One of the most common issues an Editor incurs is poor Playback Performance in Premiere Pro. There are some optimizations a MoGRT Artist can use while building a MoGRT to ensure good playback for a broad variety of computer systems.
Use the Composition Profiler
Click the snail icon at the bottom left of your timeline to turn on the Render Time panel. This will show you problematic layers. Keeping layers in the green will ensure a speedy MoGRT.
Note: Once your timeline is cached, this number will reduce, so purge Image Cache memory to see if issues remain.
Reduce Expressions
Expressions, especially complex expressions that are calculated on every frame, are the number one reason a MoGRT can be slow.
- Instead of duplicating a layer and connecting controls together via expressions, Pre-Comp that layer and reuse it.
- Parenting can often be used in place of expressions.
- Do not create a Control Null for each Pre-Comp to connect to the Main Comp's Control Null. This creates extra expressions that need to be calculated. Link directly to the Main Comp's Control Null instead.
- Reuse a single text: Create animation on a single text layer between two timecodes (for example, 0-10 seconds). Then create different animation at a later timecode (11-21 seconds). Repeat for other animation styles. Pre-Comp this text layer, and slide the layer to the duration of animation you need. This will reduce the use of text Style expressions.
- Instead of using expressions controls for EGP controls, use Native Properties instead. There are a few exceptions, generally it is when the Native Property does not have an Edit Range included with it. (such as Letter Spacing text animator)
- Do not use expressions to drive animation, such as Time or wiggle. Use keyframes instead.
- Convert expressions to keyframes when possible. Using a script like Easy Bake reduces keyframes to only necessary keyframes.
- Remove unused expressions.
- Set your expression to calculate at a particular frame instead of it calculating for the duration. For example, use posterizeTime(0) or sourceRectAtTime(0);
- Use a JSX library for expressions you reuse often.
Reduce Effects
- Use Adjustment layers for an effect for multiple layers or use the effect on a pre-comp.
- Use a Fill effect on a Shape layer that requires the same color instead of using multiple colors for each Shape path nested inside of it.
- Use effects from the GPU-accelerated list. These effects run faster than their CPU counterparts.
- Use Essential Properties.
- Pre-render footage like particles, backgrounds and texture mattes. These generally do not have any controls other than Color and/or Opacity, so running the effect causes performance drop for no payoff.
- Pre-render assets that use corrections like Curves or Brightness/Contrast or do corrections in Photoshop beforehand.
- Be aware that the motion blur switch causes playback lag.
- Use cameras & lights sparingly.
- Effects swap outs: Use masks/mattes instead of Transition effects, Use Tritone instead of CC Toner, use a feathered mask instead of CC Vignette.
Reduce Pixels
- Reduce large comp and footage sizes. The easiest method is to use Auto Crop for comps and before rendering footage.
Other Things to Know
- Masks on Solids render faster than Shape Objects.
- You may need to remove controls from the user and pre-render to create choices for them.
- 4k footage and comps cause lag.
- Responsive Design - Time causes lag.
- Media Replacement causes lag after the media has been replaced.
- PNG Sequences cause load time lag in Premiere Pro.
- MoGRT filesize is directly impacted by the file sizes of assets. While file size does not impact performance, it impacts load times when the MoGRT is first applied to the timeline.
Images Used: Offline Gaming Stream Screen by Wavebreak Media
Last Updated: 2/27/23