PPro 8.1 Update causes EXTREME UI sluggishness.  Don't do it.

Maybe try deleting media cache files...

PrPro / Edit > Preferences > Media

Under 'Media Cache Database' hit 'Clean'.

Then...

Navigate to the location specified under 'Media Cache Files',

open the folder, select all and delete.

The Media Cache Files and Database will automatically re-generate

when you re-open your Project... allow plenty of time for it to finish.

You might try deleting your Preview Files as well.

Their location:

Project > Project Settings > Scratch Disks...

Also, you can find your app prefs ned to wherever the app is installed and delete those (or hold down shift + alt/option on launch to reset them automatically)

What type of content? File type and codec, please.

How many tracks in the Timeline? Does it matter how far you're zoomed in on the sequence? Are there a lot of out-of-sync indicators in the timeline?  (A screenshot of the Timeline could help with this set of questions.)

Has conforming and indexing completed for all content?

Do any of the following help:

• disabling GPU acceleration help
• disabling one of the graphics cards
• disabling Transmit via a capture/display card (if you're using it)
• toggling off various options in the Timeline panel such as Show Duplicate Frame Indicators, Show Through-Edit Indicators
• disabling the Maintain Audio Pitch While Shuttling option (Preferences>Audio)
• disabling Ripple Sequence Markers

I installed the update yesterday; opened a project with RED RD3 files, and the Motion Tab settings had NO EFFECT AT ALL.  I added new Effects, and there was NO EFFECT AT ALL.  So, I opened other projects with other codecs, and Motion Tab settings and Effects worked again. 

To be clear, RedDirt--and I should have stated this up front--none of the measures I suggested were intended as solutions but rather as troubleshooting steps to try to isolate what's causing the problem. All of those steps relate to settings and configurations that are known to cause performance issues, and sometimes the relationship between a particular setting and the performance impact is not readily apparent.

As to your assertion that we should have tested on a similar configuration and caught this issue, you're jumping to conclusions. We're far from establishing that this is simply a matter of Premiere not performing well on a particular configuration. In addition to the version of PPro, the version of OS X, the CPU and GPU, a wide range of other variables are in play:

• backward compatibility (working with a sequence from a project that originated in an older version)
• the type of content
• the sequence settings
• the complexity of the sequence, including number of tracks and what effects are applied.
• where content is stored (internal, external, RAID array, network share) plus the speed of the drive and the interface between the drive and the computer

We exercise all those variables, but we cannot possibly test all the possible combinations of them.

I know you reported that you're having this problem with a project started in an earlier version and also with a sequence from that project imported into a new project. Have you tried with an entirely new project?

You can export your Sequence as an XML, and import that into an earlier version of Premiere.  If all you've done is cuts and dissolves, and not a lot of effects, might be worth giving a try.

Sorry, again I didn't communicate clearly enough. When I asked if you had tried with a completely fresh project, I did not mean to suggest that you restart your current project from scratch. Rather I was curious whether you had tried the same operations in a new project with some of the same content. As with my other suggestions, this is just troubleshooting step, in this case to determine if the problem might have something to do with using a project that started in an earlier version.

I understand that you've now rolled back to 8.0.1, so if you did not happen to try any test editing in a fresh 8.1 project then the ship has sailed in your case. We'll be on the lookout for other reports of similar performance issues that are new to 8.1

Just to underscore what Mark said, we really do empathize (I've been there, albeit not with a feature film), but since it's not a totally ubiquitous problem for all of us, all we can do is troubleshoot until we find the root problem and then try to remove or workaround whatever that is. The best way to do that is to prune a project down to eliminate files and other variables until you get a repro case which will clearly show you where the breakdown is happening. You can do that by opening a duplicate instance of your existing project and deleting media, etc. until the problem goes away, and then add things back in until it starts happening and then you'll have it more or less pinpointed. Or you can approach it the other way around if it's easier. Create a new project (same settings, etc) and add similar media, etc. until you see the problem show up.

I know that takes time, possibly a pretty long time, which you may not have time for right now. In that case, you should roll back to your last working setup (which it sounds like you already did), finish your project there, and then roll forward again when you have the luxury of starting from scratch. We want to work with you to get you the problem fixed for you and other uses who may also encounter it, so even if nothing happens now please feel free to come back here later to pick up where we left off.

Regards.,

-James

Have the same issue with interface. Noticed in activity monitor some problem with QT server. Its not responding as i start Premiere

Also, i found if i zoom simple timeline with one track - its ok, but if i zoom complex timeline like on picture its very slow

Thanks for the screenshots, that always helps.

Info from one of our devs: The QT32Server process always shows as “Not Responding” in the activity monitor, this is normal. The way to tell if QT32Server is hung (which happens if  QuickTime crashes or get stuck and never returns control to us) is to look at the CPU load for that process when doing some QuickTime intensive thing (non-native import and export).

