what is the future of premiere?

[Jeffiot25214080m00m]

i'm a full time video editor, I spend minimum 8 hours a day in premiere, currently on a windows machine with 64gb ram and a geforce RTX 3080.

I just got of a remote session with an adobe support employee who attempted to get playback working on my pc, and I feel like I've reached a point where I need to share and also ask a couple of questions:

first of all; in my experience, premiere is basically unuseable in 2023. there is seemingly a myriad of backend problems that I know nothing about, but that simply makes this software close to unusable for anything else than short 1080p sequences.

anything 4k (even with 480p proxies), anything longer than 10 minutes, anything with over [X] amount of text layers in the timeline, anything with more than 1-2 effects on it (even hardware accelerated ones), anything where more than 2-3 layers are stacked on top of each other just causes the entire software to become so sluggish that it simply doesnt feel viable as a professional tool anymore. forget about smooth playback, we're talking no playback.

I have had people from adobe remote access my PC several times, and unfortunately not much have come from it. this isnt at the fault of the support worker however, because no amount of cleaning out cache-files, making sure its in CUDA or re-installing graphic drivers can fix the issues of the program simply not performing well and hindering a smooth workflow at almost every single step.

I am no expert at hardware or software, but from what I understand, most of these issues stem from the fact that premiere is running on the mercury playback engine which was released in like, 2009 or so, I believe? maybe this isn't the problem, again I'm no expert, but it really seems like the program simply can not handle too many files/heavy files etc, which leads me to believe that its simply a matter of it being outdated at this point.
Most of my editor friends and collegues have all switched over to resolve, and while I'm also sick of hearing about how it does things better etc (I'm the one stubborn one who's been saying "adobe will fix their stuff soon enough, just give them a year". for 4 years now.) it has come to a point where I'm pretty much asking myself at a daily basis: why am I using a software that costs me like 50USD a month and getting terrible performance even with 1080p footage (if the timeline is busy), while my friends and collegues are using a _free_ software and getting buttery smooth 4k playback?

so I guess my question is, as title goes,
what is the future of premiere?

has there been an official statement along the lines of "we are aware of the state of the industry and we are aware that we have fallen behind, but give us [X] months and we will reveal our grand new update"?

or even just a "we're working on it"?

to be clear, I love premiere. it's why I use it every day. I'm not here to start a flame war or say that some other software is objectively better etc. I'm just confused by the state of things and wondering if I should give up my hopes of this ever getting fixed and becoming useable.

[Harold Silva]

Entiendo tu malestar al no poder usar Premiere fluidamente en una máquina aparentemente muy potente; el detalle es que muchas veces el problema surge cuando el sistema operativo no está en óptimas condiciones, (ya me sucedió una vez algo parecido) y la solución fue reinstalar mi sistema operativo (en ese entonces Windows 10) y luego instalar todo nuevamente.
Parecía una locura y a pesar de haber renegado por eso, solucioné el problema que me traía varios dolores de cabeza (use en ese momento windows 10 Profesional)

Saludos cordiales

[Jeffiot25214080m00m]

I used google translate to understand what you wrote, so if anything gets lost in translation either way I blame that.

that being said; no, this isn't a case of needing to re-format my computer. believe, I have done that several time, on several computers, and yes sometimes it has helped for one reason or another, but reformatting to get a better working software is putting a bandaid on a severed leg.

I'm not describing a problem that specifically only I have on one specific computer. I'm describing what I perceive to be a fundemental problem with premiere on any computer. this isn't a question of a windows update or an old graphics driver. it's a question of how long we can be expected to use a software just because it's "industry standard", despite it not delivering a working product.

i appreciate that you took the time to read and respond however.

[Media Editor]

A Premiere user should not have to reinstall the operating system.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello CoV,

Indeed. Very rare to have to do that. That said, when working as a quality engineer at the NLE companies I've worked at, we reinstalled the OS on a regular basis to make sure no ghosts made it into the machine (so to speak). When you're at the end of your troubleshooting wits, it's worth a try, however it's painful.

Cheers,
Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey Jeff,

Sorry to hear about your situation and the support you've been getting. I'd like to get a bit more info from you to make a few best guesses as to why you're hitting performance bottlenecks. I hope I can help.

To begin with, I have a couple of PCs that are rock solid. My Mac M1 is also delivering as expected. Most editors are not experiencing the situation you are facing (myself included), so I wouldn't expect any such missive (as you posed in your original post) from the Premiere Pro team.

What is the CPU that is installed in your system? What kind of media are you using? Is it 4K? Is it H.264 or HEVC based? Does it have a variable frame rate or a constant one? What kind of hard drives are you using and how are they connected? Is your media cache running off a separate fast drive?

If you have an AMD CPU, and are using H.264 or HEVC-based media that has not been transcoded or proxied, being stored on drives which may not be optimally set up, you may have a recipe for not having the best possible performance. All these things can be addressed.

I do understand your frustration, but some adjustments to your workflow may be at the heart of your issues. Let me know more specifics about your workflow and I'll try to help you get better results.

Reinstalling an OS is one of the last measures one might take, but it is a last resort. In my decades of editing professionally, I have had to do this a handful of times. Let's get the other info from you first to make some initial findings that may help you.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Kevin

[SquareEyz]

We have had years worth of major stability and functionality issues over here, with a downward trend, and certain colleagues have voiced similar concerns.

Thanks for stepping in to assist @Kevin-Monahan. 

We are windows based, and for example, since CC2022 we've had to force quit Premiere in order to exit.

