Thread Ripper Stutter Playback

[jayk02]

Hello everyone.  This is my first post so I hope I do it correctly.  I've just finished building system that I HOPED would give me many years of smooth editing.  Sadly I am not having that kind of luck.  Two problems of note:

Welcome screen sits upon launch for up to 20 -30 seconds before plug ins load.  Once they start, the program is up 2 seconds later.

As noted in the title playback is very stuttering.  Regardless of workspace, or resolution (turning it down to 1/4 still results in jittery playback)

Here are the specs on my system and file.. Any help in this process would be wonderful:

Computer and Premiere Data Sheet:

This is a newly built system.  Bacially, Windows 10, drivers, and Premiere.

Premiere Pro CC 2017 11.1.2

Processor  AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core Processor, 3400 Mhz, 16 Core(s), 32 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Mode  UEFI

Installed Physical Memory (RAM)  64.0 GB

Name  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

C drvie is a 500gb 980 Pro onboard SSD (1700 MB/s write / 2555 MB/s Read)

D drvie (Cache drive) is the same. (Same Speed as C drive)

Project is on a 4 drive RAID consisting of SSDs. 

(Write 1269 MB/s / Read 1436 MB/s

File being played back:

Type: MXF

File Size: 12.71 GB

Image Size: 1920 x 1080

Frame Rate: 59.94

Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 24 bit - 4 channels

Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - 4 channels

Total Duration: 00;35;34;38

Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0

MXF File details:

Wrapper type: MXF OP1a (type: SingleItem SinglePackage MultiTrack Stream Internal)

File generated by: Sony, Mem  (2.00)

AVC Long GOP High 4:2:2 Profile 10-bit Unconstrained Coding

Bitstream Format: Sony

Class 50

During playback 30% of the CPU is being used.

Aprox 8 MB/s on the hard drvie.

I will be very grateful for any help I can get reaching the editing promised land of smooth playback!

Jay

[excited_Genie16B8]

On my Win10 machine, i7/6-cores, 64GB of RAM with a 1060/6-GB GPU ... playback in Resolve and PrPro are nearly identical with long-GOP media.

On my significantly less powered i7 920/GTX 970 system, I did notice markedly better performance in Resolve with GH4 UHD media.  I was able to cut a project (with color correction) using only original media.  That's a non-starter for me in PP, where Cineform proxies are pretty much required.

[R Neil Haugen]

I've worked some GH4 media, not a lot ... and it went pretty well. I look at the performance that different folks get and am constantly amazed. While in general Resolve can be a more bearish app than say PrPro 2017, on some low-powered rigs it just simply flies. And PrPro's performance can be variable also. Someone with a hefty system is struggling, while a light-weight one is doing fine, similar media.

So ... there's obviously factors such as how many apps are active in the background, what other apps are "up", all kinds of "tuning" things. Which your advice document doth point out, I might note!

Yea, I worked through that manual over about a week one time, half-hour to an hour at a time,several times a day. Some sections more skimmed, some read for details. I'm a fast reader, which helps. But that thing is actually useful.

Neil

[IAH Digital]

Yeah Resolve14 wasn't nearly as good as 15 and the new version is still in BETA. Resolve15 is so good its scary...and they have a feedback forum where you can submit bugs and requests. Guess what, after only a few weeks of people submitting bugs and suggestions Blackmagic released a NEW BETA with tons of fixes and features based on USERS feedback!!!!! They have won me over

[R Neil Haugen]

Apparently you've not noted the User Voice feedback system that the Adobe PrPro team had made available to them some months back. And ... they've already released two bug-fix patches for the 12. release cycle.

And ... yea, I'm familiar with the Resolve feedback setup also.

Neil

[excited_Genie16B8]

I do applaud Adobe for the new Feedback system, but that's an ancillary aspect of the rivalry.

