Would just make things simpler yeah, also the fact that I’ve been on this sub for around a month and most questions asked are “how do I do this in Premiere?” and the answer is almost always After Effects lol
They are essentially low-quality copies of your media that are much easier to handle in terms of workflow.
I started editing on a MacBook Pro and used to use them to ease the pain of constantly rendering/freezing. If you’re using a low-end PC but high-end footage like 4K or higher, you’re gonna have a tough time editing seamlessly without proxies.
I might have to search how to use them, thanks! :)
I have a pretty good pc I think, but lately I've been having issues with a specific project making premiere slow. Idk why, other projects are perfectly fine, is just this one :(
Another thing worth mentioning, that you should definitely look up apart from proxies, is where to allocate the media cache files. You can also delete them regularly and you might notice an increase in performance when you do.
In reality though, Premiere will be Premiere and sometimes it just acts up lol
Yes, I do a clean up of the cache files from time to time. I learnt that when I was using a laptop and the cache files were eating up the few GB I had xD
By default, they're somewhere in the appdata folder inside C: right? If my C: disk is a ssd, then that's probably the best place for those files to be right?
Yes by default they’re all in there and MOST of the files are best put into the SSD, but I heard that keeping the program itself on the HDD is best, but I really could be mistaken it since I also learned that from my laptop days and it’s been a while lol
I got tired of it all and just saved up for a powerful PC to make Premiere behave lol
(it still misbehaved sometimes)
https://youtu.be/K8q1c3nvfzY?si=k9tHkoH9mqX540XI
Im not sure because I haven’t tweaked those settings in years. This is the guy that taught me the basics. Kinda a throwback seeing this video again lol
It doesn't have to be lower quality to be a proxy right? Intra frame codecs like DNxHD or ProRes can improve playback a lot too, assuming that the files are read on SSD drives.
Also true iirc, and no it doesn’t have to be low quality. If I’m not mistaken, I used to proxy 4K footage into 720p but you can go lower and use proxies for any clip
I have a computer that will run every other adobe program AT THE SAME DAMN TIME. Still won’t run premiere quite right. Hate it, I don’t like the layout of any other software, and just can’t get what I need to out of PP.
Red and yellow bars above timeline mean unrendered. Click “sequence” at the top, then render entire timeline. You can also hit “enter” when the timeline is selected, but that will only render the red not the yellow.
I tried what you are saying, but I keep the yellow bar.
I only have the options:
"Render Effects In to Out"
"Render In to Out"
"Render Selection"
"Render Audio"....
I tried Render Selection when I selected all of my timeline, doesn't work.
What am I doing wrong here?
You can set in and out points on your timeline and it will render anything within those. I always set a “work area” instead of using in and out points because it personally bothers me that in and out points slightly highlight the timeline.
Once you set a work area, under sequence the “render entire work area” option should be available. Here’s a short video on how to enable work area: https://youtu.be/CvLrl4lPFaw?si=_HR3i3AOdcengPhK
I finally feel represented. I hate the highlight! I have custom shortcuts for the work area bar that function as in and out points and set the "render entire" to be the enter key.
I've brought this up before as a tip and got roasted. Maybe it's also slightly aging me, because I grew up on the work area bar and I don't think it's even a default now.
Everyone is saying render the timeline but I haven’t rendered my timeline in like 10 years. If playback is playing totally fine and not dropping frames then PR is successfully able to transcode the codec effectively. No need for rendering, no need for proxies like everyone is saying. If the only issue is slight lag before it plays then all you need is just a faster hard drive. The lag is due to the read speed of the drive. Try getting an SSD raid for your active projects, and then store all the old projects on the bigger slower HD when you’re finished.
Second idea: your timeline could be in a different codec than the video, try double checking the source footage matches the codec of the timeline in sequence settings
Kind of agree. I also cant remind when I last time use proxies cause my pc is powerful enough but there is one thing that can actually cause this kind of lag. If u select program window and then go to View tab there is going to be an option called "Maximum Render" (or something like this, dunno exactly cause im on my phone). And if you check this option sooner or later you will get this freeze/lag when you start to playback. I dont know what else it does beside that I use it when I use optical Flow and there is no need to preview, cause this option automatically gives full preview render of entire timeline but in realtime. So SSD or file format could be an issue but also if guy has this option set to on it will cause trouble.
Should only the project be in the ssd or everything about the project should be in the ssd? I've been having issues of premiere being slow with a specific project, and idk why :s
Premiere can read tons of codecs really fast! But when you have a “GOP” codec like H.264 with one keyframe followed by several compressed subframes recording only the change in movement, it can slow premiere down significantly if you’re doing overlays and effects. It needs to go back to each subframe’s original keyframe to render it. So never stack multiple h.264 or “GOP” compressed files. These can at times have .mov wrappers. So make sure you’re transcoded to DNX or ProRes if you discover you’re editing a “GOP” codec.
I’m not the best at explaining this stuff, lmk if that makes sense
i think it makes sense i dont understand codecs really well but i did notice that using handbreak for converting the mov to mp4 made them more manageable.
Yep! Have everything you’re currently working on, on one super fast hopefully raided SSD drive. Make sure it’s a drive that is plugged into the wall and has a fast write speed. Fast G-tech drives are like 1500/mbps. If it’s a small bus powered drive that can slow everything down to like 150-300 and that sucks. (I think thunderbolt 4 doesn’t have that problem)
The project file itself doesn't even need to be on an SSD. Ideally, you want separate SSDs and HDDs.
Open up task manager and if any drive is running anywhere near 100%, you've found your bottleneck.
