Unrealistic performance issues because of audio

[Hector Vera]

So you basically switch between PCs the same projects which one of them runs at 1-2 fps and the other runs normally right? And if the specs are not the issue, did you tried uninstalling or reinstalling the application to see if there is an improvement in performance? Hope it can help.

[Torok Arnold]

I did try the following, all with no success:

-Reinstalling Premiere

-Setting the audio preferences to none

-Resetting my plugin caches (SHIFT+Launch)

-Deleting all my audio peak files (so that Premiere has to regenerate them), media cache files and temporary files.

[Tom Morton]

This is a curious one, could you try something else for me? I’m guessing you have past projects you can test this on:

When you are done with step 2, copy back to the original PC. Don’t open it – but now open a brand new project and test it is all running well. Then import the project into the new project using File > Import. This will force some cache rebuilds that you can’t do from the UI.

Give that a go and let me know if it still runs slowly when importing it rather than just opening it!

PS: (while we’re at it, just give us a quick idea of what edits you do on the second PC? Just thinking about some effects that could clash on different hardware. What effects do you commonly use, do you use audition for audio, do you use nested comps and how many levels?)

[Torok Arnold]

I have reproduced the first method exactly as you described it. Unfortunately it made no difference, I don’t think the issue is related to cache.

However, with your PS I feel like you have pointed me into the right direction!

I opened a project, selected all the audio from all the layers and did the following: right click – Remove Attributes – Effects (I always use Hard Limiter, Denoise, Lowpass) and clicked on Ok. It works perfectly after doing this. No playback delay.

Obviously, this is not ideal, I do need these effects. I tried narrowing it down to one, but it seems like it’s not a particular sound effect that’s causing the issue, but the quantity of them.

Overall this is still pretty weird, because it doesn’t matter how many sound effects do I use, if I skip copying the project to another PC and back, it has no impact on performance.

I could do a ‘Render and replace’ with all the audio selected, but than all of my fade transitions would be ruined and needed to be redone. Also not very ideal.

[Tod Hopkins]

A couple of things, not necessarily related, but to consider, adn YMMV. Moving projects can cause corruption. No two systems are truly identical. This would also explain why copying the contents of the old project to a newly created project on the new system would solve the problem.

This is an often-overlooked troubleshooting step, and it’s easy. Create a new project and copy only the sequence. If it works, the old project is the problem. For extra credit, create a new project AND a new sequence, and copy and paste only the contents of the original sequence. This leaves behind even more, like your track-level effects, but most of these are easy to restore. This solves way more problems than it should, especially if the old project is complicated. And it’s one of the easiest things to try. I believe it’s why Adobe created Productions.

In fact, you could bring the old project into Productions, create a new project, and copy only the latest sequence. Productions will retain all the clip-linking to the original project but allow you to close that old project while you are working.

Do not dismiss “hardware.” This is Windows where “hardware” actually means software, i.e. drivers and supporting files and no two Windows systems are truly identical. Compare your project audio and playback settings and the audio drivers between your systems. Not that this helps you solve the proximate problem.

Also audio can be more of a problem than people realize, especially if the original audio is multi-track and/or not PCM (uncompressed) and/or anything different than your sequence settings, and even worse if you are using multicam. If you have empty audio tracks in your source material, I recommend disabling them at the clip level. Historically, multitrack originals can cause playback issues even if they are not cut into your sequence. I have had projects where I had to transcode my clips just to leave behind the old audio. And you don’t notice the problem immediately, only as the project gets complicated. It tends to be an invisible problem.

Proxies. In my experience, proxies make everything more buggy, not less. When they work, great. When they go bad, ouch. I just had to delete all my proxies in a Project to get it working again. It was easy to diagnose because playback with proxies went to hell, but turning them off was all fine. Turns out, the proxies weren’t helpful. I just ramped back the playback quality. It even looked better.

In general, Premiere has become buggy at the Project level. I’ve had a lot more problems with Projects than with the go-to troubleshooting like cache files.