Over the past two development cycles, Blackmagic has done the equivalent of stuffing Audition and After Effects into Premiere Pro, and made it work.  They also reduced the price of the software to a one time (lifetime) $300.

Over the same time period, Adobe added support for cell phone and video game footage, and raised the price to $660/year.

[R Neil Haugen]

Hmmm ... I give a ton of credit to the BM folks, for what they've done with Resolve. And I do like the way that should push Adobe corporate to give PrPro some of the cash that program generates (one of their biggest for licenses in use) back for further development. A little competition is a ​very​ good thing!

That said, as an NLE there's still a ton of stuff that Resolve doesn't have .... yet. Another couple versions, it certainly will. For many, probably the majority of editing needs, the current version is probably acceptable, and for some, pretty darn awesome.

As Resolve was first adding an editor mode before SpeedGrade was formally EOL'd, I argued rather loudly both here, the Sg u2u forum, and in communications directly with the PrPro support staff and development team, that shutting down Sg was incredibly short-sighted. To the point of a few of the 'team' of that time considering me a real pain in the tushie. The "Direct Link" between PrPro & Sg was vastly superior to the "Dynamic Link" between PrPro & Ae.

I'm pleased that with the changes that came in the 12.1.1 release, the "Dynamic Link" between PrPro & Audition functions ​exactly​ like the Direct Link and ​not​ like the Dynamic Link. At NAB this year, I commented on that to a couple of the Audition staffers, who just smiled and said in effect, "Oh, you caught that, did you ... ". Yea. Going forth & back between PrPro & Audition now is slick ... do some work in Au, come back to PrPro. Go back to Au to tweak, and you just start up where you left off. All tools with full settings still showing. Yes!

There's a few other large workflow improvements that weren't Huge Feature! things in the current PrPro. So I'd disagree with the limited improvements you list. That said, subtitling continues to be a HUGE pita, they ​must​ give the users color management options, and ... Lumetri with split-screen and a very good shot-match process is a ​huge​ step forward in workflow. But even with that, Lumetri ain't near the total ability that Sg was, and to keep up with Resolve, needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Naturally, I shared my thoughts while at NAB. ​This​ set of staffers seems much more interested in things like that, and discussing what ​could​ be done with and from a user point of view. So ... I'm hopeful.

Although, Resolve breathing down their neck is definitely a part of my hopefulness ...

Neil

[excited_Genie16B8]

as an NLE there's still a ton of stuff that Resolve doesn't have .... yet. Another couple versions, it certainly will.

That's really the heart of the issue here.  The speed at which BMD is advancing Resolve so far outpaces what Adobe's doing that I just don't think Adobe can catch up any more.  (And BMD is doing it on three platforms, Adobe's only working on two.)

[excited_Genie16B8]

On something of a side note, I certainly don't use the full editing capabilities of PP.  My work just doesn't need it.  So I'm kind of curious, what do you find missing in Resolve 15 that PP can do?  What advancements for the Edit page do you still see coming?

[R Neil Haugen]

Resolve would be able to handle my standard work, probably without too much fuss. My MOGRT stuff and some of the work I'm doing for other companies is actually based on using gear with PrPro so that is totally based in this app.

I've watched the discussions especially the last couple NABs about how usable Resolve would be in different studio/b-cast workflows. There are some things many still find lacking but as of this last NAB, it's short enough fewer shops would find it intolerable.

So, the real applicable question here is will upper management kick loose the funds to expand the workforce to keep up with the Joneses?

Something of a spectator sport, perhaps ...

Neil

[IAH Digital]

No I've never come across the Adobe User Voice feedback system. I figure that its different from the Features request. Its great that Adobe has already released some bug fixes but the rate at which they are adding new features while neglecting core performance improvements is a real problem. I'm not just talking about Premiere...which seems to get worse as the updates are released IMHO...After Effects IS STILL SINGLE CORE OPTIMIZED!!! This is an impossibility for my studio to work with, especially with such high performance hardware being available on the market. BMD spends time optimizing their software so that it uses every bit of your hardware's power. This I appreciate much more than libraries, templates and new features.