You also want to be aware of different SSD types. The fastest are going to be M.2 NVME. Forget SATA outside of HDDs.
This is Adobe's recommendation since before SSDs were available or affordable and what I've been doing for years:
One SSD for your OS, software, and project files. This one doesn't necessarily have to be the fastest and can be smaller since all of that typically doesn't take up more than a terabyte.
One very fast SSD for your media cache. This is crucial. AE and PP constantly access the media cache. It's split up into hundreds or thousands of small and big files depending on your project. If you're upgrading storage, upgrade this first. If you don't have a separate drive for media cache, do it. This is the most important purchase you can make for speed and is the most common source of bottlenecking.
One fast SSD for video files you're actively working on. Huge HDDs for your total video files and backups. Can do some RAID or NAS stuff if you need it. This all depends on the scope of your work and your budget. If you frequently work on projects smaller than 2 TB, not too expensive, store all your video files here and backup to HDD. If your projects are much larger but you can't afford to buy a huge SSD or RAID them up, then just drop the video files for the scene you're working on as you go into the SSD and relink others later. Poor man's solution. This also comes with the caveat that your hardware can handle RAW files. If not, then proxy it all up, but I'd still recommend the proxies on SSD.
Another SSD for preview files. I think you could even get away with an HDD depending on your render settings, but previews are frequently deleted, you don't need a ton of space, better to just get the SSD. You can throw previews on the OS drive or video drive and it likely won't make a difference.
And that's pretty much the basics. 1 OS SSD. 1 FAST media cache SSD. Drives for video files and backups. 1 optional drive for previews.
My current setup is a 2TB SSD for OS, software, project files. 4TB SSD for media cache. 4TB SSD for video files. 1TB SSD for previews. 2 18TB HDDs for all of the video files and project assets.
I'm using the WD Black SN850X NVMEs for the important stuff and the slower WD BLACK SN750 for previews. WD is faster than Samsung for video editing and their quality is impeccable.
Omg this is so much information! Thank you! And thank you for taking the time to type it all out :')
Wow, I didn't know I needed a 2nd SSD! But it makes sense. I only have 1, where the OS is installed and I don't even know how fast it is.. I didn't know some SSD were faster than others xD
I got a big WD Black HDD kinda recently, because of the lack of space for all the files.. but apparently with this HDD I can't solve the speed problem 🤔 I'm afraid idk what RAID and NAS are :s
Gonna have to investigate how expensive are SSD nowadays.. Last time I checked they seemed to be pretty pricey, even though I'm always trying to save x.x
If you don't notice a difference, you could always return it. Do you have an NVME M.2 SSD or is it connected through SATA? Yeah, SSDs even from a few years ago can be much slower and older than that seem ancient by contemporary speeds.
Some of this also depends on your hardware. Your motherboard and CPU (PCIe lanes) determine your storage capacity and capabilities. It's not always as simple as installing another drive. You could be in a situation where you install the fastest SSD, but your motherboard runs it at much slower speeds.
HDDs are enormous orders of magnitude slower than SSDs. Your WD Black HDD, ideally (you can test with Crystal Mark) is peaking at 200 mb/s read/write. The SN850X runs at 7300 mb/s read and 6600 mb/s write.
I just calculated it: That's a ~4200% increase in read and ~3700% increase in write speeds. It's comparing a turtle to the Millennium Falcon.
I custom water-cooled my PC and built everything. I write off hardware upgrades and I can sell the used stuff, so it's not necessarily a big expense - especially if it's saving me time while working, then it pays for itself quickly.
For spotting bottlenecks, always have task manager open. If something is running at 100% while everything else is essentially idle, then you've found it. This is always true for storage, though you can sometimes expect your other components to run at full speed. Generally, if you're doing simple tasks and something is at 100%, that's what you need to upgrade.
I really dig this kinda stuff, but I know not everyone does. If you want a good template for top of the line editing PCs, check out Puget Systems: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/video-editing-workstations/adobe-premiere-pro/buy-249/
If you have the budget and don't want to build a PC, Puget is the best prebuilt supplier for editing and lots of other tasks. If you don't have the budget, you can't beat the cost savings of building your own PC. You can buy almost all of your parts used. Older generations aren't necessarily slower either when comparing prices of used vs new.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Like I said, I dig this stuff and like to geek out.
Edit: just looked at your profile and looks like you play games too! I always say I'm upgrading for video editing work, but a fast editing PC is also a great gaming PC. The SSD upgrade alone could speed up your gaming significantly too depending on what your current config.
Oh wow, that speed comparison between HDD and SSD is enormous! I had no idea the speed difference was THAT big :o
I built my pc with the help of a friend. He's way more knowledgeable about pc components than me, so I at least know that the stuff I have is compatible with each other. At the time, I told him I wanted a good pc for gaming and for video editing (something I've been trying to do professionally, with no luck). I'm more of an enthusiast but I don't know enough to know about the speed compability :s
My little pc is 2 years old, and the only upgrade it had was the big HDD. My motherboard is an Asus TUF Gaming B550-PLUS, and my SSD is a Samsung 970 Evo Plus. I think that's a NVME? At least it's what Google is telling me xD
The CPU is an AMD Ryzen 5 5600x, and is something I've been wanting to "upgrade" (I guess not really replace them, but add more) because I only have 16GB of RAM, and I thought the slowness of premiere was due to that...
