Premiere Pro Skipping, Lagging, Unusable - 4K GH5 Long-GOP Footage

[benjudkins]

Hello! I am having trouble with Premiere and thought I'd post to see if anyone has any suggestions.

For all projects, big and small, I always have to render the footage to even scroll through it. I feel like my workflow in Premiere, 2017, 2018, and 2019 versions (GH5 footage) is never swift; i'm always fighting lag, espceially once color and effects are added.

Currently working on editing my first feature-length doc, and I've seperated the doc into chapters into various Premiere projects, as I've been advised to do. That being said, the chapter I'm currently working on has 10+ hours of footage. Others have up to 20 hours. At a certain point, the rendered sequences in the bigger projects don't even do me any good - video skips, audio stutters, Premiere lags and my computer heats up and it's pretty much unworkable. Recently, with bigger projects, this is before color or any effects; it's a nightmare. I'm just losing hours of workflow a day.

So I've been through dozens of forums, tried dozens of fixes, and nothing has worked. In the past I have made proxies and maybe that will be the option I return to, although with hundreds of hours of footage total, proxies were taking loads of time to make (and additional drive space), and then when I wanted to color and finish a project, or view in non-proxy mode, the lag immediately returned. What's an editor to do?

Here are all my specs, and if you need more info let me know. Could it just be GH5 Long GOP footage is awful to edit no matter what, do I need to step fully back and trasncode footage to pro-res and bake in those missing frames of GOP footage, do bigger projects need an adjusted workflow than what I'm used to, or does my computer just need to be upgraded? I don't want to jump the gun on buying a new computer if it won't help much (which I've read is the case with Long GOP files...), but want to find a way to work efficiently and not hear the sound of a computer ready to explode constantly.

FOOTAGE:

95% of my footage is shot on a GH5, at MOV/MP4 4:2:2 10-Bit 150mbps (Long GOP), DCI 4K (4096 x 2160) 23.976p and MOV/MP4 4:2:0 8-Bit 150mbps (Long GOP), UHD 4K (3840 x 2160) 59.94p. After learning how Long GOP files slow computeres down, I have also shot entire (smaller) videos in ALL-INTRA 24p 400mbps and it actually was slower for my computer, especially once color was added. Thus, I'm curious if it actually is the Long GOP.

PREMIERE:

2019 v 13.1.4

HARD DRIVE:

G-Technology 12TB G-DRIVE Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive (everything I'm working with in this project is on this hard drive; all render files go to the same project folder). There is 250gb of available space on the hard drive. Current Premiere project has 700gb in it. Current sequence that is giving me trouble is only a 45 minute interview clip, two video tracks rendered and synched with four tracks of audio. I have the video tracks not even viewable right now, and only one audio track playing - I'm lucky to get through a minute of the interview audio without skippiness and lag.

COMPUTER:

Macbook Pro (15-inch, 2017), running on macOS Catalina Version 10.15.3

Processor: 3.1 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

Memory: 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB

That's all I can think of, thank you for reading and hopefully someone has some advice for a first time feature-length film editor!

[R Neil Haugen]

What's the sustained read/write for the external drive?

It looks like you've got everything on either the system drive or that external, for a massive project of long-GOP media, on a laptop with only an internal graphics chip and 16GB of RAM.

RAM and read/write speed are major things for media work with long-GOP files. So there are some issues there.

I would strongly suggest you change to the Production workflow. It's very, very different ... Premiere creates a Production folder, you make subfolders within that to organize the project, and yes, these are all real folders on disc. Within the sublfolders you create project files to hold parts of the project. It is suggested to use project files to store things like say media or sequences organized as you used bins in stand-alone projects.

This process came out of their Hollywood department, and it's the setup in Premiere used by the long-form features that work with Premiere.

Here's the page on Productions ... Using Productions in Premiere Pro

And here's the Reference Guide pdf ... Productions reference pdf

The whole point of this new process is that Premiere doesn't load nearly as much into RAM/cache being as the Job is spread among many different linked project files, and only the project file/s currently being worked need be loaded into RAM/cache. Even when they reference media/assets stored in other non-opened project files of that Production.

So it would make your low-powered rig handle a large long-form project much easier. But with that media, I'd still go proxies. GH5 4k long-GOP is some of the hardest media out there on many rigs.

Neil

[benjudkins]

Hey Neil, thanks so much for this response.

Here's the info on the drive: 7200 rpm hard drive, with up to 250 MB/s Data Transfer Speed (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1360172-REG/g_technology_0g05383_g_drive_pro_12tb_7200_2x.htm...). Hope that's helpful. Everything for this project is on two of these 12TB drives.

Awesome, I'll start with proxies, and give the production workflow a shot. On another note, for a low budget production, any better drives or computers you would recommend to handle this amount of longGOP 4K footage?

Thanks,

Ben

[Andy 1968]

While the GH5 does use H.264 it is a bit of an odd flavor of H.264. Intel's Quick Sync will not be of any use. You need a minimum of 8 cores if you want  real-time playback at full 4K resolution. Depending on your settings the GH5 video files can be very hard to playback even on an iMac Pro. The video link might be helpful.

https://youtu.be/Btwp84acKPQ  

[benjudkins]

Thank you! This video was helpful. My CPU% is through the roof when Premiere is open, and my computer becomes so slow. kernal_task was at 600% with this particular project open (but i was doing absolutely nothing with it, just trying to see if my High Quality Playback was on), which I just learned is basically preventing my computer from overheating. I think these h.264 Long GOP clips from the Gh5 need to be proxied... see how my computer functions from there.

[Averdahl]

Long-GOP from a GH5 is very demanding on your hardware. Going Proxy is the best way.

And, your drive is a bottle neck. It claims to have up to 250 MB/s Data Transfer Speed with the two words up to being the key. This is a best case scenario but once the disk starts to fill up it will start dropping data transfer speed rapidly. So trying to playback one stream at a time of 150mbps or 400mbps footage will be demanding, for the drive to throw the data from disk to Premiere Pro and for the CPU to de-code the footage. That combination plus footage from the GH5 will cause stutter.

Download the free of charge Blackmagic Disk Speed Test from Mac App Store and test your disk and post a screen dump here.

[benjudkins]

Proxy it may be... but what happens when I need to combine different chapters of the doc, and color etc.? I'm curious, on top of proxies, if a different hard drvie / editing set up / computer might be a good call as well. Thoughts?

I downloaded the BM Disk Speed Test, and with no other applications open or doing anything on the computer, it read as such on screen shot 1. Then I tried to open up the Premiere project (with Bm Disk Speed Test app open and running), and Premiere wouldn't even open and it locked up my computer, I had to force quit, computer was very hot and loud. I shut the computer down, let it cool for a few minutes then turned it back on. When I opened Premiere all of the media had to load (another weird thing that has been happening recently...), yet without doing anything inside of Premiere and the program merely just open (looking as if nothing is rendered green, when in reality it has been), we have screen shot #2. Computer loud and hot as this screen shot was taken.

From a basic level, I can see what's happening but if you can help me decode further and what steps would be best to move forward and actually be able to edit, that would be amazing. To clarify, all of my media / project files are on the external hard drive - but is this BM Disk Speed Test testing out my external hard drive speeds or computer hard drive speeds? Thanks!