Smooth Playback

I am trying to playback my video project with reduced stuttering. I recently built a PC with a Ryzen 7 3700X, RTX 2070 and 32 GB of RAM. I plan on getting another GPU (most likely AMD) for a more effective workload. However, I am slightly confused that despite me working in a resolution size 2k. I still don't get smooth playback when scrubbing. I know this isn't that huge of an issue since I can still watch it in real-time no problem, I was just wondering if there was any way to improve my workflow.

Generate Optimized Media. The settings to use for that can be found in Project Settings.

You can choose to use half or lower resolution Optimized Media, and choose the quality. Something like DNxHR SQ will probably be fine for most purposes.

If your source media is H264 then that's often very choppy for scrubbing, even with HW decoding. Optimized Media will be much smoother. And it usually only takes a few (tens of) minutes to generate it.

There are some issues with Optimized Media, especially if/when you do a Save As on your project. It can get lost or disconnected. In which case an alternative is to generate proxies for your footage (which can be done in bulk via File -> Media Management -> Transcode). Then you use the proxies in place of the original footage, and when you're ready to do the final render, use Reconform From Bins to put the original media in place of the proxies.

But start out with Optimized Media. It will probably work fine, and is automated and easy to use.

I vote we put this in a sticky thread.

edit

Oh wait, it's already in the FAQ, under "Performance" viewtopic.php?f=21&t=90190#p503151, but I do think you gave a great answer, Bloke, nearly canonical.