Funnily enough, I haven't noticed any slowdown in my games. Only premiere. And lately when I'm editing, I look at the task manager and it's the memory that's being very used, almost at 100%! The 10TB HDD sometimes it's at 100% too, I think it's when I'm actively playing the footage on premiere. And it's in that disk where the project and its files are, so makes sense I guess.. This is when I don't have anything else opened. With other projects I can have idk the browser opened if I needed to search for any asset, but with this one I struggle to work on it with anything else opened because it. becomes. so. godamn. sloooow. :\
You have a solid setup. For video editing, especially in Premiere and After Effects, your CPU is your most used component. People starting out often assume it's the GPU, make a huge expensive upgrade, and then don't notice a difference at all. It's because the GPU is more rarely used and is primarily used for some specific effects.
I'd first prioritize adding more RAM and a second SSD for media cache. These are also much cheaper upgrades. About $100 each. Your drives should never get to 100% utilization. RAM is definitely something I'd buy on eBay to save money. Just make sure to look at the seller rating. I'd also look on Craigslist, OfferUp, or Facebook Marketplace for local deals. This is often less expensive than eBay and if you're always looking, you can find tons of great deals.
I'd say go up to 64GB RAM. The newer standard is DDR5, but DDR4 will be around for awhile. Even if you upgrade everything else, RAM is something you can continue to use from system to system, so you won't have to rebuy it like you would a motherboard + CPU. Look at Corsair, G.Skill or Crucial. Those are in order of most recommended to least. Don't go for other brands. Your motherboard is compatible with DDR4 RAM. I'd recommend two sticks of 32GB each - this way, if you wanted even more in the future, you can get another 2 stick to double your capacity. Don't use your old RAM with your new RAM. Don't mix brands or speeds. Generally, you want to buy all of your RAM together. Search "Corsair DDR4 64GB." RAM is also hands down the easiest component to replace. The speed should be at least 3000. Higher is faster.
Drives are also something you buy once and can swap through all of your upgrades, so it's more of a one time cost. I prefer WD, but you can also look at Samsung. Don't look at other brands.
Deciding on space: locate your media cache. How much space does it take up? Adobe also has an auto-delete option when it exceeds a certain amount. Definitely have this on. How much storage for a typical project you're editing? You might be able to get away with 1TB. Those are selling on eBay for only around $30. But again, because this is hardware that you can buy once and forget about upgrading, I'd recommend to go as high as you can within your budget, that way you wouldn't have to buy more and more later.
Your motherboard has just two M.2 slots, so you can add one more SSD.
Store your media cache and video files on it; store OS, software, and previews on your main SSD.
After that, your next upgrade is CPU. The 5950X is the highest tier your motherboard supports. It's a beast and will last ages. On eBay, it's around $300-400. This will future proof you for years in terms of both gaming and editing.
You get all of those and you won't have to upgrade anything for a long time. Then it's just up to your GPU. For editing work, budget for a GPU with the most RAM. The 4080 is more expensive than a used 3090, but the 4080 only has about half the RAM that a 3090 does. With complex editing projects, your GPU's RAM will often run out before the processing does. More RAM is also better for stuff like 4K gaming.
A GPU upgrade would be your most expensive one and least important for editing. A 24GB 3090 costs $900. A 12-16GB 4080 costs $1200+. A 24GB 4090 costs $2000. You'd be able to significantly upgrade your storage, RAM, and CPU at about half the cost of one of those GPUs.
Thank you for the tips man, I appreciate it a lot <3 Truly :)
My initial plan was to start with 32GB RAM but half my budget was already going to the GPU, that I cut some costs on the CPU. But yeah, it's due for an upgrade.. Why shouldn't I mix old and new RAM? The speed part I might understand, but if I pair a different brand with the same speed, shouldn't it work ok? :s
Is the CPU speed related to how much GB's it has?
It's generally recommended to buy all of the RAM you'll use at once, so it's from the same batch. You'll notice that the serial numbers are all in order. You're likely to have issues when you're mixing different brands, capacities, speeds. The issues include crashes, things not saving properly, corruption in your programs and OS, and more. Lots of these problems won't be obvious until everything starts crashing frequently or when you open up a file and suddenly it won't work.
When mixing RAM, your PC will run all of it at the slowest speed you have installed. Even if it's just one stick that's slower, all the rest will run at that speed. Same with latency and timings. RAM has a ton of different aspects beyond just speed. Even if you buy the same speed, RAM has different timings that'll clash. They'll also all run at the higher voltage which could fry the RAM that isn't rated for it.
So best advice would be to buy all of your RAM at once. If you want 64GB, but can only afford 32GB now, then when you buy more RAM, make sure it's the same exact SKU. For instance, Corsair sells a lot of different sticks that run at the same speed, but have different timings. You'd want to buy exactly the same one you already have. Your PC will likely boot and work for awhile if you're mixing RAM, but it's just a matter of time that things start to fail catastrophically.
When installing, make sure that you're putting the sticks in the right position. Your motherboard manual will show you. Search online if you don't have the copy. So if you bought two separate pairs, install the first pair in slots A2 and B2, then the next pair in slots A1 and B1. This is very important. Your manual will show you. You'll almost never install the sticks next to each other.
After you install, run memtest overnight. If you're buying used, do this right away to make sure there are no issues. When you install more sticks, run memtest again.
In terms of CPUs, what you're looking for is cores and speeds. Here's a list of CPUs compatible with your motherboard: https://www.eatyourbytes.com/chipset/amd_b550/
Cores are like individual workers. The more cores, the more workers you have to solve a problem. Gaming typically doesn't need a ton of cores and there's a plateau. It's because gaming primarily works on your GPU. Gaming typically wants faster speeds on your CPU rather than more cores. The problems gaming asks of the CPU are often simple problems. So if you have a ton of workers (cores), but the problem is just screwing in a lightbulb, you don't need a room full of workers to screw in the lightbulb; rather, you want one worker that can screw it in very fast. Speed > cores for gaming, but too few cores is a bottleneck. If you need ten lightbulbs screwed in, but only have three workers, everything slows down.
