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Dropping frames on rendered timeline
Running a Windows 10 workstation with: dual 8-core xeons, 128GB RAM, GTX 1080, SSD boot, 24TB Thunderbolt 2 RAID-5.
I’m constantly battling frames dropping and choppy playback in my timeline, even with green rendered footage, and even with footage that matches the sequence so there’s no color bar. I’ve tried lots of things–adding the second xeon and upgrading the gpu both seemed to help get me through a couple of projects, but I think that was maybe just helping with better playback on the yellow sections.
Here’s things I’ve tried: restarting Premiere including clearing preferences and plug-in caches, changing audio to MME and setting input to none, changing audio outputs to ASIO Quantum (PreSonus interface), lowering and raising amount of ram allocated to adobe apps, transcoding to ProRes HQ DNxHD/R, changing sequence setting to different codecs, running with both CUDA and software, disabling high quality playback, setting playback to 1/4 resolution, updating Windows to April Feature and post-April cumulative, updating bios drivers and firmware for gpu thunderbolt motherboard etc., clearing media caches both in Premiere and manually in the AppData location, moving the media caches and preview file locations between the project/media RAID and the ssd boot drives.
What am I missing?
Edit: also uninstalled and reinstalled Premiere, swapped Intel boot SSD for Samsung 860, tried disabling Kaspersky, and removed non-necessary boot processes on startup.
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9 Replies
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– SD, HD, 4K, 6K, 8K?
– Location of Media Chace and Media Cache Database? -
1080p60 and 1080p30. I’ve moved the media cache and media cache database to both the media drive (6-drive thunderbolt RAID-5 array) as well as the ssd boot drive. Both drives have plenty of available free space, and I’ve never had problems like this with hosting the media cache and media cache database on a similar thunderbolt RAID-5 in the past when working on a Mac Pro with half the CPU and RAM.
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I would have started with to place the Media Cache and Media Cache Database on a non-OS disk. Then i would have used the free disk speed test from Blackmagic Design to test the write and read speed of the disks. I have a feeling that the speeds are ok.
1080p30 should be ok but 1080p60 can be tricky to playback without any dropped frames. It depends on the codec of the clips as well so the codec plays a big role here, so does the disk speed depending of the codec. What codec do you use?
What happens if you create a new project and dont mess with the preview codecs and just use the standard MPEG2 I-frame codec? Place the media on a matching timeline, no effects, and playback the footage?
Can you post the model and CPU speed of the processors? (Win+X and then press Y to get the About dialog)
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Codecs of source footage ranges from ProRes HQ to DNxHD/R, to xavc, to Cineform, to h.264. The problems appear with all codecs really, even if I’m using DNxHD source with the sequence matched so there’s no color indicator, and even with footage fully rendered to green (with the sequences set to various codecs including DNxHD, AVCHD, and I-Frame Only.
Dell Precision 7910 (latest anti-sceptre BIOS flash) with: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v3 @2.40GHz 2.39GHz (2 processors).
Disk Speed Test:
boot drive: 433 MB/s Write, 507 MB/s Read
media drive: 338 MB/s Write, 410 MB/s Read … hmmm, this is odd, this should be posting double these rates. (24TB Pegasus 2 24TB w/ 6.6 TB free – was originally testing double these rates when first setup), it’s connected to an add-on Dell TB2 PCI-e card.Okay, so here’s the weird thing: I setup new 1080p60 sequences in the standard AVCHD and 10-bit DNxHD, imported some ProResHQ, DNxHD and H.264 footage and added a couple of fx and even in the areas where it was red with two layers comped over eachother with a luma matte, it was playing back at a very reasonable rate. So I opened the project that I’ve been working on earlier today which was really shutting me down, and that was suddenly playing back reasonably. So I worked in that for awhile and then it suddenly hit a brick wall–in this instance when adding the VHS RG Universe plugin to a set of highish res stills with animated transformation keys. That’s when I’d be sitting there waiting 10 seconds just for the system to show the frame if I clicked somewhere else in the timeline. And if I grabbed a UI border to rescale, I’d be waiting 20+ seconds while the cursor did the blue pinwheel of death. So, then I opened the previous test project, and found that I could still navigate quickly, and … when I clicked back to the project that had been hanging, it suddenly was performing quickly again!
Any advice on what’s going on?
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I found that the disk speed test was giving higher numbers for uncompressed 4GB tests, but compressed formats whether AVC-Intra, DNxHR, or ProRes are all giving me very low numbers, and when I use the AJA Speed Test, I can now also see that the disk writes are sometimes hanging, both read and write are all over the place without consistent rates being held and drops in speed, and reads being slow to get up to speed. I put in a ticket with Promise.
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After some tests between Pr and Resolve, I don’t think the drive problem is going to fix everything for me.
I created a new project in Resolve and imported some of the source clips I’ve been working with and was able to layer several layers with fx and opacity and it plays back smooth as butter. I create a new project in premiere with AVC-Intra 100 sequence and it plays back ok, a frame drop or two here and there (sequence is all yellow), then I render a section and that’s playing back okay … for a minute or two. Then the project seems to get corrupted with the same problems that keep creeping up for me–namely that rendered sections are dropping frames all over the place.
Why is it that preview rendered sections are playing worse than several layers of un-rendered clips stacked?
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I’d start with isolating codecs. If you work solely with pro-res or dnxhd media and then set your timeline previews to quicktime dnxhd do you have all of the same problems?
I’d create multiple sequences with isolated codecs and set your previews to quicktime dnxhd to see if there’s any differences.
Windows 10 Pro | i7-5820k CPU | 64 gigs RAM | NvidiaGeForceGTX970 | Blackmagic Decklink 4k Mini Monitor |
Adobe CC 2018 |Renders/cache: Samsung SSD 950 Pro x2 in Raid 0 | Media: Samsung SSD 960 PRO PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 | Media: OWC Thunderbay 4 x 2 Raid 0 mirrored with FreeFileSync -
So it seems that the amount of frames dropped when playing back a rendered section is directly relational to the data rate of the codec chosen for the sequence. So, the same 30 seconds of clips copied to new sequences, rendered, and played back shows:
AVCHD: 30 dropped frames
DNxHD 8-bit: 90 dropped frames
Cineform 10-bit: 450 dropped framesBut the thing is, I can open a source xavc or a transcoded DNxHR version of the source and both near the start of play will drop 4-8 frames but then play on without any dropped frames. Those sources are both 1080p30 just like the sequences and the source and preview video files are all stored on the same drive, so there’s something specifically about preview files in Premiere that is amplifying the playback problems.
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Looks like I finally got this resolved. I added a dedicated SSD drive for Pr and Ae cache and preview files yesterday. That did not fix the problem. Then overnight I was batch transcoding and running parity maintenance on my raid array, and when I came in this morning Windows said it couldn’t see any of my drives. Turns out there is a daughtercard on my Dell Precision 7910 which hosts the SAS and SATA controllers which died overnight. It must have progressively been getting worse over time, creating the issues I’ve been dealing with.
Thanks for the help Roger and Greg.
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