When you are "seeking," (which means QUICKLY looking through a long video by clicking and dragging the playhead with the cursor,) there is sometimes very high "prefetch latency," meaning that frames will load slowly, resulting in very few frames being shown. This can make it very difficult to find what you're looking for.

But when seeking, perfect frame accuracy is not nearly as important as seeing what you're doing. Therefore, to reduce the "prefetch latency," I suggest that the nearest I-frame is loaded and displayed FIRST, (because I-frames are always the fastest to load) while the exact B or P frame is still being slowly decoded. As soon as it's decoded, it can be displayed, replacing the displayed I-frame.

If the user is seeking quickly, there might not be enough time to load the P and B frames before the user has already moved the playhead nearer to another I-frame. This is fine! The I-frames should always take priority.

In VLC, there is a similar feature called "fast seek."

Combined with my "ghost playhead" feature suggestion, it would be made clear to the user exactly what is going on. (Linked below)

However, it would probably be important for fast seeking to be optional, and perhaps even off by default, as it may confuse some users.

NOTE: This works best if only ONE video source is visible. With more than one video on the timeline, the I-frames will probably not be in the same spots. Nevertheless, it COULD still work, but there would have to be multiple ghost playheads. This might be too difficult to code, and confusing and frustrating for users, who won't understand why premiere is showing video frames out of lockstep, especially in cases where one video has high prefetch latency, and the other is low.

LINK TO FULL EXPLANATORY VIDEO: https://youtu.be/XeFezzmG22c

LINK TO GHOST PLAYHEAD USERVOICE ENTRY: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/42186274-a-ghost-playhead-which-always-marks-the-timeline

There are cases in news broadcasting where you can not make it in time for your news piece to air and you have to broadcast live from your timeline via SDI for example. In this case it would be helpful to have an option or a button to help make Premiere ready for that so when you know you are going to broadcast live from your Premiere timeline you can just press that button and it automatically suppresses every action that could interfere with your broadcast, for example auto-saving. This would help with the pressure of situations like this and we have this case regularly.

Scrubbing and Fast Forwarding performance is often painfully slow.

Here's an example by Jayme Cowley Media Co. of scrubbing performance in Pr vs Resolve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilPUc22itSA. The associated FR he posted mentions the problem but doesn't offer any specific solutions.

Here are 3 ideas that could greatly enhance scrubbing and fast forwarding in Pr:

1. SCRUBBING/FF RESOLUTION: In addition to being able to set the Payback and Paused Resolution in the Source/Program Monitor's wrench menus, it would be great to also be able to specify the resolution that's used when scrubbing or Fast Forwarding in the Timeline or Source Monitor. This setting would be variable, meaning that setting it to 1/4 resolution, for example, would scrub/play the footage at a variable resolution between Full all the way down to 1/4, depending on how well one's computer can keep up. (see Image 1)




2. DYNAMICALLY IGNORE EFFECTS: A new setting in the Timeline's wrench menu could allow Pr to dynamically disregard computationally heavy effects while scrubbing/Fast Forwarding in the Timeline whenever necessary in order to provide a fluid viewing experience. Essential effects such as crop and Motion settings would always be shown, but certain effects such as Lumetri Color, sharpen, blur, Warp Stabilizer, etc. could be ignored depending on how well the computer can keep up with the Timeline to guarantee a fluid viewing experience. Of course, the moment the user stops scrubbing or resumes normal playback speed, all effects would be displayed again (see Image 2). Optionally, to visually inform users that effects are being omitted, the playhead could turn a different color whenever this happens, returning to its normal blue color as soon as conditions allow all effects to be rendered once again.




3. ONLY SHOW I-FRAMES: TaranVH posted a brilliant FR suggesting that Pr only show the nearest I-frames while scrubbing Long GOP footage, quickly updating to the actual frame under the playhead when pausing. I'd like to add that this great idea should also be used when fast forwarding. Make sure to take a look and vote here: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/42186322--i-frame-first-fast-seeking-for-inter-frame-compr?tracking_code=ccac1cc695840488e461c4e3fa2399bb

Hopefully some or all of these suggestions can be implemented to help guarantee smooth scrubbing and fast forwarding. Even though computers are getting faster, the ever increasing demands put on them with 6K and 8K footage means new tools are needed in order to give editors a great editing experience. This is especially true for laptop editors!

As always, thank you for listening!

You already know the issue, many people have posted about it. For some reason I was shut out of my old trusty copy of Adobe Encore, and I'm now not able to create DVDs and BluRays for my clients. I understand that Encore was dropped for some reason, and I'm sure there was a good reason. But how in the world have you not created an alternative yet? You have such comprehensive software for every aspect of the video production workflow, but then don't offer a way to burn the project to DVD or BluRay? It boggles the mind. PLEASE figure out a way to allow us to keep using our old CS6 vintage of Encore, or just make a new version. This pandemic has been so hard for so many small businesses, and this decision by Adobe feels like a kick in the teeth. I have several projects I'm working on right now that I've had to put on hold until I can find a solution, just because I updated my computer and was locked out of my own software.