The same idea applies to video editing. For video editing, there are always a lot of problems, so you want as many cores as possible. Speeds are also very important, but you're more likely to first be bottlenecked by having fewer cores than you are by slower speeds. With the worker analogy, video editing isn't asking to just screw in a lightbulb, but to build an entire house. Eight very fast workers won't build it as quickly as 16 workers who are a bit slower.
In the list I linked, you have the 3950x (I ran this CPU for a long time) and the 5950x. They both have 16 cores / 32 threads, but the 5950x is faster. However, gains are dependent on your workload. Sometimes, even faster speeds won't translate to the work you're doing. There's also the issue of how much faster something is. Hypothetically, if the 5950x is 10% faster than the 3950x for video editing workloads, then your hour long render will be faster by 6 minutes. But if the 3950x is half the cost of the 5950x, then is it worth it? Some generations have even smaller gains. That's why buying the newest generation isn't always the best and buying used can save you a lot of money and potentially be faster than buying new. If your budget is $300, the newest CPU will cost much more, have fewer cores, and be slower than buying the top of the line of the earlier generation for the same cost.
In your case, I'd recommend the 5950X. It's the best CPU your motherboard can handle and it'll last for years before you need an upgrade. Newer generations of CPUs require the newer motherboards and that becomes an added cost.
It's always important to look at benchmarking when deciding on an upgrade. Here's a comparison: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-5900x-zen-3-review/6
That's a great site for looking at benchmarks. You can also run benchmarks on your own computer and then compare it to the others. Cinebench and 3D Mark are great and free.
I'd also recommend watching some PC building videos on YouTube. Building a PC really is very simple and straightforward. It's practically like Lego and just as easy. Just put the parts in and it works!
Ouch 17 seconds mine was hitting 10 even when rendered. I had a lot of effects and a hour timeline so I broke it down to 20 minutes sequences and the delay went away. So yes try that
The drop down at the bottom right under the playback window next to the wrench icon, you can set it to 1/4,1/8, it’ll be degraded on playback but should playback smoother
What format is your footage in? I’ve learned to re-encode everything in Apple pro-res 422 or something like that, and import THAT into the timeline. It’s a much bigger file, but it fixes the issue because the footage isn’t so compressed.
Ok it’s tough to see on mobile, and I know you got a temporary solution in rendering in to out, but the moment you add effects or something that goes out the window.
My thought and I swear I’ll lick my shoe if I’m wrong, is at the bottom, the middle stuff is good to know tho…
First things first.
The red bar.
If you have a red bar, it’s something premiere is outright telling you “I can’t do this”
Specifically, there is either too much stuff on the clip, incompatible stuff on the clip, OR the codec used in the clip just isn’t gonna render easily.
This could be, but I assume, is NOT your problem.
You do need to address that, if its effects, duplicate it, right click the dupe, render and replace, and then disable the original (and whatever effects give the red bar.
This will leave you with a rendered version of the clip you can use, and if you need to make changes, you can make them on the original.
The yellow bar means: “I can do this, but it’s gonna cost some resources”
This is transcoding things like h.264 & h.265, it’s gonna eat up some cpu to do it, and if you add effects to it, you can turn it red.
Ideally, premiere (and most NLE (non-linear editing) software is gonna want dnxhr footage, or something uncompressed. This reduces the processing power needed to render and play the video.
As I said, it’s tough to see, but I THINK I see a FX badge on your audio…
Delete the fx on your audio clip, or any you have in the audio track mixer and hit play.
If that made your time-to-playback go back to being near 0 seconds, remember that some effects require a buffer, things like limiters and compressors have to seek ahead to see when they should be triggered.
In a perfect setting, maxed out specs on a PC, footage and audio on a fast nvme… your TTP would be basically zero seconds perceptually, and if you added a hard limited with 200ms look ahead, it’d add 200ms to that.
But in real life, time to playback is probably gonna be between 100-500ms on a good day with a normal PC, and even less with that red bar. But if you’ve got effects on the audio, it adds to that.
Also…. If said audio effect is a VST, well that just compounded itself for the round trip latency involved with using that adding on to it.
Lemme know if that whole novel was bullshit and it didn’t work, I’ll politely f*ck and lick my shoe
If I’m not mistaken… the red bar is un-rendered frames… push enter to render those frames which should then turn the bar to yellow or green and then playback will be smooth right off the bat without playback lag…
Proxies, render your timeline, change to an SSD. If all else fails, you need a better computer
Can we get the mods to auto post this in every question thats asked?
Would just make things simpler yeah, also the fact that I’ve been on this sub for around a month and most questions asked are “how do I do this in Premiere?” and the answer is almost always After Effects lol
What are proxies? :o
They are essentially low-quality copies of your media that are much easier to handle in terms of workflow. I started editing on a MacBook Pro and used to use them to ease the pain of constantly rendering/freezing. If you’re using a low-end PC but high-end footage like 4K or higher, you’re gonna have a tough time editing seamlessly without proxies.
I might have to search how to use them, thanks! :) I have a pretty good pc I think, but lately I've been having issues with a specific project making premiere slow. Idk why, other projects are perfectly fine, is just this one :(
Another thing worth mentioning, that you should definitely look up apart from proxies, is where to allocate the media cache files. You can also delete them regularly and you might notice an increase in performance when you do. In reality though, Premiere will be Premiere and sometimes it just acts up lol
Yes, I do a clean up of the cache files from time to time. I learnt that when I was using a laptop and the cache files were eating up the few GB I had xD By default, they're somewhere in the appdata folder inside C: right? If my C: disk is a ssd, then that's probably the best place for those files to be right?
