Comments on things that Break your Creative Flow in Premier, and suggestions.

[FlyingFourFun]

Premier really needs to add a few things to level up its performance and avoid breaking the creative flow.

1) When running warp stabilize, there are so many ways for the process to be stopped, such as doing a render and replace, that seems to stop any active warp stabilize - I dont normaly do Warp stabilize, but I have a 50 min video recorded with a gimbal that was slighty not as nice as I wanted, and it had some sharp direction changes, so I found a quyick test setting that allowed me to take the  sharp gimbal movement I wanted, with only a 5% zoom which was good enough for this project.  However there are 104 clips in the 50 min and every one needed this treatment.  You cant actualy start them all as this crashes the system I can to do about 3 or 4 at a time and pace myself.

• When you are running a warp stabilize and render and replace, the warp stabilize stops, no notification it stopped either
• Way in the world can we not have render and replace as a media encoder process so I can continue to edit.  Every modern machine has plenty of power to do this.  consuming premier as a forground task for render and replace is silly.
• There should be a que system for warp stabilize and probably a ton of other things, have them all qued up, and the user can decide how many the system is allowed to do at the same time, show which ones are done.  Also, if you use media encoder for this, PLEASE do not only allow one task to run at a time,  something like a warp stabilze can run while a  render and replace can run, also allow me to chain commands,  like after a warp stabilize, render and replace.
• The warp stabilize data needs to come out of the main project file.  use a concept like you are using for media intellegence and create a seperate warp stabilize file outside the main project file, because if you have 50 min of warp stabilize data in the project it takes a VERY long time to save the file, load the file, and when loaded, it takes a huge amoung of time before you can start working after the file 'appears to be loaded'.  Not to mention,  the warp data seems very sensative, and can be lost under some circumstances within the project, and it would be nice to protect that data, and if you use the clip in other projects, have that data available without processing it again.
• Clips with Warp stabilze applied really need to have have an indicator on them (small shaky hand icon thats green, red or yellow - so we know whats going on when we are in the timeline, without having to click on the clip to load the effects panel, and look at the effects status for each clip.
• Render and replaced clips also need so some sort of visual indicator also, like the proxy indicator, currently they add the _rendered text the clip name but that is only visable when you are zoomed in enough the read the clip name not actualy usefull when scanning a moderetly sized project, and it also doesnt follow the same design langauge as a proxt is kind of like a render and replace, and it has a nice icon to know. 

I'm sure there are lots of other things, this happens to be on mind mine because I'm active in a project that these things are haunting me. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Warp stabilizer is a massive processing load ... more so even that Neat Video noise reducer.

It simply can't share CPU resources with other effects. Which is a pain when you need a bunch of clips "warped" ... but there it is. Maybe run it overnight, doing the analysis.

Anyway, I always apply Warp, and as soon as it's usable, do an immediate full render & replace of the clip on the sequence to normally ProRes422. Warp is now done and gone ... and playback, adding other effects, and exports simply fly by.

Simple practical workflow choice.

[FlyingFourFun]

@R Neil Haugen I dont know what you mean by Warp Stabilize being a massive CPU/GPU hit,  I can literaly run 4 clips at the same time, and not hit 80% utilization on CPU or GPU - 18 cores (36 logical) for the CPU and a 3090RTX.

I can let Warp tun, and have Media encoder transcoding in the background (started with a different process) and not run out of capacity for the system to process it.  It does break down at 5+ clips being processed at the same time,  but not even right away, it seems to be a memory leak over some time, and then it falls apart,  so I tend to run 3 bigger clips and look for much smaller 4th clip that will run for a few min at a time if I want to push my luck.

As for the workflow, that is exactly what i am doing, I run warp, then render replace and run other process/effects on top of that as needed.

If I need to run noise removal, I actualy have Topaz process that as yet another thread, but limit it to 1 to 3 clips at the same time.    after noise removal is done, I import into premier and do whats needed to them

I feel like your nto seeing the same peformance capability, because I feel like I'm leaving tons of capacity not used.  Id like to get to the poitn with permier that I can send work off to do heaving procoessing in the background, while I make creative decisions with the stuff thats ready, thats all I was saying.  

Things like doing a render and replace should not cancell a warp stabilzie process - thats absurd, it should run in the background with the render and replace happens if the user feels thier machine can handle it.

I'm goign to be upgrading (next year I hope) to somethign with way more cores, and I really think I should be able to get more work out.  Also, when I am watchign them I would like to be able to see it all in one place, a list of active processes, done, failed, etc.....   I realy feel this design change needs to take place, we cant go off lookign all over the place for info on whats done or not.

[R Neil Haugen]

I run a 24 core Ryzen 3960x with 128GB RAM and 2080Ti. An Nvme for OS/programs, another for all cache files. Not a small system in all. Yet Warp can take enough resources that Premiere doesn't do much else.