This is just my experience and opinion though

[R Neil Haugen]

The old feature/bug system has been replaced by UserVoice, so though it's the same link it's a completely different page. You can look at all the bugs or feature requests filed, sort, add comments to others and create your own. It even gets comments from program engineers. Vast improvement.

As to AfterEffects, that is intriguing. Some people get only single-core use and others I've known have a 12-core running all cores. Some with 12-cores report only partial use of them, and a 6-core from someone else is fully utilized. So blanket statements aren't necessarily accurate, but why ... there's such a difference in performance on various rigs ... I've no clue.

Same thing in PrPro. I see no difference in my mid-level machine between 2017 and any of the 2018 versions. Some reported that 2018 chugs on their rigs. Which would be a bummer. I have seen a few threads on the Hardware forum where folks have taken setup/tuning information given by Bill Gehrke and EC Bowen, and reported what seemed a frustrating poor performer is now running fine. Others, not so much.

These apps are I guess somewhat affected by how many operations are running in the background on the machine and timings & such, which is way beyond my computer skills & training. Would it be good if the developers could get them past that? Yep.

But even then, other apps such as Resolve can vary widely per computer also. We get plenty of reports here of people on middling/low-end machines saying Resolve runs faster than PrPro. They run about even on mine. But I know many users of Resolve that have to have really high-end rigs to get it  to work decently. What's the deal? Don't know that one either.

Neil

[anettes36532900]

I have the exact same issue - no matter what I do, nothing plays back smoothly. I've reduced playback resolution as far as it'll go, I've made Cineform proxies for my entire project (even tried playing those back at 1/8th resolution!), and it still drops dozens of frames over just a few seconds of playback.

My system is a Threadripper 1920X, 32GB of RAM (3400MT/s), a GTX 970 and a Samsung 960 Evo drive + a 4TB HDD.

I've tried placing both the project and the media on both drives, I've tried both GPU and software accelerated playback, I've checked every resource there is to check (RAM use never exceeds 80%, SSD load never nears any type of choking point, and outside of creating the proxies the CPU barely seems to be lifting a finger - same goes for the GPU). I'm utterly baffled by this.

My media is from a Sony A7S II, XAVC S 4K 100Mbps 25p files. I get that these files might be a challenge for Premiere (even if VLC plays them back just fine), but I can't grasp why playback with 720p Cineform proxies wouldn't fix this.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, as this is driving me up the wall right now. Editing is impossible when playback doesn't work.

[Bill Gehrke]

Run my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) and see if your system is well tuned.  Here is the Output.csv file for a TR 1920X running well.

"21","38","21","171", Premiere Version:, 12.0.0.224

That system has two M.2 PCIe x4 drives and a GTX 1070 so your first three numbers will not be that low.

[Bill Gehrke]

anettes36532900  wrote

My media is from a Sony A7S II, XAVC S 4K 100Mbps 25p files. I get that these files might be a challenge for Premiere (even if VLC plays them back just fine), but I can't grasp why playback with 720p Cineform proxies wouldn't fix this.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, as this is driving me up the wall right now. Editing is impossible when playback doesn't work.

First get another SSD to have all your project files and media ideally one of the new M.2 PCIe x4 versions.  Forget hard disk drives for editing.  But let me first tell you I edit XAVC-S from my Sony FDR-AX100 smoothas silk on my laptop with a simple 4-core i7-4700HQ and two SATA III SSD's.  But it is properly tuned!  If you bought your threadripper as a complete computer it is loaded with all sorts of garbage programs and processes.  Look at Task Manager/Performance and when you have your computer turned on with no applications yet running, how many processes are running?

[anettes36532900]

Thanks for the feedback!

