Using "Move Playhead to Cursor" is not nearly as responsive as normal scrubbing

@jamieclarke  I'll put my system info below - it seems to occur only on Windows. 

However @Tom_edit was able to identify the root cause. The "Move Playhead to Cursor" command is apparently not programmed as a "press and hold" command, but rather responds only to individual keydown events. So the "delay" is simply the set time between when Windows starts doing the key repeat after holding down a key.

(Behind the scenes when a key is held down in Windows, it sends the WM_KEYDOWN "message" to the Window, and if the user doesn't release the key, it waits a time set by the user, then starts sending additional keydown messages at the defined rate, until the user releases the key after which Windows sends the WM_KEYUP message and stops repeating the key.)

So what I described as "lag" and "not updating frequently" after the initial delay was actually because the Windows repeat key rate is not very high.

So basically I think that particular shortcut command should be programmed in such a way where it continuously updates the playhead position instead of needing to wait for individual keydown events.

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System Info:

• Premiere Pro Version 25.2.0 (Build 147)
• Windows 11 24H2 (Build 26100.3476)
• Sequence Settings: Doesn't seem to matter, it happens regardless of sequence settings
• System Hardware:
  • CPU: Intel 13900KS
  • GPU: Nvidia 5090 FE
  • GPU Driver Version: 572.83 (Current latest studio driver)
  • RAM: 128GB
  • Storage: NVMe SSD - Optane 905P 1.5TB

The reason you're seeing it stick/lag behind is because the shortcut is only intended to be a singular move of the playhead and so you're relying on windows repeating the key input to do the rest (which as I'm sure you know has an initial delay, and also doesnt repeat all that frequently).

By @Tom_edit 

Ah that explains it! Not sure how I never put two-and-two together with that. They should really add custom handling for that hotkey in particular to support press and hold. 

I created my own little Autohotkey function for it - I have the shortcut assigned to my mouse side button (which I programmed in Logitech's software to natively output an F15 keypress). So this just makes it immediately start repeating the keypress instead of waiting for Windows:

~F15::
{
	While GetKeyState("F15", "P") ; P to ensure it uses physical key state
	{
		SendInput("{F15 down}")
		Sleep(30)
	}
	SendInput("{F15 Up}")
}

In my main autohotkey script I have running all the time, since I use my side mouse button for other stuff, I have that assignment under this section which does some checks to make sure it only applies when Premiere is the active window, but also only if the mouse is specifically over the timeline panel (using a custom "CheckMouseOverControlAdvanced" function I have):

#HotIf WinActive("ahk_exe Adobe Premiere Pro.exe") and CheckMouseOverControlAdvanced("ahk_exe Adobe Premiere Pro.exe", "DroverLord - Window Class*", 3300)

The `CheckMouseOverControlAdvanced` function is in my own Utils.ahk script here: https://github.com/ThioJoe/ThioJoe-AHK-Scripts/blob/89e65913bfd8b282c4914300d35a3c7733f6f9d8/Scripts/Utils.ahk#L241

That function basically lets me check if the current control under the mouse is larger than a certain width, so since the timeline panel in premiere is going to be the longest I can basically check if it's over it by that.

Got it, cheers. 🙂

@MyerPj the thread is specifically about the responsiveness of ‘Move Playhead to Cursor,’ as mentioned in the title

You know you don't have to click and drag, you can simply click up there to where you want the playhead to be.

As you don't believe me,  I uploaded the video from my colleague, who isn't experiencing any lag when pressing and holding "Move Playhead to Cursor". Again, same macbook model, same project, same premiere version.

The reason you're seeing it stick/lag behind is because the shortcut is only intended to be a singular move of the playhead and so you're relying on windows repeating the key input to do the rest (which as I'm sure you know has an initial delay, and also doesnt repeat all that frequently). It'd be sweet if there was a similar hotkey that moved and continued moving the playhead until key release though.

Alternatively your best bet outside that is something like ahk (example vid). TaranVH has a v1 script for this, I have one for v2 that expands functionality and catches more edge cases but it relies on other things in my repo and a few other external libs/tools, so isn't really easy to pass off. It's not a perfect solution and still suffers from some visual lag compared to left click dragging as prem will only actually move the playhead every 30-50ms~ (guestimation), but it's a lot more useful than waiting for key repeating

edit: also apologies, I only just realised this post got necro'd somewhat

It's actually a mistery to me, that it scrubs perfectly smooth on my friend's macbook. The same macbook model, the same project, the same premiere version. I can't get my head around it.