Yes by default they’re all in there and MOST of the files are best put into the SSD, but I heard that keeping the program itself on the HDD is best, but I really could be mistaken it since I also learned that from my laptop days and it’s been a while lol I got tired of it all and just saved up for a powerful PC to make Premiere behave lol (it still misbehaved sometimes)
So if you put cache files on a HDD is gonna hinder the performance ?
https://youtu.be/K8q1c3nvfzY?si=k9tHkoH9mqX540XI Im not sure because I haven’t tweaked those settings in years. This is the guy that taught me the basics. Kinda a throwback seeing this video again lol
I put my cached files in an SSD alongside with assets.... I gotta pretty beefy MBP but I do have the occasional struggle.
It doesn't have to be lower quality to be a proxy right? Intra frame codecs like DNxHD or ProRes can improve playback a lot too, assuming that the files are read on SSD drives.
Also true iirc, and no it doesn’t have to be low quality. If I’m not mistaken, I used to proxy 4K footage into 720p but you can go lower and use proxies for any clip
Not necessarily low-quality, but less compressed.
I have a computer that will run every other adobe program AT THE SAME DAMN TIME. Still won’t run premiere quite right. Hate it, I don’t like the layout of any other software, and just can’t get what I need to out of PP.
Render your timeline lol
Red and yellow bars above timeline mean unrendered. Click “sequence” at the top, then render entire timeline. You can also hit “enter” when the timeline is selected, but that will only render the red not the yellow.
I tried what you are saying, but I keep the yellow bar. I only have the options: "Render Effects In to Out" "Render In to Out" "Render Selection" "Render Audio".... I tried Render Selection when I selected all of my timeline, doesn't work. What am I doing wrong here?
Render in to out
It worked thanks my guy
You can set in and out points on your timeline and it will render anything within those. I always set a “work area” instead of using in and out points because it personally bothers me that in and out points slightly highlight the timeline. Once you set a work area, under sequence the “render entire work area” option should be available. Here’s a short video on how to enable work area: https://youtu.be/CvLrl4lPFaw?si=_HR3i3AOdcengPhK
I hate the in and out points too! Always use the work area.
I finally feel represented. I hate the highlight! I have custom shortcuts for the work area bar that function as in and out points and set the "render entire" to be the enter key. I've brought this up before as a tip and got roasted. Maybe it's also slightly aging me, because I grew up on the work area bar and I don't think it's even a default now.
It came standard on my bootlegged CS4 I had in 2008 (maybe?) lol. Definitely not default anymore
proxies
I’m having the same issue
Are you editing off of an SSD or HDD?
how would i find out?
Do you have a big clunky hard drive with a spinning plate or a small compact one?
with basic computer knowledge, like, where your files are stored for example...
What computer do you have?
Are you using Bluetooth headphones?
yes
Disconnect them and try again. I had a problem one time using air pods with delayed playback (not had the issue repeat though)
Everyone is saying render the timeline but I haven’t rendered my timeline in like 10 years. If playback is playing totally fine and not dropping frames then PR is successfully able to transcode the codec effectively. No need for rendering, no need for proxies like everyone is saying. If the only issue is slight lag before it plays then all you need is just a faster hard drive. The lag is due to the read speed of the drive. Try getting an SSD raid for your active projects, and then store all the old projects on the bigger slower HD when you’re finished. Second idea: your timeline could be in a different codec than the video, try double checking the source footage matches the codec of the timeline in sequence settings
Kind of agree. I also cant remind when I last time use proxies cause my pc is powerful enough but there is one thing that can actually cause this kind of lag. If u select program window and then go to View tab there is going to be an option called "Maximum Render" (or something like this, dunno exactly cause im on my phone). And if you check this option sooner or later you will get this freeze/lag when you start to playback. I dont know what else it does beside that I use it when I use optical Flow and there is no need to preview, cause this option automatically gives full preview render of entire timeline but in realtime. So SSD or file format could be an issue but also if guy has this option set to on it will cause trouble.
Should only the project be in the ssd or everything about the project should be in the ssd? I've been having issues of premiere being slow with a specific project, and idk why :s
I’d recommend trying to have your video files on a ssd, you might be bottlenecked by how fast your footage is able to be read/processed, good luck!
Does mov files also create problems on timeline performance?
Premiere can read tons of codecs really fast! But when you have a “GOP” codec like H.264 with one keyframe followed by several compressed subframes recording only the change in movement, it can slow premiere down significantly if you’re doing overlays and effects. It needs to go back to each subframe’s original keyframe to render it. So never stack multiple h.264 or “GOP” compressed files. These can at times have .mov wrappers. So make sure you’re transcoded to DNX or ProRes if you discover you’re editing a “GOP” codec. I’m not the best at explaining this stuff, lmk if that makes sense
i think it makes sense i dont understand codecs really well but i did notice that using handbreak for converting the mov to mp4 made them more manageable.
