Terrible playback performance in Premiere Pro 2021

[Damstein]

Updated to Premiere Pro 2021 in hopes that it would improve Premiere's performance, but instead, it has gotten much much worse. Premiere now freezes and stutters constantly just trying to watch back a piece of 1080p 60fps footage at 1/4 playback resolution. Would appreciate any advice you may have.

System specs -----

RTX 2070

Ryzen 5 3600x

32 GB 3200MHz Ram

Internal SSD for both footage and Premiere itself

[basil1891]

try Preferences > Audio Hardware > Default Input => select "No Input"

[Damstein]

doesn't seem to have made a difference. Did let me know that my mic input was broken though, so that's nice.

[basil1891 · Accepted solution]

few more steps to try then:

1) Manually clear media cache - close Adobe PP/AE/ME, go to cache location and clean/delete folders: Media Cache, Media Cache Files, PTX, Peak Files

2) Toggle off hardware accelerated Decoding in Preferences > Media... Remember to clear media cache and restart the app each time you change this settings, or after any app/driver update as well

3) Reset workspace: Window > Workspaces > Reset to saved layout (or just switch to different one)
4) Try on/off "Mercury Transmit" option (Preferences > Playback > Enable Mercury Transmit)
5) Make sure that NVidia G-Sync/ AMD Freesync is off in driver control panel
6) Make sure you are using NVidia 'Studio' driver and not 'Game ready' one

7) Reset app preferences: close all Adobe apps, go to My Documents > Adobe  and rename folders Premiere Pro / Adobe Media Encoder. Now start the app while holding Shift+Alt, open your test project and see if there is any improvements.

[Damstein]

Did most of this stuff, and not only did it solve my problem, but performance is also an insane amount better than it has ever been. Thank you, friend.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks again, Basil1891!

Kevin

[abhishekkapoor]

Hi Demstein,

what is the soucre of these clips? 

please share few sample clips.

if you are working with HEVC/H264 then try to playback the clips with software decoding.(Uncheck "H264/HEVC hardware accelerated decoding" under Preferences > Media)

Regards

Abhishek 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Abhishek,
I suspect that others are experiencing similar issues with hardware decoding on the GPU. Thanks for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Kevin

[GeorgeDay]

Just to throw another report in, experiencing this myself since the update to 2022. As other have mentioned performance is better if I tick "High Quality Playback" and keep the resolution at Full, but it's still very poor in comparison to 2021. I'm primarily editing 10-bit H.264 UHD footage from Panasonic Lumix S1/S5 cameras.

SPECS..

Windows 10 Pro

RTX 3080

Ryzen 7 5900x

64GB 3600MHz RAM

All drivers are up to date and I've tried clearing Media Cache, turning Hardware Acceleration off/on, and a fresh reinstall of Premiere, and nothing. Will try installing the latest Beta later and see if it's any better.

[GeorgeDay]

Whoops - meant to reply in the 2022 thread! Admin please delete.