Premier Pro - Stutters on 4K GH5 and 4K DJI Video

[diesel5598]

I cannot figure out why my video editing workstation still stutters on GH5 4K 8bit content and DJI P4Pro 4K H.264 content. I have read every Adobe Premier Pro performance tuning guide I can get my hands on and I still cannot smoothly playback and edit 4K content from these two sources.I keep throwing more hardware at the problem and it's not improving. Below is my hardware platform:

Dell 7910 Rackmount Workstation

2 x Xeon 6 core processors

16GB DDR4 memory

NVIDIA GTX 980ti Video Card

RAID 5 NVME PCIe RAID array

NVME PCIe card for the OS

For my workflow I always color grade and add transitions last yet I still have to create proxy files sometimes when I need to view some of the clips in realtime because the stuttering is completely unworkable. I just ordered 80GB more DDR4 memory but I doubt it will help anything.

The problem is, I have no problems throwing more hardware at the problem if I could just figure out where the problem is. I watch GPU, CPU, disk, and RAM performance when it is stuttering and everything is below 5% utilized. The one thing I have seen is memory utilization sometimes hits 80% which is why I am upgrading the memory. I don't understand how the software can stutter when nothing is being heavily utilized. The CPU usually hovers around 5%, the GPU around 2-7%, the disk less than 1% and memory usually around 30-60%. This is with a clean install of Windows 10 64bit, and with playback set to 1/8 quality. I have seen users online get better results with way less hardware.

Yes I know I could create proxy files, and yes sometimes I do create proxy files because I don't have a choice, but with my hardware specs I feel I should not need proxy files. All of my content is 4K H.264 and mostly GH5 8bit footage or DJI Phantom P4 footage stored in an MOV container. Output renders are fast but editing is completely frustrating.

[Moderator note: moved to best forum for technical help.]

[diesel5598]

Cross Aerial, it would be helpful to know your hardware setup instead of just knowing that it works for you.

[R Neil Haugen]

Knowing Apple, I would presume they make whatever changes in the OS they need to make FCP-x look good. Even then, it's not the greatest thing for a number I've seen posting on using long-GOP in Mac's with FCP-x.

Neil

[Cross Aerial Photography]

Just wanted to chime in here,

I regularly edit GH5 footage, P4P, and Inspire 2 on my PC with ZERO issue at 4k 60fps. Even at the 400mbps on the GH5, everything is smooth. Really not sure why you are having such an issue with this footage.

[ECBowen]

No Bill I was not aware of that new feature to Storage Spaces. Very interesting. Obviously Microsoft's response to Optane memory.

Eric

ADK

[redmodel]

Try this,

it worked for me with 4K prores files on Windows.  In task manager, under details, right click on premiere pro.exe and change priority to normal.   It will probably be on High Priority by default..

[R Neil Haugen]

I saw you posit this on another thread, and I'm hoping a bunch of people test this out, so we get some data on it. It's great to get this sort of thing nailed down.

Also, another user noted their mobo came with a chipset that ​assumed​ one wanted to overclock part of it. When he manually set the mobo setting in the BIOS to no overclock, suddenly ... everything was smoother and just worked. One GPU that comes over-clocked has had users saying that by removing the over-clock setting they got better overall performance.

All things nice to hear about.

Neil

[redmodel]

Yeah I hope the method works for the OP as well.  The performance difference for me was just night and day.  I'm not overclocked, but I'd be interested in what the common thread of the issue may be.  Maybe the High Priority doesn't work on systems like mine because of the high core count, or maybe it's the Nvidia drivers that work against it.

[Rich Hall Reps]

I am going through all the threads here and on the PPro forum trying to fix the stutter issue and find that I cannot change the priority of Adobe Premiere Pro . exe to anything but normal. It looks like I change it, but when I go back to check it is again on normal. I know this is what you say it is supposed to be, and likely that is correct, but I had to try Realtime and High but could not.

