New MacBook Pro, Fs7 4k and bad playback performance

[Felix Swensson]

As I mentioned in my previous reply I am experiencing the same issues but I don’t think it has to do with the FS7 files. For my last project I had to make proxies (prores 720P). Even when working with the proxies things are not working 100%. I mean it’s fine but there is still some choppyness in playback and scrolling and things like the audiometer is lagging.

I doubt there is a hardware issue with the computer since other apps such as Final Cut are working very well and is super smooth.

[Felix Swensson]

How did it go? Did you get a new one and is it better now?

Thanks!

[Hamish Boyd]

booked in for this Saturday. Ive been going round the clock with work of late. So just haven’t had time to deal with it.
But apparently there is a machine I can swap it out for. I’ll post here asap when I know how we go.

[Hamish Boyd]

Ok brand new laptop swapped out at Apple Store. Just fired it up, cloned back from time machine and opened premiere. Playing out same footage.
As I suspected… same result. drop frames etc.

So here is where we stand: 2 different 2016 MacBook Pro machines. Identical specs – 2.9ghz 16g ram, radeon 460 1tb SSD internal running Premiere CC 2017.0.1 or 2017.0.2 struggle to play a single stream of 4k footage coming in from F5 and Fs7 cams.
mates 2011 MacBook Pro, while not completely perfect with it, Was, we both agreed MUCH better dealing with it. And my 2012 iMac is fine with it.
Same projects, same external drives, same footage same versions of Premiere.

So somewhere I fall in the gap between Adobe and Apple.
I can’t seem to see a whole thread of people with same issues. Only Felix and I.
Seems to be a tonne of reviews suggesting new MacBook Pro should eat all this up, except this isn’t what Im seeing.

[Felix Swensson]

This is so frustrating.

New OS X update today 10.12.4.

Problem remains.

Using 1080 proxies now. Just adding a single Lumetri on top slows everything down to the point it’s unusable. It’s just not the XAVC material that is working poorly :/

Final Cut is very smooth and fast. Too bad I can’t stand the interface.

[Hamish Boyd]

I haven’t been able to do some more digging on this, just completely snowed with work.

but I did just try a straight encode speed race between my old 2012 iMac and my new 2016 MacBook Pro.

I HD proResHQ clip, encoding to a Vimeo 720p preset in media encoder.

And iMac beat it by about 20%.
This was encoding straight off the same Small Tree Server we have here.

Unbelievable. I just don’t get why this MacBook Pro is performing the way it is. Even after replacing.

[Shane Ross]

[Hamish Boyd] “Unbelievable. I just don’t get why this MacBook Pro is performing the way it is. Even after replacing.”

Because Apple cares more about battery life and nifty swipe bars than actual performance. They are solidly going after consumers…and really only caring how their stuff works with FCX.

Shane
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Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Hamish Boyd]

Look I get all the Mac walking away from pro etc etc.. and that whole debate.
But I’ve never had a Mac product significantly worse than one 5years before it.
It seems that something is wrong, even if the fact that this might not be the best MacBook they’ve built, its hard to draw a line from that, to performance this underwhelming given all their history till now.
Maybe I’m wrong… And I have bought my last Mac.

I think its an Adobe software on new Mac hardware issue. A guess.

The only thing in the back of my mind that says otherwise is that there isn’t threads upon threads of the same thing, its seems to be a few of us talking about it.

[Felix Swensson]

New Premiere update today. Scrolling through 4K XAVC clips works fine now! ☺

[Felix Swensson]

Tried the following with new update:

XAVC-I 4K 25P clip in a timeline and a LUT applied in Lumetri. It plays fine in 1/2 resolution. A bit choppy at full.

Playing a 5K Red Raw file plays well at 1/4 resolution.

Prores 422HQ 4K 25P seems to be playing smoothly at full resolution.