Premiere pro slows down and lags when images are on the timeline.

Report · Dec 13, 2021

Hi there! Any image I put on the timeline, be it jpg or png, makes the premiere incredibly difficult to use. If there is an image present on the timeline, the playhead lags for a second before playing after pressing spacebar. Then when the playhead passes the image, the program monitor freezes and if I stop playback, audio continues to play for a few seconds. Every once in a while it's crashed the program.

The only way I've been able to work is to render preview over the images via in-to-out. I have tried uninstalling premiere, cleareing my caches, etc.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Windows 10

Latest version of premiere 22

Report · Dec 13, 2021

Have you tried converting the images to PSD in Photoshop?

Report · Dec 13, 2021

Hi ziwzih,

Sorry about the poor experience. We can get this checked. What is the resolution of these image files used in the project?

Also, share a screenshot of the Audio Hardware preferences in Premiere Pro.

Thanks,

Sumeet

Report · May 15, 2022

Experiencing the same problem on windows 10, latest Premeire 22, this is ridiculous problem to be encountering in 2022.

Report · May 26, 2022

Hi There,

I had same problem. If you still need help with this. Good solution for now is to save it as PSD and add PSD to the timeline, runs very smooth compared to JPG-PNG.

Report · Jan 04, 2023

I had the exact same problem but only under very specific circumstances.
whenever i was editing with a custom workspace that used two monitors i had this problem. What i found odd tho was that when i switch to a preset that only used one monitor it fixed my problem completely. so i just rearranged my "assembly" workspace preset to use two monitors and now the problem is gone. idk why or how this happened but if it worked for me it might work for you.

i also want to note that when i was experiencing the problem only the timeline panel was laging, i was able preview my video at full scale, add and remove files / effects and whenever i would click play on the timeline or jumped to a random spot on it, my preview would update in time just as normal, but not the timeline. Anything i did had about a minute delay to show up in the timeline panel but it was stillmaking edits to the video files at its normal pace.

Report · Jul 25, 2023

Did you ever find a fix to this? I'm having the same issue right now

Report · Jul 25, 2023

Sorry to see this issue, everyone!

We have a tutorial here with some potential fixes for choppy playback. Let us know if any of the steps listed here help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0D1uCKmNSQ

If it does not help, open your Audio Hardware Preferences and set the default input to "None."

PC: use the toolbar at the top to go to Edit>Preferences>Audio Hardware
Mac: use the toolbar at the top to go to Premiere Pro>Settings>Audio Hardware

Other community members have suggested converting the image to a .PSD if you have Photoshop. This should be a last resort, but if that is the only thing that works for you, please let us know.

Report · Aug 27, 2023

Hi,

Thought I may add a little information here I have tested.

I had a .webp image in my project files, even though I wasn't using it, it was interfering with animation, selection of items on the timeline and even slowing the load of the project to a crawl. Once deleted, everything was as normal.

Report · Aug 27, 2023

Back again, further information found. It seems there is a limit to how many images you can pull in. The webp was just the last component. As I continued and added more files, I tried the Photoshop file trick to no avail.

In the end, I placed all my images into a new bin, and the speed returned.

Report · Oct 18, 2023

I had this issue as well on PP 2023. My whole laptop starts to lag, I also see Task Manager that my CPU is using 100% (means it's working way more than it should). Then I had to check the size of the photo and it was massive. The problem was the size of the photo itself, it is way too big for premiere to render for playback. So, what I did was just to resize it through a free site on the Internet - and voila! It worked! I was able to finish my project smoothly. Hope this helps!

Report · Sep 19, 2024

Hi - I have this exact issue, with Premiere Pro 2024. What would you say was a file size that was 'too big'? I've lost a day/half day trying to work out why my timeline keeps lagging/stopping when it encounters a pdf that I've converted to a jpeg/png with Adobe Acrobat. Haven't tried to the Photoshop solution/conversion yet though. Thanks