Premiere Pro 2020 Making Computer Laggy

[emmap9318889]

Hi all, I'm having an issue with a laggy computer and am trying to nail down the culprit.

Essentially, what is happening is when I work in Premiere and switch to another window on my mac my entire computer runs incredibly slow. Everything from web browsing to working in Illustrator becomes an issue.

I have regularly followed my current workflow and it has not caused an issue until about a month ago.

These are my specs:

2016 macbook pro

Processor: 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

Memory: 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

Graphics: Radeon Pro 455 2 GB
                Intel HD Graphics 530 1536 MB

I have 170gb out of 500gb free on my computer, and have done all of the normal reset-clear-cache-etc troubleshooting. If I have AE working I also usually have a 2tb drive attached as well for cache storage or a 4tb drive if I'm working on a larger video project.

Apps that are usually open when working in Premiere (usually at least one, rarely all unless I'm being dumb and forgetting to quit):

- Illustrator

- After Effects

- Firefox

- Spotify

- Time tracking apps (toggle, UpWork, Timer)

- mail

- Skype

I'm trying to figure out if the issue is something to do with premiere pro, my laptop itself, or something else. I would blame the issue on using too many apps but before about a month ago I would regularly run many of the apps above simultaneously and have no issue.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Emma

[Kevin-Monahan]

Emma,
What has changed? Have you updated Premiere Pro? If so, have a look at system requirements for Premiere Pro as they have increased over time. At a certain point, a four year old Mac begins to show its age. You sometimes cannot run the latest software on older machines. Think thats part of what is going on here. Some other things to consider too: 

Spotify and web browsers are notorious VRAM hogs, so that will seriously impact your GPU's capability when operating Premiere Pro. After Effects is a RAM hog too, so that will tear up those resources. I rarely run these simultaneously on underpowered systems. My advice is for these older machines, you might want to get into the habit of closing out apps you are not using when editing.

I know. Sacrilege, but you do have to consider that your computer is 4 years old and is falling out of spec. Your specs are barely passing HD specs in system prefs, so you have to make sacrifices in other areas, minimum.

If you need to have music on while performing tedious tasks, may I suggest that you get that streaming from your mobile device or a second computer instead? Spotify really is that bad. I am not sure about Firefox, but if there is GPU accelerated capabilities there, turn those off or browse on another device. Chrome, I know is terrible.

When Premiere gets sluggish, reboot the computer. It's a good idea to reboot a couple of times per day to refresh system resources. I like to. 

As long as you've deleted media cache with all projects closed and deleted preferences, I've listed everything else I can think of. Sorry for the frustration. Hope the advice helps.

Thanks,
Kevin