Ok, so i have only the problem with complex timeline. Playback is fine

Red Dirt and others,

Try the following, if you have not already:

• Sign out from Creative Cloud, restart Premiere Pro, then sign in
• Update any GPU drivers
• Trash preferences
• Ensure Adobe preference files are set to read/write
• Delete media cache
• Remove plug-ins
• If you have AMD GPUs, make sure CUDA is not installed
• Repair permissions
• In Sequence Settings > Video Previews, change the codec to one that matches your footage
• Disconnect any third party hardware
• Reboot

Report back if anything here worked for you.

Thanks,

Kevin

Hi RD,

If I were still freelancing, these kind of operations are what I'd consider standard troubleshooting procedures. However, many of these things (alone or in combination) I asked you to try have fixed similar issues for other people, especially those on the new Mac Pro. These operations should not take much longer than 15 minutes.

If none of these things work for you, I suspect that something may be going wrong with the way Premiere Pro is operating with RED footage. The After Effects team has a bug with RED footage that might be related. In that case, please file a bug if you can: http://adobe.ly/ReportBug

Thanks,

Kevin

Hi RedDirt,

RedDirt wrote:

 

Also -- to all who try what Kevin is recommending -- beware of ditching your CUDA drivers if you use Davinci Resolve.  According to one of the Adobe links Kevin provides, some apps won't run at all without it.  But if you don't read far enough in the blogpost, you'll miss that update.

Actually, the Premiere Pro team has fixed this bug, as I mentioned up front in the blog post. It's probably a lower priority to try that now that Premiere Pro CC 2014 has fixed that. Still, I ask people to try removing CUDA drivers as a troubleshooting step. You can always place the driver back into the Frameworks folder if you need Resolve back.

Thanks,

Kevin

Trash preferences worked for me. Thank you

Pr on Mac has been notoriously bad about hogging all the RAM in my Mac (32 GB).  If I watch the Activity Monitor, when the blue (Inactive RAM) takes over, and all the Green (Free RAM) goes away, Pr get's REALLY sluggish.

The act of hogging the RAM seems to come and go with different releases and different footage types.

I keep aTerminal window open, and type in "purge" (no quotes) every now and then, and that frees up the RAM until Pr hogs it again. (That's the only thing I feel comfortable about doing with the Terminal.)  There are some freeware utilities on the web that do the same thing.  One of them can reside on the Menu Bar.  Can't remember the name of it.

This may be totally unhelpful, but I've learned that ChronoSync, which I use to do backups over my network to a backup server RAID also hogs all the free RAM, so I can't run that at the same time that I try to edit with Pr.

Add me to the list of people who are screwed by this issue. 2 days ago, I updated to 8.1 and the latest Mac OS to hopefully remedy an issues I've had since day 1 (that's a whole other MASSIVE discussion thread on this site), and after 2 days on the new version I can't even work because my system is so sluggish. Just backing up my latest CC settings took over 10 minutes, hence my time to type this. I'm switching over to my laptop so I can (hopefully) make a crazy deadline this evening.

I CANNOT BELIEVE how many issues Premiere and this new mac pro have produced. Haven't even mentioned hourly crashes I get for committing the sin of clicking from one sequence to another. If premiere wasn't the common platform for myself and almost everyone I work with, I'd be off it in a heartbeat. So many hours and dollars lost. It's my best friend and worst enemy, and the hardest part is, there's almost NEVER a definitive fix from either Adobe or Apple.

(sigh)

Hi Jesse, sorry it's giving you problems... It seems software development is inherently an imperfect process, but in situations like this you might find this helpful:

How to Access, Roll Back, or Update to Any Version of the Adobe CC Apps

Add me to the list.

Don't have time at the moment to troubleshoot or isolate anything as I am up against a deadline and my time is better spent rolling back (why the heck IT rolled it out without testing is beyond me as they never have before)

Want to add that my symptoms are identical, can playback fine, can't drag, extend, or otherwise interact in the timeline.

Here's the update after trying Kevin's post 19 fixes...

My system works for a few hours, then hits a point where it grinds to a halt. Can't drag the timeline, do simple tasks, severe lags in response, etc. When I save & quit, Premiere warns me I've had a crash, which is basically Premiere's version of a quit at this point anyway. Thank God premiere doesn't make cars or we'd all be dead from regular crashes...

What fixes this for me (not permanently, I've had to do this twice today) is, as Kevin suggested, signing out of CC, opening up premiere holding option + shift to trash my prefs, re-signing in to creative cloud, and syncing my preferences from the cloud.

Hope this helps someone out of a jam, and I hope Adobe can fix this bug FAST.

thanks Kevin.

Update from my end. Project which is sluggish was a preupdate project. A new project I created in this version  is working fine. The other, sluggish project, gives me about 10 seconds of responsiveness before grinding to a halt.

FYI, my project locked up again tonight at the end of a 13 hour edit (delayed a lot because of this issue). Had to go sign out, trash prefs, repair permissions, restart, etc repeatedly to buy a few hours of functionality. Seemed to happen in the same spot on my timeline every time, so this issue was probably triggered by a media file. Regardless, tomorrow I'm downgrading until this issue is sorted.

