How do I fix laggy playback in Premiere Pro 2020

[Lucas5CE7]

I have been having this problem for a while now and I don't know how I might fix it. The video I'm recording is pretty long, high bitrate video, but my computer seems like it should be able to handle it. My problem is with any and all video playback as soon as I import it into my project. The playback is extremely laggy in the video preview as well as the timeline preview. Is there any way to fix this?

Important Specs: 

• CPU: i7 7700k
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080
• Ram: 16 GB
• Video Storage: 500GB M.2 SSD

If you need any more information to understand my situation bettter let me know.

[Peru Bob]

Have you tries proxies?

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/proxy-media.html

How full is the SSD?

What are the media properties?

[Lucas5CE7]

I'm currently encoding a proxy right now to see how well it will improve my performance. The SSD is only about 75% full, so I don't think that would be the problem. The media might be the problem though. It's 1080p video at 4600kbps bitrate encoded with h.264. The video is hours long though making the files over 10 gb each. 

[Lucas5CE7]

Followup on this topic. I have been tinkering with it for a while now and the problem shows up with high bitrate video. The bitrate of my video is 18158kbps and it is 1080p 60fps footage. I checked my task manager while editing and my cpu/gpu are fine, but my m.2 ssd is stuggling hard which makes sense for high bitrate video. I can't convert to a proxy because I have multiple audio tracks so I have to convert to apple pro res making the files 10x in size. After converting to proxy, I was able to edit just fine even though the files were massive, but I can't do that for every file or I'd be filling my storage with as little as two files. Has anyone found some other workaround for this?

[Michael Grenadier]

tell us where the footage came from...  and how many audio tracks does it have?

[Lucas5CE7]

The footage came from OBS and it's a screen recording. It has the most optimal settings possible for recording. It also has 3 audio tracks.

[Michael Grenadier · Accepted solution]

screen recordings often have a variable frame rate which can be problematic in premiere

use mediainfo to determine whether your source is variable or constant frame rate
https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download
if it's variable use handbrake to convert to constant frame rate
https://handbrake.fr
and here's a tutorial on how to use handbrake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=xlvxgVREX-Y

[Lucas5CE7]

Okay so after 9 hours of encoding for one video, I was able to convert it to a constant frame rate. This seems to work wonders! Thank you for the advice. Hopefully I can find a way to cut down those encoding times cause that might get annoying to wait that long.

[idivuoma]

Having the same problems with 14.5 Premiere and later. My solution for this is following:

Recorded OBS .mkv remuxed into .mp4.

Then open the .mp4 in OSX Quicktime, export the .mp4 into a .mov.

.mov runs smoother in Premiere Pro, but you loose the multitrack when it's converted to .mov.

When I record in OBS, I just keep in mind that all audiotracks will be merged into a stereotrack. It might be easier to record straight to .mov in OBS, but OBS has a tendency to crash and a .mkv will not be corrupted if a crash occurs.