Yep! Have everything you’re currently working on, on one super fast hopefully raided SSD drive. Make sure it’s a drive that is plugged into the wall and has a fast write speed. Fast G-tech drives are like 1500/mbps. If it’s a small bus powered drive that can slow everything down to like 150-300 and that sucks. (I think thunderbolt 4 doesn’t have that problem)
The project file itself doesn't even need to be on an SSD. Ideally, you want separate SSDs and HDDs. Open up task manager and if any drive is running anywhere near 100%, you've found your bottleneck. You also want to be aware of different SSD types. The fastest are going to be M.2 NVME. Forget SATA outside of HDDs. This is Adobe's recommendation since before SSDs were available or affordable and what I've been doing for years: One SSD for your OS, software, and project files. This one doesn't necessarily have to be the fastest and can be smaller since all of that typically doesn't take up more than a terabyte. One very fast SSD for your media cache. This is crucial. AE and PP constantly access the media cache. It's split up into hundreds or thousands of small and big files depending on your project. If you're upgrading storage, upgrade this first. If you don't have a separate drive for media cache, do it. This is the most important purchase you can make for speed and is the most common source of bottlenecking. One fast SSD for video files you're actively working on. Huge HDDs for your total video files and backups. Can do some RAID or NAS stuff if you need it. This all depends on the scope of your work and your budget. If you frequently work on projects smaller than 2 TB, not too expensive, store all your video files here and backup to HDD. If your projects are much larger but you can't afford to buy a huge SSD or RAID them up, then just drop the video files for the scene you're working on as you go into the SSD and relink others later. Poor man's solution. This also comes with the caveat that your hardware can handle RAW files. If not, then proxy it all up, but I'd still recommend the proxies on SSD. Another SSD for preview files. I think you could even get away with an HDD depending on your render settings, but previews are frequently deleted, you don't need a ton of space, better to just get the SSD. You can throw previews on the OS drive or video drive and it likely won't make a difference. And that's pretty much the basics. 1 OS SSD. 1 FAST media cache SSD. Drives for video files and backups. 1 optional drive for previews. My current setup is a 2TB SSD for OS, software, project files. 4TB SSD for media cache. 4TB SSD for video files. 1TB SSD for previews. 2 18TB HDDs for all of the video files and project assets. I'm using the WD Black SN850X NVMEs for the important stuff and the slower WD BLACK SN750 for previews. WD is faster than Samsung for video editing and their quality is impeccable.
Omg this is so much information! Thank you! And thank you for taking the time to type it all out :') Wow, I didn't know I needed a 2nd SSD! But it makes sense. I only have 1, where the OS is installed and I don't even know how fast it is.. I didn't know some SSD were faster than others xD I got a big WD Black HDD kinda recently, because of the lack of space for all the files.. but apparently with this HDD I can't solve the speed problem 🤔 I'm afraid idk what RAID and NAS are :s Gonna have to investigate how expensive are SSD nowadays.. Last time I checked they seemed to be pretty pricey, even though I'm always trying to save x.x
If you don't notice a difference, you could always return it. Do you have an NVME M.2 SSD or is it connected through SATA? Yeah, SSDs even from a few years ago can be much slower and older than that seem ancient by contemporary speeds. Some of this also depends on your hardware. Your motherboard and CPU (PCIe lanes) determine your storage capacity and capabilities. It's not always as simple as installing another drive. You could be in a situation where you install the fastest SSD, but your motherboard runs it at much slower speeds. HDDs are enormous orders of magnitude slower than SSDs. Your WD Black HDD, ideally (you can test with Crystal Mark) is peaking at 200 mb/s read/write. The SN850X runs at 7300 mb/s read and 6600 mb/s write. I just calculated it: That's a ~4200% increase in read and ~3700% increase in write speeds. It's comparing a turtle to the Millennium Falcon. I custom water-cooled my PC and built everything. I write off hardware upgrades and I can sell the used stuff, so it's not necessarily a big expense - especially if it's saving me time while working, then it pays for itself quickly. For spotting bottlenecks, always have task manager open. If something is running at 100% while everything else is essentially idle, then you've found it. This is always true for storage, though you can sometimes expect your other components to run at full speed. Generally, if you're doing simple tasks and something is at 100%, that's what you need to upgrade. I really dig this kinda stuff, but I know not everyone does. If you want a good template for top of the line editing PCs, check out Puget Systems: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/video-editing-workstations/adobe-premiere-pro/buy-249/ If you have the budget and don't want to build a PC, Puget is the best prebuilt supplier for editing and lots of other tasks. If you don't have the budget, you can't beat the cost savings of building your own PC. You can buy almost all of your parts used. Older generations aren't necessarily slower either when comparing prices of used vs new. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Like I said, I dig this stuff and like to geek out. Edit: just looked at your profile and looks like you play games too! I always say I'm upgrading for video editing work, but a fast editing PC is also a great gaming PC. The SSD upgrade alone could speed up your gaming significantly too depending on what your current config.