[MarkWeiss]

I stumbled into this thread while researching DJI Phantom 4 footage playback issues, and I can report the same problems on a dual Xeon E5-2667v3 with 128GB RAM and all SSD drives.

There must be a difference between compressed formats like XAVC and ProRes422 and what the drone records, because the other formats play with no issues, but the drone footage is hit and miss. Sometimes it will play smooth until the CTI hits a dissolve and then Premiere will lose it's composure and play a slideshow of the rest of the timeline.

The sickening thing is I have a recently built backup machine with a i7 processor, built for 1/10th the cost of the "monster" and it plays video without and dropped frames, despite much higher CPU utilization.

I refuse to believe there's not enough CPU when you're at 11% utilization and dropping frames. There's got to a pipeline issue related to NUMA or QPI links between processor sockets, that's all I can think of. Single processor machines run circles around duals in Premiere. Duals excel in Maya, by a long margin though. Except if you're running DaVinci Resolve. That just blows me away with it's ability to handle FIVE 4K video streams, picture in picture on the same timeline with only 53% CPU usage. At the time I did that test, my GPU was an old Titan X and it was about 90% utilized, so that was likely what limited me to five 4K streams. Now I have the 1080Ti and have not yet installed Resolve, so that remains to be tested.

Oddly, Phantom 4 H.264 footage is harder to play than HEVC 4K footage. HEVC takes about 2% CPU and 30% GPU. Go figure.

I'm considering a new system build. i9-9980XE, 128GB RAM, Intel Optane PCIe X16 bus SSD drive (3500MB/sec sustained and nearly as fast at 4K blocks, which is where SATA SSDs fall flat) and a pair of RTX2080Ti GPUs. If that doesn't run well, then I'll sell everything and move to Japan and become a rice farmer.

[R Neil Haugen]

I doubt that i9-9980XE CPU is something that say Puget Systems or Safeharbor Computing use in their specialized builds for video post work. Why? A lot of slow to middling cores ... about reversed from what's needed.

You want FAST cores for video post. Much of it is sequential processing, not lending itself well to being split among cores. So having a decent amount of cores ... 8-10, really ... but those being at or above 3.8Ghz and supported by up to 10GB of very fast RAM each is a huge consideration.

And for Pr, two 2080 Titans may be overkill ... But check with Safeharbor, Puget Systems, maybe ADK, see what they would suggest. They do not find most even spendy CPUs as sensible for video-post work, and even fewer mobos ... and often, the mobo is the problem: the lanes are setup in such a way there are internal bottlenecks for data given the number of drives and cards video post folk typically use in their rigs.

Drones ... pump up the compression to the limits of format standards. One user here ran some drone media through a structure analyzation app, and found that it used partial i-frames every 30 or so frames in one section, and complete i-frames only about every 120 frames! Yea, it put the media on card in an amazingly small space, BUT ... that media would require massive work of the CPU/RAM to process for editing.

Standard ProRes is of course a full intra-frame codec: every frame is complete, just compressed. Bigger files but a TON less work on the computer for playback.

Neil

[MarkWeiss]

I just priced out a system on Pudget Sound's configurator and they top out at i9-9960 for the CPU choice. That's 16 cores.

What I see now, is pretty much a DJI drone footage problem here. And it seems newer versions of Premiere have gotten worse, not better, at playing it. It plays best on CS6, believe it or not! Nearly flawlessly.

But here's the kicker: import 4K HEVC footage and that plays like a dream. Lowest CPU usage usage (only on Windows 10 Pro) and smooth, instant playback with no "spoolup" delay. Baffling. DJI must have some real funk going on with their CODEC.

I think if there is a bottleneck, it would be the GPU, because with only 11% CPU utilization and 38% GPU, it seems the GPU will hit the wall sooner as project complexity grows.

I know I've had five DCI 4K Prores streams going in DaVinci Resolve and my CPUs were peaking at 53%, while the (then Titan X) GPU was over 90%. I've yet to try a new test with the 1080Ti and see how many streams DaVinci can manage before it drops a frame, but five is certainly enough. But Premiere is and has been a different animal for years.

