Premiere Project and Sequence really Lags

[askrause22]

I have been working on a feature length doc in Premiere, and recently had to transfer the whole project from a 4TB drive to a 5TB drive (both USB C Lacie drives). Since then, I have experienced really slow performance from premiere when working on this project, in terms of effects control panels is laggy, 1-2 second lag between hitting play and playback starting, save takes 2-3 times longer than it used to, video preview doesn't follow when scrubbing, video thumbnails take ages to load in timeline.

Premiere and my computer don't lag when I open other smaller projects, and even lags much less when I am working in a sequence with much less going on (like a trailer sequence for example). I have cleared cache files, turned off growing files refresh, ran first aid on my hard drive, removed un-needed media from my project file, reinstalled premiere, restarted my computer, duplicated the project, renamed it and opened the new project file, nothing has worked.

Video playback isn't the problem here, I don't have a ton of dropped frames, once playback starts.

Specs
2018 MBP

32GB RAM

2.9 ghz quad core i9 processor

Pro Vega 20 4GB graphics card

Premiere Pro CC 2019, fully up to date

Footage:

Mostly Cinema 4K, C-Log profile Mkv files from Canon c300mkii

Proxies: Custom-wide Quicktime 720p proxies

A good amount of archival footage of various sizes all .mov or .mp4

Trying to figure out how to clean it up and make it smoother, or if I just have to deal with the unbelievable size of the project as an impediment to expediency.

Thanks for your advice in advance

[Kevin-Monahan]

AskKrause,

Sorry for this. How does one of your backups behave? Let us know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[askrause22]

Backup project/drive acts similarly/even slower. I also had to transfer that to a larger hard-drive at the same time. That's really when things slowed down drastically on both the primary and back-up.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Did you update your project file?

Kevin

[askrause22]

What do you mean by that? All the project files are updated to Premiere 2019, the backups are duplicates of the primaries on a separate drive. All the projects are up to date in terms of the cutting/editing itself.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi,

What do you mean by that? All the project files are updated to Premiere 2019, the backups are duplicates of the primaries on a separate drive. All the projects are up to date in terms of the cutting/editing itself.

What I mean is: were your project files updated from 13.0.x to 13.1.x at any point along the lifespan of your project? Updating project files, especially large ones like features and docs can cause corruption in the updated versions.

Another concern I have is the new drive. Was it initialized using the same protocol as the original Lacie drive? Are you certain you are using USB 3.0 and not USB 2.0 connections? Have you done a speed test?

Thanks,

Kevin

[askrause22]

The drives were initialized the same way, I'm sure its USB 3.0, the speed test showed normal read and write speeds for USB 3.0. What's really weird is that my big sequence with the whole film in it moves about 25 times slower than my trailer sequence with only about 1:30 of media on it, which leads me to believe its something in the sequence or the mix of media in that sequence.

Sequence settings:

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sequence Corruption

• It's possible that your sequence itself is corrupt. Can you try copy/pasting the clips into a new sequence?

Folder Permissions:

• When was the last time you updated macOS?
• Have you tried resetting Adobe folder permissions? I do this on all my Macs periodically and never hurts. Premiere Pro CC, CC 2014, or 2014.1 freezing on startup or crashing while working (Mac OS X 10.9, a...

Kevin

[askrause22]

I have already tried the copy/paste sequence thing. I updated my mac as soon as a new update comes out I am currently running Mojave 10.14.15.

I have reset the Adobe folder permissions, nothing has changed.

I am thinking about trying to make a new project and importing sequences into that project to see if it will work better.

[LennardvanderValk]

Have you found a working solution yet? I'm experiencing the same issues when working in large timelines.

[lehestro]

Similar issue here. Are you using proxies? I'm also on a Lacie USB-C drive, although 4TB. But I find when I turn proxies everything in the GUI has a lag. When I turn them off, though playback stops working well, my timelines and panels start reacting as they should, without delay. 

It isn't a solution, but hopefully it's a clue that will help.

[R Neil Haugen]

In larger projects, it is vastly better to work in Premiere's new-ish Production manner ... it breaks up the project into small linked project files within a file/folder structure for easy grab and use of any asset in any project file without duplication.

And as it loads far less in the computer at any one time, runs much faster. It was developed for long-form and major epidodic work by their "Hollywood" section, and even helps with small single-operator shops.

This is an explanation of the workflow ...

Using Productions in Premiere Pro

And this is the Reference document (manual) for getting started with Productions mode.

Productions reference pdf

Neil

[lehestro]

It's actually just a small project – only one 3 minute scene. However, I am also working on a feature length project in which this has been a major problem. This is incredibly welcome news going forward. I know a lot of feature filmmakers (well, like 4, but that implies others) that have been extremely frustrated with Premiere for this very reason. Am keen to check it out!

That being said, this interface lag is still an issue. I'm in 14.3.1, btw. macOS High Sierra, 2013 mac pro 6-core Xeon, 32GB Ram. Never had this happen before, even on bigger projects, actually.