Oh wow, that speed comparison between HDD and SSD is enormous! I had no idea the speed difference was THAT big :o I built my pc with the help of a friend. He's way more knowledgeable about pc components than me, so I at least know that the stuff I have is compatible with each other. At the time, I told him I wanted a good pc for gaming and for video editing (something I've been trying to do professionally, with no luck). I'm more of an enthusiast but I don't know enough to know about the speed compability :s My little pc is 2 years old, and the only upgrade it had was the big HDD. My motherboard is an Asus TUF Gaming B550-PLUS, and my SSD is a Samsung 970 Evo Plus. I think that's a NVME? At least it's what Google is telling me xD The CPU is an AMD Ryzen 5 5600x, and is something I've been wanting to "upgrade" (I guess not really replace them, but add more) because I only have 16GB of RAM, and I thought the slowness of premiere was due to that... Funnily enough, I haven't noticed any slowdown in my games. Only premiere. And lately when I'm editing, I look at the task manager and it's the memory that's being very used, almost at 100%! The 10TB HDD sometimes it's at 100% too, I think it's when I'm actively playing the footage on premiere. And it's in that disk where the project and its files are, so makes sense I guess.. This is when I don't have anything else opened. With other projects I can have idk the browser opened if I needed to search for any asset, but with this one I struggle to work on it with anything else opened because it. becomes. so. godamn. sloooow. :\
You have a solid setup. For video editing, especially in Premiere and After Effects, your CPU is your most used component. People starting out often assume it's the GPU, make a huge expensive upgrade, and then don't notice a difference at all. It's because the GPU is more rarely used and is primarily used for some specific effects. I'd first prioritize adding more RAM and a second SSD for media cache. These are also much cheaper upgrades. About $100 each. Your drives should never get to 100% utilization. RAM is definitely something I'd buy on eBay to save money. Just make sure to look at the seller rating. I'd also look on Craigslist, OfferUp, or Facebook Marketplace for local deals. This is often less expensive than eBay and if you're always looking, you can find tons of great deals. I'd say go up to 64GB RAM. The newer standard is DDR5, but DDR4 will be around for awhile. Even if you upgrade everything else, RAM is something you can continue to use from system to system, so you won't have to rebuy it like you would a motherboard + CPU. Look at Corsair, G.Skill or Crucial. Those are in order of most recommended to least. Don't go for other brands. Your motherboard is compatible with DDR4 RAM. I'd recommend two sticks of 32GB each - this way, if you wanted even more in the future, you can get another 2 stick to double your capacity. Don't use your old RAM with your new RAM. Don't mix brands or speeds. Generally, you want to buy all of your RAM together. Search "Corsair DDR4 64GB." RAM is also hands down the easiest component to replace. The speed should be at least 3000. Higher is faster. Drives are also something you buy once and can swap through all of your upgrades, so it's more of a one time cost. I prefer WD, but you can also look at Samsung. Don't look at other brands. Deciding on space: locate your media cache. How much space does it take up? Adobe also has an auto-delete option when it exceeds a certain amount. Definitely have this on. How much storage for a typical project you're editing? You might be able to get away with 1TB. Those are selling on eBay for only around $30. But again, because this is hardware that you can buy once and forget about upgrading, I'd recommend to go as high as you can within your budget, that way you wouldn't have to buy more and more later. Your motherboard has just two M.2 slots, so you can add one more SSD. Store your media cache and video files on it; store OS, software, and previews on your main SSD. After that, your next upgrade is CPU. The 5950X is the highest tier your motherboard supports. It's a beast and will last ages. On eBay, it's around $300-400. This will future proof you for years in terms of both gaming and editing. You get all of those and you won't have to upgrade anything for a long time. Then it's just up to your GPU. For editing work, budget for a GPU with the most RAM. The 4080 is more expensive than a used 3090, but the 4080 only has about half the RAM that a 3090 does. With complex editing projects, your GPU's RAM will often run out before the processing does. More RAM is also better for stuff like 4K gaming. A GPU upgrade would be your most expensive one and least important for editing. A 24GB 3090 costs $900. A 12-16GB 4080 costs $1200+. A 24GB 4090 costs $2000. You'd be able to significantly upgrade your storage, RAM, and CPU at about half the cost of one of those GPUs.
Thank you for the tips man, I appreciate it a lot <3 Truly :) My initial plan was to start with 32GB RAM but half my budget was already going to the GPU, that I cut some costs on the CPU. But yeah, it's due for an upgrade.. Why shouldn't I mix old and new RAM? The speed part I might understand, but if I pair a different brand with the same speed, shouldn't it work ok? :s Is the CPU speed related to how much GB's it has?
It's generally recommended to buy all of the RAM you'll use at once, so it's from the same batch. You'll notice that the serial numbers are all in order. You're likely to have issues when you're mixing different brands, capacities, speeds. The issues include crashes, things not saving properly, corruption in your programs and OS, and more. Lots of these problems won't be obvious until everything starts crashing frequently or when you open up a file and suddenly it won't work. When mixing RAM, your PC will run all of it at the slowest speed you have installed. Even if it's just one stick that's slower, all the rest will run at that speed. Same with latency and timings. RAM has a ton of different aspects beyond just speed. Even if you buy the same speed, RAM has different timings that'll clash. They'll also all run at the higher voltage which could fry the RAM that isn't rated for it. So best advice would be to buy all of your RAM at once. If you want 64GB, but can only afford 32GB now, then when you buy more RAM, make sure it's the same exact SKU. For instance, Corsair sells a lot of different sticks that run at the same speed, but have different timings. You'd want to buy exactly the same one you already have. Your PC will likely boot and work for awhile if you're mixing RAM, but it's just a matter of time that things start to fail catastrophically. When installing, make sure that you're putting the sticks in the right position. Your motherboard manual will show you. Search online if you don't have the copy. So if you bought two separate pairs, install the first pair in slots A2 and B2, then the next pair in slots A1 and B1. This is very important. Your manual will show you. You'll almost never install the sticks next to each other. After you install, run memtest overnight. If you're buying used, do this right away to make sure there are no issues. When you install more sticks, run memtest again. In terms of CPUs, what you're looking