How to diagnose performance issues on nicer PC

[garretth67558565]

Hello! So I built my own computer back in March. The specs are:

GPU: AMD Radeon 5700 XT

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

RAM: Corsair Vengence 16GB

Mobo: Asus Prime X570-P

I do some editing for my work but it's a lot of basic YouTube content and After Effects projects, I also got it for gaming (where it performs fine) but just keep in mind by no means am I a "professional editor."

So I always had a little problem working from home on Premiere but was doing small projects and never got too annoyed but I think this last project might be the last straw. B-roll will pop unavaliable screen for a few seconds when I start to place it in, if I try to shuttle right it will start getting laggy, constant video lags on playback, and generally just slow performance across the board.

There's also a weird bug where scale keyframes simply won't work unless there's a positional change even if just by 1. 

The project is about 100GB of .mxf and .mp4 video shot in 1920x1080 HD. Just basic multicam interview sequence with b-roll but I just feel like it slows down so much. I'm working off an external hard drive but my work computer which is comparable does not slow down/lag/be buggy hardly at all in comparison. 

I want to try to figure out the issue but have no idea how to troubleshoot this issue (I did increase my memory allotment in preferences > memory and it did not help). Does anyone have any programs or diagnostic tests I could run to figure out what's going on? Happy to supply more info if anyone has any ideas. Please let me know and thank you!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi there Garrett,

Sorry for your performance woes. In order to troubleshoot performance issues, one of the most important components is the actual media you are manipulating.

I don't know much about your media, but from what you said, media from game streams is usually H.264 with a variable frame rate. Media from mobile devices is the same. So, you are likely hitting a bottleneck with this media, especially when dealing with multiple streams of that extremely non-performant media. What is the source of the .mxf media? That might be helpful to know.

Another problem besides non-performant media: you've got an AMD CPU which does not have hardware accelerated decoding capability for H.264 and HEVC formats. Intel with Quick Sync does have that capability. Your purchasing decision to go with team Red may not have been the best one given the media you use. Sorry.

Though it takes extra time and a great deal more drive space, I'd transcode the non-performant media to something like ProRes LT. You can transcode the footage on ingest. Look at your Ingest options in Project Settings. 

The final component of your issue is that you did mention an "external drive" for your media.  Is this a secondary SSD connected with a high speed connection like USB 3 or Thunderbolt? Let us know.

Diagnosis:

1. Non-performant media: includes Long GOP H.264.
2. Multiple streams of non-performant media in a multicam environment
3. Computer not optimized for H.264/HEVC footage, but is optimized for all other codecs (ProRes, Cineform)
4. Insufficient RAM for multicam H.264/HEVC footage
5. Media drive is connected externally. Not verified as a high speed connection like USB 3 or Thunderbolt. Need Speed test.

Finally, I'd advise basic troubleshooting like deleting media cache, trashing preferences, and repairing Adobe folder permissions (especially if you have updated your project and moved it to a new version of Premiere Pro).

Hope we can assist you in getting the expected performance for your system. I think you need to lower your expectations a little since your system is not really the right one for the media you are editing. An Intel based system will probably give you better results with your media.

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Kevin

[garretth67558565]

Thanks for the informative reply! The footage is from a C200, C300, and Canon 6D. All are indeed H.264 codecs so I suppose I'll start transcoding the media from now on to ProRes going forward. Also it is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection to the hard drive. I deleted the media cache and repaired permissions.

You mention insufficent RAM, would it be worth it to get an extra 16GB or is transcoding to ProRes enough do you think? Also are there any other diagnostic tools or test I could run to see where the issues may be?

Thank you again!

[Andy 1968]

If you run Windows Task Manager as seen in the video below we might be able to see what is happening. Quick Sync is nice but your system should play h.264 just fine.

https://youtu.be/pE6t1ryanO4