[R Neil Haugen]

I've been around fascinating discussions about GPU use in Resolve, Pr, and Ae.

Depending on the tools one uses in each, there are very divergent ideas on what GPU uses they want in any app, and ... what they DON'T want it used for. "You put more effects through the GPU it will slow down what I do with X" sort of thing.

And it always intrigues when some middling old computer is a screamer and a new loaded rig .. chokes.

Neil

[MarkWeiss]

I was reading a lot of discussion about GPU use in Maya's Arnold renderer and people were saying "why don't they use the GPU for everything?" and the answer was that not that many graphics processes can be paralleled. Many instructions are too complex and unavailable on a GPU, so the CPU is what works. Gradually, the world IS moving toward GPU and with nVidia's Turing GPUs with Tensor processors on the market, application devs are going to be busy writing code that can exploit those powerful features.

Meanwhile, I hate to admit is, but switching to Windows 10 is the best way to give your system a needed performance boost in Premiere. Still doesn't eliminate long-GOP playback problems (which can be on and off with the same project on different sessions), but cleared up a lot of problems with playing intra-frame video. The biggie for me was the implementation of V-sync, which put an end to screen tearing. That and better management of displays coming on line, such as when the projector in our screening room gets powered on. (Windows 7 would go berserk, rearranging desktops at random, screwing up Wacom tablet mapping, etc).

Another thing I noted about Windows 10 is HEVC playback not only becomes possible, but absurdly easy. The 3.0.4 version of VLC Media Player, on Windows 7, could not play anything h.264 or h.265 at HD or above. It would play a couple frames improperly decoded (looked like grey embossed filter was applied) and freeze. On Windows 10, it not only plays smoothly, it uses between 0 and 1% CPU and about 20% GPU.

Adobe stuff DOES apparently run well on 32 threads and no special tuning is required. In fact, changing things like power profile to "performance" seems to make things worse, not better. Xeons are not dead. Windows 10 gives them new life. That said, I have a love-hate relationship with Win 10. It doesn't play well with Wacom pens, Microsoft Surface tablets, and that other Huwei tablet that some people use. Windows "Ink" is the devil. And 10 seems to have a mind of its own sometimes. I find that 'three times a charm' is the golden rule. Windows will change settings back to some default that many times until it finally 'gets' that you REALLY want that "increase mouse pointer precision" option to remain ON. Between stuff like that and automatic updates,

I spend a lot of time fighting with the OS instead of getting work done. But when it's running, the experience is great. On my cheaper i7-9700K system, I have a ton of processes going on, files downloading in the background, Ubuntu running in a VM, stuff writing to drives, and 4K Prores video will play without dropping a single frame. It's almost laughable about how we sometimes feel that we must shut all non Adobe processes down before we can edit, given the Windows 10 experience.

[R Neil Haugen]

Great post ... and yea, the three-times rule before if actually sticks to your preferences rule seems to be A Thing.

Windows Ink ... would love to obliterate that from the universe!

We've got an old laptop that even on Win7 was slow ... and supposedly gear that couldn't run Win10. My builder went ahead and loaded it on as well, it was near "dead" anyways, right? Fired it up after loading the new OS ... was "up" ready to load other apps in five seconds, not the minute & a half to two minutes that Win7 always took to load. Now, it's just a thing to use for email and other low-power tasks ... but we can run other rigs remotely from it just fine if we have to check something.

Yea, I'm not a hater of Win10, but ... neither a huge lover either. The network stuff is a bit of a pain and such.

Neil

[WeAreMoose]

Reviving an old thread here.

I just changed the Memory setting from Performance to Memory, and now Logn GOP formats play back MUCH MUCH better.

FYI.

Thanks

Jannick

[MarkWeiss]

I found that the opposite happened for me. Every project, no matter the format, won't play at all, or stutters badly when performance is set to memory. When I switched back to Performance, I was able to play video again.