CC 2019 extremely slow with 4K MP4 files.

[Rob Ainscough]

I was hoping a wipe of my PC and re-install Win10 1803 OS from scratch, then install Adobe PP 2019 new fresh install would solve all my 4K MP4 performance problems I had with CC 2018 ... sadly it did not.

This is really disappointing.  I worked with an Adobe Engineer and provided them my projects in hope they would figure out the problem and solve it  ... then CC 2019 came out and I had hope, sadly PP 2019 is completely unusable with my MP4 4K files ... I can edit smoothly for about 2-10 minutes, then after that CC 2019 becomes an unresponsive slide show.

If I exit PP 2019 and reload then it'll work fine for about 2-10 minutes then back to the unresponsive slide show.

My hardware is:

CPU 7900X (10/20)

M.2 500GB Samsung 960 Pro

M.2 1TB Samsung EVO 970  (this is my main edit drive and where all my footage lives)

nVidia TitanXP GPU

32GB RAM

I'm about to completely give up on Adobe, what happened?  PP 2017 worked flawlessly on the EXACT same MP4 4K files, 2018 did not and 2019 doesn't either.  This is progress Adobe??

Rob.

[Dean_Utian]

Sorry to hear earlier versions worked better than the current.

Have you tried using proxies (lower res versions as substitutes) of your 4K content for editing? This should make editing faster in Premiere.

Here is a good explanation and demo of this:

How to Use Proxies to Edit 4k Video FAST | Adobe Premiere Pro CC Tutorial - YouTube

[Rob Ainscough]

Thank you for response, but proxies (low res variants) weren't required to make PP 2017 work well so why would "progress" to PP 2019 require proxies?

But, I was willing to try proxies and the results weren't much different.  I could edit a little longer, like 20-30 mins before PP 2019 start to be unresponsive and lagging.

Just to be CLEAR, this issue is with 4K MP4 files.  The files really aren't even that large as they are already compressed, I'm working small files sizes around 1.2GB to 2GB ... this are NOT a typical uncompressed 20-40GB 4K file.

Like I said, I've been working with Wes Howell at Adobe and provided him with my project files and assets, this was back in August 2018.  They "thought" they have found the issue and my hope was it would be resolved in CC 2019.  It looks to me like nothing was resolved at all??

Forcing editors to use Proxies is just a band-aid of a more significant problem that WAS NOT present in CC 2017.  So what exactly happened?  Proxies IS NOT the solution for most editors.

Very frustrated at this point, and given the "performance" threads here and elsewhere, it seems I'm not the only one not happy with Adobe and why we lost great performance in both CC 2018 and CC 2019?  I'm a software engineer with over 30 years experience, something doesn't "smell" right here ... is this really about a codec licensing issue with MP4 that Adobe are trying to avoid paying?

If that is the case, then why are my monthly subscription fees going up, but CC 2019 performance is going down?  Like I said, I'm a software engineer and I know it doesn't take over 2 years to solve performance issue ... so there is something external happening and it seems Adobe doesn't want to deal with it because it's probably financially related ... like licensing.

I know Adobe engineers/reps do monitor this place, that's how I got into contact with an Abode engineer in the first place. 

Cheers, Rob.

[Jim_Simon]

I recommend Cineform proxies with that media.  The performance improvement is significant, especially once effects come into play.

Work offline using proxy media |

[Rob Ainscough · Accepted solution]

For anyone else reading this ...

I was able to resolve this Edit performance problems thanks to working with an Adobe representative who was very helpful.  In my case, the MP4 files I use are highly compressed which Adobe PP 2019 had a hard time working with during edit sessions.  One would think small file size would be "easier" on PP 2019, but that is not the case ... it's the high level of compression that seemed to trip up PP 2019.

So my solution, although not a perfect solution does allow me to work efficiently during edit sessions, is to use AME (Adobe Media Encoder) and convert my 4K MP4 files over to 4K ProRes 422 HQ files (.MOV).  The conversion took only a few minutes to get to ProRes 422 HQ (keep in mind my source was recorded via HDMI using RGB 8bit full range so ProRes 422 HQ was fine for quality) but the file size was large 62GB.

So I tested and I tossed every edit/FX I could at the converted 4K ProRes 422 HQ and it didn't miss a beat, no lag, no freezes, no pauses ... fast and furious editing ... much much improved.

I tried AME with Cineform 4K but that took 2-3 hours to convert my MP4 (only 16 mins of footage) and resulted in a 126GB file size (from a 2.6GB file size) ... so not a practical option as that's too much of a compromise for my workflow.  In addition, Proxies are not a viable option for me, for the type of video work I do I need to be able to demonstrate image quality with things like AA (anti-aliasing) and proxies would skew that with lower resolution so Proxies aren't something I can use.

So in my case there is a solution, it's an extra step in my workflow, but it's a step I can live with but I'll most likely need to get more "offline" storage as my current 30TB NAS isn't going to hack it.

Cheers, Rob.