Your system runs Warp better than about anything I've ever heard which is great. Now, my laptop  ... Warp brings everything to a halt.

One issue for those building apps is processes take resources in different needs and levels through the process. So it isn't always just adding more processes for other things on top of each other until the system is fully used.

As along the way there will be moments where different processes will be demanding the same resource bit.

I've had intriguing discussions with the devs not just for Adobe, but BlackMagic, Baselight, Nuke, and others. Building process chains and trees is complex intricate work. And over time they solve problems moving their stuff forward. 

But it isn't just stack more effects simultaneously. 

[FlyingFourFun]

@R Neil Haugen my experience with warp is that it really crushes the user interface, and it hates doing multiple clips at the same time.  The issue for me is that I can have 40 clips I want to do, that each take 5 to 15 min to do, and hang around waiting for each one to complete to que up the next one.

If nothing more than getting warp stabilize to do one at a time in order of application, it would get me 90% of the way there.  But by extension, if you can que up different clips, and have them start after the one prior is completed, then I would also like a user definable option that says, do one at a time, or do two, or three.  let the user have some input.

What happens to me now is the user interface will run very poor with even one warp processing running.  so, I will in fact force a second or 3rd clip to start processing, and that can get me to 80% CPU utilization.  Premier interface is running very poorly and takes a long time for mouse clicks and other elements to update - but the clips process in the background, and eventually get done, and I can do something else.

In fact, there is plenty of resources left over, depending on exactly how many warp clips are processing, for me to use the NVENC encoder to transcode video to ProRes, or at times, I will in fact run topaz, and have it process clips for noise reduction normally at the same time.  

Overnight, it would be ideal if the system doesn’t have any free time and it’s always doing something, not waiting on that simple click to do the next task.   

My main point is let me que up tasks so the system can be busy with something to do, at or near 100% utilization - so when I'm on the phone, or at a meeting, sleeping, watching a hockey game - it’s still chugging along at whatever max utilization I want to be at.

But over and above that, there are simple things that can be fixed without too much architecture design, such as warp process should not come to stand still when a render and replace is requested! Some of the other ideas to add in a small visual token mark on the clip to show if warp is applied, in progress, stopped or completed is helpful too.   There are considerable ways in which to improve these small things.   

I hope to get some ideas out, so that Adobe can consider them at least.  Frankly it doesn’t stop one from getting work done, but it sure does make it a little harder - when you’re doing stuff that takes so long to process, but that process finishes when you’re in a meeting, or a conf call, it would be nice that it could start the next thing for you so you strand the time between calls/meetings/sleeping, driving as unused by your system when all it needed was someone to 'click' on something for the next task to start.

Maybe I'm not explaining it well enough, but I hope the main concept of the avoiding of idle time for the system, but giving it the power to do things in an order - is what comes across well enough - to avoid system idle time when there is work to do.

[R Neil Haugen]

That's very good explanation of the typical difficulties working with Warp.

Yea, it doesn't like working 10 clips at a time.

And yea, the processing seems complicated enough it can't split off bits to fill out resource usage. Which is also frustrating.

We users have been asking for better coding while simultaneously sharing best current use practice for years.

And hoping for improvement. 

[FlyingFourFun]

Warp doesn't like doing 3 at a time, and worse, if you do a bunch in a row, there seems to be a memory leak, and you have to restart premier to get decent performance again from future clips you process or just deal with the slower processing on future clips.

Not to mention, what I think is a very poor decision, to add warp data into the project file!  My last video project, with about 50 min of warp applied, was massive!  about 1.5gb for the project file, with literally nothing more than warp data for 104 clips.

The load time is horrific.... even after it loads, the program monitor doesn't display for a few more min until something happens in the background (I have no idea what).

The save time is also horrible!  

I then render and replace clips, and save as a new project but delete all the warp clips so I don't have to try and save all that data over and over again and it loads way faster without.

Not to mention the autosave impacts are also very high while working on the project.

At the end of the day, the warp stabilize feature seems to a carry over with little attention over the years (yes I know they made the processing faster, but that was not enough improvements.  The so many ways warp clips impact the premiers performance are massive.   Workarounds make it bearable, but they need to give it some attention.

With that said, I think I'm going back to Mocha for the stabilize.  It does way more stuff that often I don't need, but it works, its faster too.....  I was messing with Warp first time in years now, and its all coming back to me why I stopped using it before.

Thanks for the input @R Neil Haugen - there are some many places where premier could benifit from moderization....  I hope they pay some attention to these areas.

[FlyingFourFun]

So small bit of feedback,  beeing focused on the Beta these days, and they have a new feature in the public beta for masks... and guess what - they are storing the mask data externaly!  This is great news, and I hope they do the same thing with warp data also;

All I can say is Bravo - moves like this start to restore my faith in the devolopment - not only is this new mask tool really promising - but the very logical decision to have a folder for object masks and good documention around this a good step forward that I hoep they apply to warp stabilize now also.