7th-Gen quad-core Intel CPU. And this current system has 12 cores and 24 threads (an AMD Ryzen 5900X). I am now beginning to feel that I had wasted my money on this CPU upgrade.

As a result, I am considering a hardware downgrade on my current desktop. (I have been moving more and more of my video rendering duties to my M1 MacBook Air recently due to the skyrocketing energy costs.) You see, the AMD CPUs may have a lower maximum power draw but a much higher average power draw compared to an Intel CPU. The CPU draws more than 30 watts even at idle, contributing to its very high idle power consumption. (I noticed this when I hear my case fans scream at times even with that desktop PC idle.)

I do not want to reuse my old 4th-Gen Intel CPU as driver and security updates for that CPU platform had been EOL'd by Intel itself, while I do not want to reuse my 7th-Gen CPU platform as it was on only a mini-ITX motherboard.

So, when I have funds available, I will part out my 5900X CPU (and sell it), donate its motherboard and DDR4 RAM to a 5600X build that I am currently in the middle of building for my gamer brother, and pick up a 12th-Gen Intel i5 or i7 K-series CPU with a decent mid-range DDR5 motherboard (I will be buying new RAM for it).

[R Neil Haugen]

I've got a 24-core Ryzen 3960x with 128GB of RAM, a 2080Ti, and dual Nvme drives on the mobo ... one for programs/OS, the other for Adobe/BlackMagic cache files.

The rest of the "working" drives are large SSDs, with a couple large spinners for basic data storage.

This is the hottest thing I've worked with in Premiere, it screams through Red, BRAW, even Sony S-log3 stuff.

My three-year old Acer Triton laptop is also screaming with Premiere, by far the best performance I've ever had with Premiere on that.

And other people are getting totally crap performance. So ... freaking ... weird.

Especially when RJL ain't getting performance, as that user is one of the most awesome brains around here on gear.

Neil

[RjL190365]

Correction:

My 5900X draws almost 60W at idle! No wonder why I wanted to downgrade or cross-grade in the first place!

For the record, my PugetBench scores with this AMD system have been declining into the mid-800s using the Standard preset. The problem is while its effects and GPU scores were decent, the live playback score is poorer than comparably equipped PCs with similar-performing hardware.

[RjL190365]

UPDATE:

It turned out that I do not need to downgrade or cross-grade my CPU platform after all. I ended up spending a lot of money ($300-ish!) on a motherboard whose VRM quality is underwhelming for the motherboard price. In fact, most cheaper AMD X570 motherboards have mediocre-at-best VRMs, which meant that the way the AMD platform is designed, if the motherboard's own devices couldn't handle it, the extra heat goes back into the CPU package! The CPU effectively throttled at a maximum temperature that's only 65 degrees Celsius due to this very narrow headroom in CPU package powers! It's no wonder why I get CineBench 23 multi-core scores that were subpar for this model of CPU. I get only 19,500-ish when it should have been in the lower 20,000's. This is all caused by the much narrower-than-expected headroom between the idle CPU package power and the maximum CPU package power.

To make matters worse, I had this same CPU running on a mini-ITX Gigabyte B550 motherboard, and the CPU performance was noticeably and consistently better.

As a result, my decision now is to just upgrade my main PC's motherboard, and donate my system's current motherboard to the Ryzen 5 5600X system that's currently under construction.

Hope this settles it.

[RjL190365]

Another update:

It turned out that it wasn't my CPU or motherboard at all, but it was my GPU that's not well matched to the CPU. I tweaked the BIOS settings so that my system now scores on a par with other "stock" Ryzen 9 5900X PC's in the CineBench R23 Multi-core test. My motherboard's default settings happened to choke the performance of the CPU.

Now, I still scored only in the 880's on PugetBench with the Standard preset (running Premiere Pro 22.4, of course) because in large part my GPU is holding it back. This score should have been in the mid-900's with the properly performance-matched GPU.

Unfortunately, I would have to spend a lot more money than I really planned to just to gain this level of performance increase. In fact, it is now a poor bang for the buck (Premiere Pro performance-wise) compared to simply replacing the AMD X570 platform with a 12th-Gen Intel Alder Lake platform (even accounting for the higher cost of DDR5 RAM).

[RjL190365]

Going back to your original problem:

Which version of Premiere Pro were you running? If the latest released version (22.4), then everyone's PCs performance scores dropped significantly.