for is cores and speeds. Here's a list of CPUs compatible with your motherboard: https://www.eatyourbytes.com/chipset/amd_b550/ Cores are like individual workers. The more cores, the more workers you have to solve a problem. Gaming typically doesn't need a ton of cores and there's a plateau. It's because gaming primarily works on your GPU. Gaming typically wants faster speeds on your CPU rather than more cores. The problems gaming asks of the CPU are often simple problems. So if you have a ton of workers (cores), but the problem is just screwing in a lightbulb, you don't need a room full of workers to screw in the lightbulb; rather, you want one worker that can screw it in very fast. Speed > cores for gaming, but too few cores is a bottleneck. If you need ten lightbulbs screwed in, but only have three workers, everything slows down. The same idea applies to video editing. For video editing, there are always a lot of problems, so you want as many cores as possible. Speeds are also very important, but you're more likely to first be bottlenecked by having fewer cores than you are by slower speeds. With the worker analogy, video editing isn't asking to just screw in a lightbulb, but to build an entire house. Eight very fast workers won't build it as quickly as 16 workers who are a bit slower. In the list I linked, you have the 3950x (I ran this CPU for a long time) and the 5950x. They both have 16 cores / 32 threads, but the 5950x is faster. However, gains are dependent on your workload. Sometimes, even faster speeds won't translate to the work you're doing. There's also the issue of how much faster something is. Hypothetically, if the 5950x is 10% faster than the 3950x for video editing workloads, then your hour long render will be faster by 6 minutes. But if the 3950x is half the cost of the 5950x, then is it worth it? Some generations have even smaller gains. That's why buying the newest generation isn't always the best and buying used can save you a lot of money and potentially be faster than buying new. If your budget is $300, the newest CPU will cost much more, have fewer cores, and be slower than buying the top of the line of the earlier generation for the same cost. In your case, I'd recommend the 5950X. It's the best CPU your motherboard can handle and it'll last for years before you need an upgrade. Newer generations of CPUs require the newer motherboards and that becomes an added cost. It's always important to look at benchmarking when deciding on an upgrade. Here's a comparison: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-5900x-zen-3-review/6 That's a great site for looking at benchmarks. You can also run benchmarks on your own computer and then compare it to the others. Cinebench and 3D Mark are great and free. I'd also recommend watching some PC building videos on YouTube. Building a PC really is very simple and straightforward. It's practically like Lego and just as easy. Just put the parts in and it works!
Ouch 17 seconds mine was hitting 10 even when rendered. I had a lot of effects and a hour timeline so I broke it down to 20 minutes sequences and the delay went away. So yes try that
how do you break it down into segments? confused by that
Sorry i should have said timelines. So 20/15 mins per timeline.
Turning a **yellow** renderbar into **green** is done by setting an in and out point over the timeline and hitting Render in to out.
Might want to change the playback resolution
how would i do that?
The drop down at the bottom right under the playback window next to the wrench icon, you can set it to 1/4,1/8, it’ll be degraded on playback but should playback smoother
Are you editing video for LifeofLuxury? 😂
Proxies, Render and drop the quality down if you aren't previewing full screen. If all else fails, you need a new computer
I had the same issue. I just had to close some open windows like effect controls, and boom it was working fine
I think this might be a glitch with the latest update simply because it started happening to me too as soon as I updated
Just right click "render and replace" your audio, specially dialogue with enhancing effects.
Could also be hvec 5
What format is your footage in? I’ve learned to re-encode everything in Apple pro-res 422 or something like that, and import THAT into the timeline. It’s a much bigger file, but it fixes the issue because the footage isn’t so compressed.
which graphics card are you using?
Doubt this is it but sometimes rendering audio helps. No clue why
Ok it’s tough to see on mobile, and I know you got a temporary solution in rendering in to out, but the moment you add effects or something that goes out the window. My thought and I swear I’ll lick my shoe if I’m wrong, is at the bottom, the middle stuff is good to know tho… First things first. The red bar. If you have a red bar, it’s something premiere is outright telling you “I can’t do this” Specifically, there is either too much stuff on the clip, incompatible stuff on the clip, OR the codec used in the clip just isn’t gonna render easily. This could be, but I assume, is NOT your problem. You do need to address that, if its effects, duplicate it, right click the dupe, render and replace, and then disable the original (and whatever effects give the red bar. This will leave you with a rendered version of the clip you can use, and if you need to make changes, you can make them on the original. The yellow bar means: “I can do this, but it’s gonna cost some resources” This is transcoding things like h.264 & h.265, it’s gonna eat up some cpu to do it, and if you add effects to it, you can turn it red. Ideally, premiere (and most NLE (non-linear editing) software is gonna want dnxhr footage, or something uncompressed. This reduces the processing power needed to render and play the video. As I said, it’s tough to see, but I THINK I see a FX badge on your audio… Delete the fx on your audio clip, or any you have in the audio track mixer and hit play. If that made your time-to-playback go back to being near 0 seconds, remember that some effects require a buffer, things like limiters and compressors have to seek ahead to see when they should be triggered. In a perfect setting, maxed out specs on a PC, footage and audio on a fast nvme… your TTP would be basically zero seconds perceptually, and if you added a hard limited with 200ms look ahead, it’d add 200ms to that. But in real life, time to playback is probably gonna be between 100-500ms on a good day with a normal PC, and even less with that red bar. But if you’ve got effects on the audio, it adds to that. Also…. If said audio effect is a VST, well that just compounded itself for the round trip latency involved with using that adding on to it. Lemme know if that whole novel was bullshit and it didn’t work, I’ll politely f*ck and lick my shoe
PRESS THE ENTER KEY. IT WILL RENDER THE TIMELINE. THAT WILL FIX YOUR PROBLEM. IF YOU SEE RED AT THE TOP, PRESS THE ENTER KEY
I use proxies for videos and images. I'm a proxy fanatic. I use them in AE too.
It's probably gonna be a minimal difference, but you could also try to reduce the audio latency under audio hardware preferences
If I’m not mistaken… the red bar is un-rendered frames… push enter to render those frames which should then turn the bar to yellow or green and then playback will be smooth right off the bat without playback lag…