User: I have premiere pro, a 2023 version of it, and I really like it, but for some reason now its playback is slightly choppy, and the fix for it is either sharing my screen on discord, or just opening obs. why would that be a fix for this issue, and what can I do to perma fix it so that I dont have to keep doing either of those things?


Assistant:  That'sThat's an interesting and somewhat uncommon issue! The fact that playback in Premiere Pro (2023) becomes smoother when you share your screen on Discord or open OBS suggests that the way your system is handling **hardware acceleration** or **GPU resources** might be involved.

### Why does opening OBS or sharing the screen fix playback choppiness?

Opening OBS or starting screen sharing in Discord can cause your computer to:

- **Activate the GPU more consistently or change its power state**: Some GPUs dynamically scale performance or power down when idle. Sharing your screen or running a capture app often forces the GPU to stay active and run at higher performance, which can help smooth out video playback.
- **Switch or initialize certain GPU drivers or encoding sessions**: OBS and Discord use hardware video encoding (NVENC, AMD VCE, or Intel Quick Sync), which may "wake up" or stabilize your GPU’s video pipeline.
- **Change the system’s video processing state**: These apps invoke video capture and streaming APIs that might indirectly fix resource/thread contention or sync issues with Premiere’s playback engine.

### How to make this fix permanent:

1. **Update GPU drivers**
   - Make sure your GPU drivers (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel) are fully up-to-date. New drivers often fix GPU acceleration problems or bugs.
   
2. **Adjust Premiere Pro’s playback settings**
   - Go to `File > Project Settings > General`
   - Under **Renderer**, switch between different options:
     - **Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA/OpenCL/Metal)**
     - **Mercury Playback Engine Software Only**
   - Test playback smoothness. If GPU acceleration causes choppiness, try software only temporarily to diagnose.

3. **Disable or enable hardware acceleration in Windows**
   - On Windows 10/11, **Settings > System > Display > Graphics settings** – turn off/on hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling.
   - Also, check if the **"Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling"** option in GPU control panel is enabled or not.
   
4. **Adjust power settings**
   - Set your PC to **High Performance** mode via Power Options.
   - For laptops, ensure you're plugged in, and no aggressive power saving modes throttle GPU or CPU.
   
5. **Clear Premiere Pro cache**
   - `Edit > Preferences > Media Cache` – clean unused media cache files.
   
6. **Check timeline playback resolution**
   - Lower your playback resolution in the program monitor (e.g., 1/2 or 1/4) to reduce load.
   
7. **Make sure no background tasks are interfering**
   - Sometimes antivirus or background apps cause disk I/O or CPU throttling.
   
8. **Try forcing OBS to be open but minimized in the background**
   - As a workaround, if it’s a persistent issue and you can't fix it immediately, keep OBS running without actually recording or streaming.

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### Summary:

Your GPU or video pipeline is likely being underutilized or mismanaged when Premiere plays normally; opening Discord screen share or OBS invokes a different GPU/video path that stabilizes performance.

**The ideal solution is to:**

- Update GPU drivers,
- Play around with Premiere’s and Windows’ hardware acceleration settings,
- Make sure power settings favor performance over power saving.

If you want, I can also guide you through checking specific settings or logs to narrow down the root cause. Would you like step-by-step help for that?
User: im on a mac tho
Assistant: