Premiere Pro Lags around Text Media??

[Ivan Eldredge]

Hello Josh! While I haven’t encountered this exact issue before, here are some steps I would take to troubleshoot the problem:

First, have you tried the standard Premiere Pro troubleshooting steps? Resetting preferences, clearing the media cache, enabling or disabling graphics hardware acceleration, or switching the acceleration mode might help. It’s also worth lowering the playback resolution to see if that improves performance. Additionally, third-party plugins can sometimes cause conflicts, so I’d recommend checking those as well.

Specifically for your project, you might want to try using a different font, as sometimes the font itself can cause unexpected issues. Even though 4K H264 footage is widely used, it can still be demanding on a system, so I often suggest using proxies or transcoding to a more computer-friendly format.

I hope one of these steps helps you resolve the issue! Let us know how it goes.

Good luck!
Best,

Ivan Eldredge

[Josh Logan]

Hi Ivan! Thanks so much for the reply!

Yes I’ve done all those things except changing the hardware acceleration, I’m not sure what that is? Since I have the M3 Max Mac there’s not a 3rd party video driver to fuss with (at least not that I’ve found), so I’m not sure if that’s something I can do on this machine or not. If you have any suggestions on that front I’m super down to try anything!

The font is the default font, no 3rd party plugins, and I’ve been cutting for 4 months with no trouble, so the areas that are problematic are areas that previously were fine. That’s the part that’s so confusing. I even tried importing a project into a fresh project and it seemed to help for a minute, but then went back to the same behavior.

Even when I render the graphics and have a green bar, anywhere I have text events playback hits a roadblock for 2-3 seconds, and then goes back to normal.

Thank you for your input! I’ll do some research on what you suggested!

[Ivan Eldredge]

Hi Josh! Thanks for the reply!

To check if you’re able to change the renderer/acceleration mode on your machine do this, go to File > Project Settings > General, and then under Video Rendering and Playback, see if you can switch acceleration modes from the Renderer dropdown. On my M1 MacBook, I can’t change this setting, so I’m not entirely sure if you’ll be able to on your M3 Max Mac, but it’s definitely worth a try.

Now, regarding the H264 codec: Even if you haven’t had issues with it in the past, problems can arise at any time due to the nature of how this codec works. H264 is highly compressed, which means your machine has to work extra hard to decode each frame, especially when additional elements like text overlays are involved. This extra processing can sometimes cause the kinds of playback issues you’re describing.

Given this, I’d still recommend trying to transcode a few files or use proxies to see if that helps. On a Mac, transcoding to a ProRes codec is usually the best approach, as it’s much easier on your system and typically eliminates these kinds of issues.

I hope this helps! Let me know how it goes, and good luck!

Ivan Eldredge

[Josh Logan]

Thanks for the additional ideas! Tried that — same same.

Understood on the H264, that may well be the problem. I do wish there was a simplified text tool that didn’t have all the bells and whistles that the fancy Premiere text tool has. Sometimes I just need to put some letters on the screen without having to sift through an advanced motion graphics interface. It’s an excellent tool for what it is, but serious overkill for some purposes.

The part that’s most puzzling to me is that it still creates the same playback artifacts even AFTER rendering the previews. At that point, it should be referencing ProRes422LT render files from a totally different cache, shouldn’t it?

Thanks again for the feedback here! I’ll experiment with proxies when I’m past my next big deadline!