I ran your benchmarks, and my results seem to be noticeably worse than yours: 58, 80, 28, 276. I should note that Firefox with a bunch of tabs was open while running this, so that probably affected the scores. I'll try to re-run the benchmark later today. IIRC, my disk write rate was ~650MB/s. The CPU score seems particularly high, although I'm suspecting that to be affected by Firefox. The GPU results seem in the ballpark of what I should expect (a bit high for H.264, spot on for MPEG2. My main question regarding the benchmark is how this relates to timeline playback, though, as I don't quite see the connection.

The PC was built from scratch, so it has zero unnecessary applications running. Unfortunately it isn't that simple, sadly. I've tried closing/disabling the few background applications in use, with no results.

As for the SSD, the 960 Evo is one of the fastest m.2 drives on the market, and even though it also houses the OS and applications, it boggles my mind that it should be anywhere near insufficient when no other applications are putting even light stress on it. I might consider getting a second SSD, although I doubt it will make any difference as there's zero indication that the system is I/O bottlenecked during playback.

As an experiment, I installed Premiere on my boyfriend's gaming PC, which apart from a slightly faster GPU (from a different vendor) is around half the performance of mine in any metric - it has a 6 core Ryzen 5 1600X (marginally higher clocks, but half the cores and threads), 16GB of 3200 MT/s RAM, and an AMD Fury X GPU. It also has a 960 Evo main drive, but even with the project file, media and proxies all located on a dirt-slow external USB HDD (~50MB/s sequential transfers, and as it's a 2.5" mechanical HDD probably a dozen IOPS or thereabouts compared to the tens of thousands for the 960 Evo), playback is significantly smoother. Not only does it stutter far less, but even at full resolution (proxies) the few stutters that appear are 1-2 frame minor stutters rather than the 5-10 frame chugs that appear even at 1/4 resolution on my workstation. Mainly, this seems to be due to the PC running out of RAM during playback, which isn't surprising, but never happens on the workstation.

I'll definitely have to re-run the benchmarks at a time when I'm not juggling multiple tasks, but other than that, I'm still baffled by why Premiere performs the way it does.

[Bill Gehrke]

anettes36532900  wrote

Thanks for the feedback!

I ran your benchmarks, and my results seem to be noticeably worse than yours: 58, 80, 28, 276.

Well that 275 seconds for the CPU test with another user reporting 171 seconds means that you have something using an awful lot of CPU cycles resulting in lousy Premiere Pro editing performance..  Since video is sequential  any othe process stealing CPU cycles is a problem. 

Again: "Look at Task Manager/Performance and when you have your computer turned on with no applications yet running, how many processes are running?"

Your statement:

"I might consider getting a second SSD, although I doubt it will make any difference as there's zero indication that the system is I/O bottlenecked during playback."

When I experimented and just used one 960 EVO for everything the PPBM diskI/o score for me was 31 seconds where your score of 58 seconds is twice as long.  That to me does not make any sense except that if you thrown in non-video editng interruptions it messes up everything.  Have you turned off indexing on that EVO? 

[anettes36532900]

After a reboot, there are 75 background processes running, at 0% CPU activity, 12% memory usage and some intermittent minor drive loads (looks like Onedrive is updating). That includes antivirus, a cloud backup service for my footage, as well as some minor bakground apps and utilities. None are using any tangible amount of system resources. Of course, background processes only matter if they're actually using system resources, which these aren't. I know this was a big thing back when PCs ran HDDs for boot drives (given their god-awful random read/write performance (of ~20 IOPS at best, vs. ~50 000 for an NVME SSD) and the ever-increasing amount of tiny reads and writes stemming from these processes), but if Premiere is that finicky, it would be unusable on any SATA SSD, given how my drive outperforms those even while running the OS.

Re-running the benchmark without any other applications open (I paused Onedrive for good measure) changed the results somewhat: 57 (650MB/s write rate), 68, 28, 173.