I'd really like to constructively figure out what the issues are here, and get the resultant performance that we expect from a pro tool such as Premiere. 

At the facility I work at, we are part of a large organisation with an IT department that has us all on Windows Enterprise OS, and only now am I wondering if this could be part of our issues?

I'd love to take this offline @Kevin-Monahan and figure this out, as we are now at an enterprise Adobe CC membership as well- which I'd hope has more meaningful / results based support. 

I'd happily report back to the forums with whatever results we come up with.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello SquareEyz,

Thanks for the note. I appreciate the info you provided. There are added layers of potential bottlenecks when working in an Enterprise environment. In my experience, these are usually related to connectivity, storage, and media file types (mainly). What you might try as a test is to take one of your workstations offline and disconnect it from everything in your networked environment. Then, using a standard media file (generated, say, from a camera) see if you don't get the performance you'd expect.

I don't believe that your version of Windows should be a problem, as long as you are running the latest version of the OS. I'd love to hear the results of the test I laid out for you and we can go from there. Take care, and thanks again for writing in.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Jeffiot25214080m00m]

Hey Kevin
as for your questions,
Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700KF 3.60 GHz
What media I use: 4k video from a gh5mk2. codec: h264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part10) (avc1). Constant framerate of 25.
however i work with 480p proxies.
hard drive: KINGSTON 1tb ssd (which my D: drive, while premiere is installed on C:)

media cache: on the D: drive aswell, but I empty it on a very regular basis and have not encountered any improvements from it.

any suggestions that doesn't include reformatting my OS?

[Averdahl]

hard drive: KINGSTON 1tb ssd

By @Jeffiot25214080m00m

How much free space do you have on the 1TB SSD? Thumb of rule is to have at least 10% free space on the disk. If you have less free space left you will get a myriad of performance issues. 

[Jeffiot25214080m00m]

about 170gb of free space right now, and I clear ut out frequently.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the added into. Your system sounds like it could handle that media. Is it 4:2:2 10-bit? Can you show us a screen shot of the clip info in MediaInfo in "Tree View" to evaluate it?

My hunch is that your problem is media related. Just because you can work with the native H.264 camera files, or with H.264 proxies, doesn't always mean you should. Historically, this adage has helped me and others work reliably with NLEs, in general.

Personally, I avoid H.264 altogether in my workflow as I do not consider it an editing codeec. Call me a boor, but I transcode to ProRes on ingest and go from there. Since I am dealing with ProRes and not H.264 (no proxies needed), everything regarding editing performance, stability and export goes as planned nearly every single time. Since I ingest as ProRes when importing footage, it transcodes in the background so no time is lost as I set up the project. Could you try that as a test?

Thanks,
Kevin

[MyerPj]

480p (720×480) sounds like a mismatched aspect ratio in proxy to actual media. Are you running 3840x2160, 720p would be right (1280x720).

What are you using for your proxies. ProRes proxy or Cineform work well. h.264 defeats the purpose.

[Jeffiot25214080m00m]

I have another big editing project coming up in a week or two. I will try to transcode it to pro-res.

how do you go about that? the same procedure as creating a proxy? or do you drop all the files into media encoder before starting the edit, chose a prores-preset and export them to new files? any specific presets that are good/dont lose quality etc? I'm new to working with prores files.

as for the treeview, I hadn't ecnountered that before but I downloaded MediaInfo from a recommendation in another thread. lmk if this is what you wanted:

[Jeffiot25214080m00m]

adding on to that, and perhaps saving you some time in explaining, would you say this workflow that Premiere Gal shows here is good? anything that should be done differently, or should I be able to do it the way she does it?

https://youtu.be/SWBOhza4CNI

[MyerPj]

You can use Media Encoder for that, mostly as you explained.

Try or ProRes or ProRes LT within Shutter Encoder: https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/ It's Donation ware, and a really good way to Transcode or create Proxies.

[Stephen_Spider]

I'm not having the same issues. While I do have problems with some GUI & workflow changes , performance & stability have been solid.  Impressive even.

An example workflow..... using 4:2:0 4k 30p H.264 Sony Cam Green Screen studio footage clips. Add Ultra-key keying in a native 4k sequence, then bring that nested 4k green screen footage with transparency already set into my master editing sequence wich is 1080 30p. .......

On lower tracks of the1080 30p master editing sequence I have Premiere generating solid colors & shapes, guassin blur effect applied, performing blending mode opacity effects , Lumetri generated Vignetting effect, and simple keyframed motion animations, keying .png logos & mgrt text..... 

Then Apply the 4k fooage of medium framed talking head people with transparency already set, set on tracks above the Premiere generated graphics, allowing wide options for medium to close up reframing with scaling effect adjustments . I've found that the 4k Green Screen, even 8bit 4:2:0  keys people so much cleaner than 4:2:2 1080 clips, especially the hair fringes than are such a pain at lower rez. 

That all powered easy easy with a RTX 2060 Super 6gb,  i9 9900k hardly taxed.   Plays back smooth without the need to stop & render any previews throughout the projeect.

[Warren Heaton]

If using a mezzanine CODEC (like ProRes 422 LT or HQ) with storage media that maintains the sustsined data transfer rate, 2160p video editing should be very smooth on any i7 or better that's not more than five years old.

[ffaabb]

I think premiere has no future if they don't rewrite the software from scratch.
Or they create a "actually working premiere lite" they could sell for 5$/month
I'm not switching only because I have new projects coming but as soon as I have 1 month free to learn resolve, bye bye