Choppy playback in premiere pro with good specs

[Swult]

I am having a major issue of choppy playback in Premiere Pro. I have upgraded my computer to:

RTX 3070, Ryzen 9 5900x, 32gb ram, 1tb samsung evo 970 and the problem has not become any better. I can smoothly playback video files in vlc however they are at <1 frame a second when playing back in premiere pro (even in the source monitor). I need this issue fixed as I edit videos for multiple clients and this has drastically slowed the video creation process. I have also tried the following to fix the issue with no success:

Clear cache, change installation path of premiere pro, reinstall premiere pro, update all drivers associated with my computer hardware, rollback all drivers mentioned previously, reinstalled windows, changed audio class, reinstalled audio drivers.

Creating proxies fixes the issue however it can take up to x8 the length of the video to create the proxy itself, and when I'm dealing with 3-6 hour videos it really adds up. The problem is not noticable at the start of the video and becomes worse over the duration.

If you find it of any use, here's the properties of one of the video files that causes this:

General
Complete name : E:\EditorFolder\QTCinderella\Rust1\Downloads\QTRust1_VOD.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 7.03 GiB
Duration : 2 h 0 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 8 384 kb/s
Writing application : Lavf58.26.101

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.2
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=120
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 2 h 0 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 8 200 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 60.000 FPS
Minimum frame rate : 58.824 FPS
Maximum frame rate : 62.500 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.066
Stream size : 6.88 GiB (98%)
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.601 NTSC
Transfer characteristics : BT.601
Matrix coefficients : BT.601
Codec configuration box : avcC

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : mp4a-40-2
Duration : 2 h 0 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 162 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 138 MiB (2%)
Default : Yes
Alternate group : 1

[Sami Succar · Accepted solution]

Frame rate mode : Variable < There's your problem.

Premiere and other NLEs don't work well with variable frame rates. You can use Handbrake to convert your source to a constant frame rate before importing into Premiere.

On another note, Premiere Pro 14.8 was just released, and it was mentioned that it might work better with variable frame rates.

Maybe update to 14.8 and give it a shot. I haven't tried it myself, but just suggesting that it might solve your issue.

[Swult]

Did what you said, it appears to have fixed it! Thank you so much! I've been at this since August/September of last year.