Over the last couple of weeks, I have been playing with Adobe Premiere Pro with varying results. The biggest problem I have run into is the preview of a sequence becoming choppy after a few seconds of playback. After reading MULTIPLE forum posts and articles on this matter I still have not found a complete solution. What I plan to do is take note here what I have tried and what has been suggested to me. Feel free to comment with any further tips. On a Side note, I am working with Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014.

1. Changing Playback Preview Settings

If you click on the sequence you are using then navigate to the top “Sequence” Menu item, select “Sequence Settings” and navigate down to “Video Previews”. You will notice that it is stuck on “I-Frame” and is greyed out. You need to change the “Editing Mode” to “Custom” and then you can select anything other than I-Frame. What you also need to do is change the resolution down low to something like 640×360.

This technique has been reported to work, however, I am still having a few issues with it. After you have set these settings you may still need to delete any previews that have been generated and delete the cache.

2. Change Renderer to Software only

In case your GFX/GPU is not up to the task, you can try using “Software” only as the Renderer. Go to “File”, “Project Settings”, “General” and select the “Video Rendering and Playback” dropdown. Switch to “Mercury Playback Engine Software Only” Click the image to see the exact settings.

3. Render the Sequence

After a bit of reading it seems that those with inadequate hardware (me included) will need to render the clips that you have inserted into your sequence. From what I can tell this “rendering” process pulls all your clips together and brings them down in size/resolution etc and makes the preview playable. If anyone wants to enlighten us further as to exactly what is happening here then please feel free.

To get this done you will need to use the “in” and “out” markers. (Shortcut keys ‘I” and “O” funnily enough) Once you have selected the section of your sequence to be rendered using the markers, you then can press “Enter” and the process will begin. I had a few issues with pressing enter as it was just playing that section of the sequence for me. So instead I go to “Sequence” on the top ribbon bar and click “Render In and Out”. This will begin to render your sequence between the markers you set.

You will then notice that the line above the clips turns green and you should then get much better playback in the preview window. This does not affect your final export or rendering of the clips.

4. If editing from a laptop, disconnect your dock or USB 3.0 Display Link Cable

So, I think I may have solved one of my problems. Today I decided to do a bit of editing on the couch and noticed a massive improvement in the preview window. But how can this be? I have not made any changes to the settings. I decided to head back to my desk and plug into my port extender which uses ‘USB 3.0 Display Link’ to connect the monitor….(Massive Light bulb moment!) I decided to then change my monitor properties to “Clone” mode instead of “Extend”. I noticed straight away that the choppiness still appeared on my larger monitor through the USB 3.0 display link,?but it was not nearly as bad on the laptop screen. Of course, I had been using the larger external screen the whole time with premiere pro. Saying all of this, it has not fixed it perfectly yet, but we are getting closer to complete resolution.