It seems obvious that Firefox was hogging the CPU, and the disk write rate must be what I get for editing off a boot drive. If you're trying to tell me that a >600MB/s write rate to my SSD is somehow causing choppy playback in the timeline, I'd like you to explain that, as I'm at a loss to see a connection between those two factors.

As the benchmark doesn't test disk read rates (which would be more relevant for playback unless Premiere playback includes some sort of live transcoding, which would be a whole other can of worms), I ran CrystalDiskMark to get a pointer - although canned benchmarks like this aren't even close to representative of actual performace for a whole heap of reasons, they do give a decent indication of relative performance. With a single thread accessing the drive and a queue depth of 1 - in other words, as low as it gets, or a pretty standard desktop workload - read rates were 2180 MB/s and write rates 1699 MB/s. Making a rather oversimplified conversion into an "equivalent" speed to your write benchmark (650MB/s vs. 1699, or a factor of .383), that would give read rates in the ballpark of 840MB/s. Given that my source media isn't even a tenth of that data rate, again, I'd say the SSD should be able to handle this workload very well. Not to mention that the problem does not go away when using 720p Cineform proxies for editing.

The drive does have indexing enabled, but given the improvements to Windows Indexing since Windows 7 and the fact that indexing a 500GB NVME SSD takes tens of seconds at most (not to mention that the NVME protocol allows for multiple threads to access the drives simultaneously, removing any interrupts unless the Indexing service runs more than 65 000 threads - which seems rather unlikely) I'm not worried about that. Drive indexing does not cause tangible (and barely measurable, if at all) performance variations on modern SSDs, especially ones fixed in a system (and thus already indexed, with only intermittent refreshes needed). This is of course more important if the drive sees sustained 100% loads, but again - that's not the case during timeline playback. If you'd like, I can give you screenshots of Task Manager and Resource Monitor while playing back.

My theory for the performance delta between your drive test and mine is that it's caused by various system and background processes and the intermittent small and large drive accesses caused by these. Of course this has a measurable performance impact, but given that the measured performance still exceeds any SATA SSD in existence (even the best theoretical SATA SSD you could come up with), you're going to have to spoon-feed me an explanation of how this is preventing me from playing back 720p Cineform proxies - 'cause that is something I simply don't believe.

My next step will be to reinstall my GPU driver, as well as updating chipset and other motherboard drivers. I'm still leaning towards this being a "Premiere is horribly optimized for Threadripper" issue, though.

[johansebamuel]

I am having this same issue on my system - Ryzen TR 1950x, 32GB ram, SSDs, the works. I built this system specifically for video editing and so far my crap Lenovo i7 laptop does a much better job. Here is a video of the two systems playing back the same clip:

I should note that in this test, the laptop is loading the footage off of a network drive while the 1950x system that should be awesome is loading it off of a super fast RAID 0 with read/write speeds above 700MB/s. I also tried loading the footage from a fast SSD with the same results. It's NOT a read issue, it appears to be a CPU issue.  

I get jobs where I edit with clients and I have already lost one job and put another in jeopardy because of this issue. I look like a (*&#$ moron being $3500 into a pro editing rig in a pro studio and it performs like flaming garbage. 

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE: I encourage everyone who has this issue to report it a bug here and cross your fingers that Adobe pays attention and fixes this.

[johansebamuel]

I managed to talk to someone at Adobe who can do things on Reddit today. Here is what I posted in regards to this issue. This was his response: 

Great! We got some actual traction on this issue today, mainly due to your fine post. We now have an internal bug filed and hope to have some test cases shortly. Resolving issues like this do take time, but we are now on a path to assisting you and other users with this setup.

There was another user on uservoice who said he had a tech support rep tell him that the engineering department was working on unspecified "this issue." From this it sounds like this is not something that they were previously aware of and that the other user's rep was talking about something else or something similar. The good news is maybe this will actually finally get fixed!