Proxies scrubbing and playing back choppy

[darianl3257004]

So the situation is:

I have R3D media in a variety of sizes, from 4K all the way to 8K. I've created 1080p Pro Res Proxies from all of it, with the largest being 2048x1080.

In Premiere, even with proxies enabled, when I open the clip and try to scrub through it or playback, it's very choppy and laggy. However, if I change the playback resolution from Full to 1/4, the playback and scrubbing is smooth. This makes me think that perhaps the 1080p proxies are being up-res'ed to 8K because of the resolution of the original media?

Even stranger, when I offline the original media, the issue still persists.

Note that I have a LUT on the proxies in a Lumetri Color effect. When I turn the effect off, the proxies play back and scrub perfectly fine.

Even weirder - if I import the proxies on their own, completely separate from the original media, and I have the LUT, they play back and scrub perfectly.

Finally, one thing I've done is Reconnect Full Resolution Media directly to the proxies. Then I attach the proxies. Then I offline the original media (which is now the proxies in this scenario) and it works.

I'm stumped. Anyone experience this before?

Thanks!

[John V Knowles]

I'm not 100% convinced you have a good workflow going here. The whole idea behind proxies is to make really low res, lightweight files to edit with, not make 2K versions of large material. You also didn't list your system specs but it sounds like it's struggling with things like the Lumetri LUT; I think you're overloading the system.

If it were me I would make proxies using the basic ProRes proxy preset from inside Premiere, which are very small and non-HD. Premiere will scale them and apply anamorphic squeeze as necessary to match your original footage. You can also modify your own preset so that it adds the LUT during the transcode, so that's one less effect you need to turn on while working. Finally, there;s no shame in lowering the playback resolution if it helps you get the job done; i often work at 1/2 and I barely notice the lesser quality.

[darianl3257004]

Hi John,

Thanks so much for your response! For starters, here are is the system I'm using:

Late 2015, 27-inch iMac running Catalina and the newest version of Premiere

3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 RAM

1TB Internal SSD

AMD Radeon R9 M380 2 GB Graphics

I agree with you re: proxy resolution could be smaller, and it does seem like the Lumetri Color effect is overloading my system. However, in another project I'm working on I have almost the exact same process - I'm creating 2K proxies from 4K DCI footage, adding a Lumetri Color LUT as a source clip effect, and I have no issue with playback or scrubbing. So that's why I'm mainly confused.

Thanks for the proxy tips!

One strange thing about lowering the playback quality to 1/2 or lower - It seems like it is basing the playback resolution (of the source monitor) on the resolution of the original media. So when I set my playback resolution to 1/4, and I playback 1080p proxies created from 8K original media, it plays back fine - because 1080p is exactly 1/4 the size of 8K. The problem with this, is I have some original media that is only 4K UHD. So if I have my playback resolution set to 1/4, the proxies created from the 4K files (still 1080p) look pretty horrible. Weird, right?

[R Neil Haugen]

The playback resolution is taken from the sequence resolution, not the media resolution. Does that help understand what's going on?

Neil

[darianl3257004]

Thanks Neil.

Does this also apply to clips when you load them to the source monitor? What resolution is the source monitor playback resolution based on?

My issue is that in a 1080p sequence at full playback resolution, the proxies play back smooth, and If I drop the playback resolution in the source monitor, they play back smooth, but the proxies created from 4K original media look very bad with a lowered playback resolution (in the source monitor).

[R Neil Haugen]

Source monitor is based (as I understand it) on the current source ... if the source is a clip opened in the source monitor, at that clip's res. If a sequence, at that sequence's res.

As both are 'the source' for themselves.

Neil

[darianl3257004]

Right. So it's interesting how my proxies have choppy playback in the source monitor, but smooth playback in 1080p sequences. This leads me to believe the source monitor's resolution for these clips is 8K (the resolution of the original media), even though the 8K media is offline.