Same problems for me - they took me to google about Pr CC 2014.1 update sluggishness and I ended up finding this thread. I just updated my Premiere and continued and old project for client (started with 8.0.1), and everything went fine until I went to Title tool, which was super slow and freezing - moving text, clicking on objects etc. took seconds to react and the spinning beach ball of death came many times. Even right-clicking the working area in Title tool froze the system, gave spinning beach ball of death and took multiple seconds before the menu opened. Really frustrating, because everything ran smooth before.

Then I noticed an interesting thing - after this Title tool freezing, I checked my RAM usage. It was quite high - 7 GB in use and nothing free (though several GBs inactive). I have 16 GB total. I tried to restart Premiere, and after it Premiere was running with only 3 GB of overall RAM usage. I tried to open Title tool again immediately after that without doing anything in between, click and move some text to get the SBBOF and freezing, then close the title tool and checked the RAM usage - it was jumped to 9 GB!! I suppose this is not normal to have a jump from 3 to 9 GB only by opening title tool and trying just to click couple of things there? Is there some kind of memory leak related to Title tool after this update? Also the editing itself seemed a bit more sluggish than before (lag when using timeline etc.) but the title tool was almost unusable after the 2014.1 update.

I have tested only with this old project (which Premiere converted to new project in first opening), have to try more when I have time.

The project I was doing was with 4K RED material, and system is a Mid-2010 8-core Mac Pro, 16 GB, Radeon HD 5770 1 GB, OS X 10.9.5, materials in an internal 2 TB HDD. Mercury Playback Engine OpenCL is in use.

I also got some rendering errors when exporting my video with Adobe Media Encoder to H.264 mp4 -file, OpenCL rendering on. Some parts of video when there was gaussian blur effect used, resulted in image flashing & banding for the duration of the effect. I don't know if this is 2014.1 related or not, because before I have exported with Premiere's own Export -> Media -thing, not with Adobe Media Encoder. The Premiere's own export tool does not use GPU, right? Or does it? At least there is no option to select CUDA / OpenCL / CPU-only as there is in Media Encoder application...? I was thinking if those rendering errors resulted because of GPU acceleration and a "consumer-grade" GPU card that should not be used on mission-critical renderings.

Does anyone have thoughts on that?

EDIT: I just noticed that rendering on Premiere only will also result in crippled file with flashes and banding during gaussian blur -parts, this is nightmare. This had not happened with Pr 8.0.1, I had rendered the same project before with same settings without problems.

Hopefully this 8.1 general slow-down will be fixed soon!

BR,

Sakari

Oh, no.  I'm encountering the same problem.  Editing a feature film of Red Epic media.  Premiere has started chugging when I try to move clips around on the timeline.  Not unusable but truly annoying..... It's like I just downgraded my computer severely when doing certain tasks.  Don't update to the new version if you're editing Red media.

I've had to move over to my laptop for a short film edit while me new Mac Pro get serviced (a whole other issue). Went ahead and updated premiere to 8.1 and my Mac OS to 8.9.5 thinking maybe it would work on my laptop. Man, I'm dumb for doing that!

The new issues discussed in this forum are occurring on my laptop too. Sluggish performance when I apply simple filters at 1/4 resolution, and now a total loss of program monitor signal constantly. Plus it locks up crashes over and over again like most other versions of premiere I've had over the past few years (why is this so *******' hard to fix)?

The suggestion ProDesignTools helped me roll back to version 8.0, but I was shocked to discover I can't open my project created in 8.1 (the problem project). I also tried importing individual sequences and the progress bar just hangs with no results. Shouldn't I be able to trade projects between anything that's version 8? Does anyone have a fix for this!???

Also, a question for Adobe: please correct me if I'm wrong on this - but why do you make it so hard to roll back to previous base versions when you've given us buggy software? Why is there no simple web page with download options for each previous version? Please set me straight if this exists.

Dear Adobe,

A few questions:

1) Do you have a QA (Quality Assurance) department?

2) Does that QA department have more than 3 people in it?  20?  100?

3) Is each build tested thoroughly for at least a month before it's made public?  2 months?

4) Does your QA department have at least 20 different test computer configurations for both PC and MAC from budget to high end professional?

5) Does your QA department have at least 50 test projects that are loaded, manipulated for an hour, and rendered without error for each new build before it's posted?

6) Do you ship builds with known severe bugs?

7) Does your marketing department determine release schedules?

If your QA department doesn't have test projects, or if none of them include Red camera media.... please add a feature film Red camera media project to that collection.  Currently, I see NO indication that your software is being tested with long form projects with large volumes of media.  Prelude is broken for me and Premiere 2014.1 is getting there.

I don't know what your revenue stream is from the Creative Cloud, but I assume that it's reasonably extensive.  A good chunk of that monthly income needs to be spent on a robust and properly manned QA team that has the authority to delay an update if they deem it not ready.  Premiere and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite is an insanely complex piece of software and to pretend that you can keep adding features every quarter without an extensive QA team testing it thoroughly is naive, amateur, and will snowball your suite into oblivion.

Perhaps the next update for Premiere needs to be a 'bug fix only' update.... and done as quickly yet thoroughly as possible.

Recent Adobe convert... but getting frustrated,

Michael