<p>Whilst I think @ahackney's answer is also a valid issue that is slowing down Premiere, the lack of CPU usage indicated to me there is a data bottleneck - that is, your HDD is too slow to send data to Premiere.</p>

<p>The reason Premiere (or any editing software) needs its footage on a fast, dedicated hard drive is because editing requires data to be read from any part of a file, at any time. It can skip between files, between parts of the same file, and Premiere needs to read ahead of the current play time to 'prepare' the footage to be previewed.</p>

<p>I find a good starting point is a 7200rpm drive with a SATA 6Gbps (or equivalent!). However, this needs to be a <em>dedicated</em> drive - you can't have any other programs reading or writing to this drive, as that consumed valuable bandwidth that Premiere needs.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-03-23T04:16:04.977Z
2015-03-23T04:16:04.977Z
nchpmn
<p>Not sure if this was meant as rhetorical or not, but ..</p>

<p>I think your problem is the WMV. Premiere never works well with it. I don't know if its the way its encoded or what. Can you not capture in something more universal?</p>

<p>It looks like you're making minecraft videos, try using fraps or something that captures in avi or mp4. Those would probably give you better performance also if youre greenscreening, its better to used an uncompressed format.</p>

<p>Your video card could be an expensive, awesome gaming card but still not adobe-certified for gpu acceleration. Using one that is can help with this issue.</p>

<p><a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html" rel="nofollow">https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html</a></p>

<p>Alex</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-03-23T04:11:49.470Z
This is a possible culprit. Almost all video cards are 'tuned' towards decoding H.264, as it is such a common and complex codec, used almost universally across the internet and consumer electronics.
nchpmn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-20T12:51:53.110Z
2015-02-20T12:51:53.110Z
ahackney
<p><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/k4y36.png" alt="enter image description here">
In this screenshot you can see it using 20 gigs of ram, without using any gpu or cpu, while the render window being open for 5 minutes without any progress. Gpu cuda setting is enabled, 3 gigs are allowed for the rest of the computer. There are 27 free gigs that premiere could be using but refuses to use, the cpu is mostly idling. It's frozen. for no reason at all. It just freezes and sits on its ass.
I managed to edit the first half of my footage, but when working with the second half, I can't even play the preview playback thing. I press play and nothing even happens. </p>

<p>Right now I am trying to export what I have edited and maybe use a different program to finish editing, or maybe export it into a file and import it back as a single file, however when I try yo export it just sits at encoding sequence 01 at 0% doing absolutely nothing.</p>

<premiere>
Why does premiere perform so badly when it shouldn't?
sergbot
# Why does premiere perform so badly when it shouldn't?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-02-19)

![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/k4y36.png)
In this screenshot you can see it using 20 gigs of ram, without using any gpu or cpu, while the render window being open for 5 minutes without any progress. Gpu cuda setting is enabled, 3 gigs are allowed for the rest of the computer. There are 27 free gigs that premiere could be using but refuses to use, the cpu is mostly idling. It's frozen. for no reason at all. It just freezes and sits on its ass.
I managed to edit the first half of my footage, but when working with the second half, I can't even play the preview playback thing. I press play and nothing even happens.

Right now I am trying to export what I have edited and maybe use a different program to finish editing, or maybe export it into a file and import it back as a single file, however when I try yo export it just sits at encoding sequence 01 at 0% doing absolutely nothing.

**Tags:** premiere


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2015-03-23. Score: 1

Whilst I think @username_2's answer is also a valid issue that is slowing down Premiere, the lack of CPU usage indicated to me there is a data bottleneck - that is, your HDD is too slow to send data to Premiere.

The reason Premiere (or any editing software) needs its footage on a fast, dedicated hard drive is because editing requires data to be read from any part of a file, at any time. It can skip between files, between parts of the same file, and Premiere needs to read ahead of the current play time to 'prepare' the footage to be previewed.

I find a good starting point is a 7200rpm drive with a SATA 6Gbps (or equivalent!). However, this needs to be a *dedicated* drive - you can't have any other programs reading or writing to this drive, as that consumed valuable bandwidth that Premiere needs.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2015-02-20. Score: 1

Not sure if this was meant as rhetorical or not, but ..

I think your problem is the WMV. Premiere never works well with it. I don't know if its the way its encoded or what. Can you not capture in something more universal?

It looks like you're making minecraft videos, try using fraps or something that captures in avi or mp4. Those would probably give you better performance also if youre greenscreening, its better to used an uncompressed format.

Your video card could be an expensive, awesome gaming card but still not adobe-certified for gpu acceleration. Using one that is can help with this issue.

<https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html>

Alex

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: This is a possible culprit. Almost all video cards are 'tuned' towards decoding H.264, as it is such a common and complex codec, used almost universally across the internet and consumer electronics.  

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