Premiere Suddenly is Slow to Respond and Video Playback is Laggy

[marks82719860]

Hello, I'm a content creator and the use of Adobe Premiere is extremely important for me. Overtime, it seemed performance for Premiere was degrading but it was still able to do the the editing I needed to do. Now I'm in a spot where no matter what I do, Premiere is slow to react.

Below is a YouTube video that shows how slow Premiere is to play a video. The timeline tracker sometimes stops completely while a video plays, audio sometimes cuts out, and playback sometimes will lag or simply result in a black screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IJBR-roKq0

The PC that I use is meant for gaming but I thought it should have been able to do these edits with no issues what so ever.

Below are my PC specs.

Processor: Intel Core i7-9700KF @ 3.6 GHz 8-Core
Graphics Card: Asus GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i PRO 75 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB RAM

Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive

It may also be important to know that I work off large video files (one piece of footage can range from 8-12 hours, at 1080p and 60fps, with the format being .mp4). I make clips from multiple large video files and make them into content.

I've tried so hard to fix the issue on my own, including: clearing media cache, clearing preferences, allocating extra RAM towards Premiere, uninstalling then installing, reducing playback resolution, transferring footage to my SSD and working off that. Nothing I do seems to work.

If anyone is able to assist, I beg of it please. This is currently putting all my content on hold until I'm able to resolve the issue.

[Warren Heaton]

That ought to handle 1080p just fine.

I'd try transcoding the 1080p60 MP4 to Apple ProRes 422 Proxy 1080p30 and editing that in a 1080p30 Sequence that has the Video Previews also set to QuickTime ProRes Proxy.  If you planning on doing slow motion, then transcode to 1080p60 with the Sequence set to 1080p30.

8 hours of 1080p30 ProRes 422 Proxy is going to need about 144GB of storage space. That may seem large, but when it comes to good intermediate CODECs, that's pretty small.

-Warren

[marks82719860]

Hello Warren,

I've attempted to use proxies before but they always take too long to convert from mp4 iuto a proxy. I just tried again after reading your response and it's telling me it will take over 2 hours to fully convert one of my 12-hour files, and I have multiples of these files.

Waiting 2 hours for this conversion isn't exactly something I'd call a solution.

[Warren Heaton]

MP4 is not an editing format.  I’m sorry to hear that someone led you to believe otherwise.

[RjL190365]

Which Nvidia driver are you using with that RTX 2070S?

Earlier Nvidia drivers have NVDEC that doesn't work properly. What made that deficiency even worse is your CPU: It has absolutely no IGP at all (or rather the IGP is permanently disabled by Intel during manufacturing), and thus no QuickSync hardware decoding or encoding at all. And that CPU has only 8 cores and 8 threads, which means that your CPU usage during even simple playback of H.264 or HEVC footage gets pegged to maximum and still goes sluggishly.

In short, you need a more powerful CPU to properly handle your working footage. Alternatively, you may want to update your Nvidia driver to version 516.59 or higher, which improves NVDEC performance with newer GPUs.

[marks82719860]

My current NVIDIA driver is updated to 516.94 so it shouldn't be that.

[RjL190365]

That narrows it down to your CPU. You made the mistake of choosing a KF (or anything Intel containing an F in its model number) for a CPU. By default, Premiere Pro utilizes both QuickSync and NVDEC simultaneously for hardware decoding of H.264 and HEVC footage (although you can choose to use one or the other or neither). Unfortunately, the NVDEC on even the most powerful Nvidia GPU still lags behind Intel's QuickSync for hardware decoding. And since your CPU has no integrated graphics at all (and that integrated graphics must be both present and enabled just to even have QuickSync at all), almost all decoding will get sent straight to your CPU, which with its 8 cores and 8 threads is only about as powerful as a three-year-old 6-core/12-thread CPU - and much weaker in performance than any current-gen i5 CPU.

[Jake25937280s99z]

lol what...... i just started having this problem and its not my computer or drivers nothing. becuase ive never had this problem before and its new.

[marks82719860]

I appreciate the reponse. Learned something new about what kind of CPUs to look into prior to making the purchase.

I'm currently in the transition from purchasing a new CPU now. Would you happen to have any reccomendations? I'm currently looking at some i7s that are not the KF model.

[Jake25937280s99z]

Honestly I'm not the one to ask those questions. I have no clue im sorry my
friend.

[RjL190365]

In your case, you will be looking at not only a new CPU, but also a new motherboard and (possibly) new RAM. You will need to upgrade all three of these at once.

The current latest gen i7 is the 13th-Gen i7-13700K, which will require a 700- or 600- (with BIOS update) chipset-based motherboard just to even work at all.

You see, your current motherboard cannot be upgraded to a newer-gen CPU at all because their sockets are now completely different from (and completely incompatible with) the one that's on your motherboard.

And if you do get a new motherboard, you may also need to purchase new DDR5 RAM (your current memory modules are DDR4, which is both physically and electrically incompatible with DDR5 sockets).

All that will push the total cost of your CPU upgrade to very close to $1000 USD, if not more.

[Bas_Timewriters]

I have the same problem. Version 22.5 and version 22.6.

Reverted back to 22.4 and none of these problems. No lagging, perfect playback.

Even trying to move the timeline cursor has an lag of a second.

Operating system: Windows 10 - Business Edition
Version: 10.0.22000
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 16
Processor speed: 3,6GHz
SqLite Version: 3.36.0
Built-in memory: 65236,6 MB

Displays: 1) 2560x1440, 2) 2560x1440
Input types: Multitouch: No, Integrated touch: No, Integrated pen: Yes, External touch: No, External pen: No, Keyboard: No

Graphics Processor Info:
DirectX: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (31.0.15.1694)

[Ali Jaber]

Deleting media cache sometimes fixes such version upgrade problems (sometimes resetting preferences would do).