System-wide choppy video playback on Mac Studio M1 Ultra

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J-2K Author

Level 1

18 points

System-wide choppy video playback on Mac Studio M1 Ultra

System-wide choppy video playback on Mac Studio M1 Ultra Tahoe 26.5

When playing video files, the playback freezes for a micro-second every 7 to 9 seconds.

This happens in Premiere Pro, in Quicktime, in VLC.

This happens on ProRes files, as well as mp4 — HD or UHD.

I have 2 monitors, and I tried to use only one at a time. Problem persisted.

This is my video editing station, so it's been frustrating. If anyone has any idea of what's going on, I'd love to fix this without having to re-install everything. Thanks in advance!!!

edit: Memory is 128GB (plenty). Storage uses only 359GB out of 2TB internal drive. The issue happens on files played from external SSDs, as well as from the internal drive.

Mac Studio

Posted on Jun 8, 2026 6:49 AM

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Answer 1

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J-2K Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 16, 2026 9:08 AM in response to J-2K

Symptom: Periodic micro-freezes during video playback on macOS Tahoe (every ~10 seconds, wall-clock time, across all video apps — Premiere, QuickTime, VLC — and all codecs). Mac Studio M1 Ultra.

Fix: Plug a USB device into the Mac Studio. Any wired USB HID device (keyboard, mouse, dongle) seems to work. Bluetooth devices don't count — it has to be wired USB.

Thanks everyone for the support!

After following your advice and further investigating for hours with ChatGPT and Claude, the breakthrough came by accident. I plugged a USB keyboard into the Mac Studio because I was getting ready to test with Bluetooth turned off. Before I even turned Bluetooth off, I played a video file and noticed the playback was suddenly smooth.

My Mac needs to have something plugged into the USB port.

So I simply plugged my DaVinci Resolve dongle in and it works fine now.

I used to have a USB hub always plugged in with the dongle on it, but I haven't needed any USB device in a while, nor have I been using DaVinci Resolve, so I unplugged them. And somehow I failed to notice the correlation.

Likely a macOS Tahoe USB power management bug. Filing a Feedback Assistant report. If anyone else hits this, the workaround is simple: just keep something plugged in in the USB port.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

96,626 points

Jun 8, 2026 8:03 AM in response to J-2K

1) What Displays and how are they connected to the Mac studio..?

While this sounds like a resource issue. Keep in mind, that Mac's can be very picky when it comes to the length and quality of display cables. In many cases those long cheap display manufactures supplied cables, need to be upgraded to short high speed certified 8k display cables.

2) To help determine if this is hardware, software and resource related issues.

Download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Then post back here with your Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 10

96,626 points

Jun 8, 2026 3:51 PM in response to J-2K

Update everything first and re-test to see if that fixes the current issue.

Before going nuclear: Use Safe Mode on the Mac Studio, as per > Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

Run Disk Utility Repair on the Containers and Volumes, as per > Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

on your Internal Drive and all External Drives.

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Answer 4

Jun 8, 2026 6:54 AM in response to J-2K

By far the easiest way to cause poor performance, instability, overheating and crashing is to install ANY third-party speeder-uppers, Cleaners, Optimizers, Third-party Virus scanners, Bit Torrent, or a VPN that you installed yourself.

¿Are you running any of those?

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Answer 5

Jun 8, 2026 11:26 AM in response to J-2K

Based on that, especially when played off the Boot drive, simple drive performance does not seem to be the underlying issue.

den.thed suggested posting an Etrecheck report to get better visibility. I second that suggestion.

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Answer 6

den.thed

Level 10

96,626 points

Jun 8, 2026 12:49 PM in response to J-2K

Your EtreCheckPro report looks better than most, that come this way.

There are no App's crashing, but there are a few that are reporting "High CPU Use" at the bottom of the report.

The main "High CPU Use" seems to be coming from Adobe Premiere.

Which could suggest, that Premiere needs an update after the macOS 26.5 update.

The other "High CPU User" seems to be related to Intelligence, FPCK and Creative Cloud.

Which might suggest, that there is some App incompatibility with those and/or possible data-base corruption.

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Answer 7

Jun 8, 2026 9:19 AM in response to J-2K

<< external SSDs Samsung T7 — they're rated at up to 1,050MB/s. >>

Exactly how is that fast Samsung drive connected to your Mac?

the interface could be a bottleneck.

have you run black magic speed test on that drive using its current connection?

in this extreme example, resolutions above about 2K are show as not workable at typical refresh rates.

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Answer 8

Jun 8, 2026 5:59 PM in response to J-2K

you have no Time Machine setup showing.

That begs the question, where are you keeping your backups?

if the answer is something like DorpBox, that could explain why Dropbox is the highest user of network services. That might substantially slow down your Mac.

There are some things you can do to reduce the punishment if that is the case.

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Answer 9

J-2K Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 8, 2026 8:22 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Yes, it's either the internal 2TB SSD that came wit the Mac Studio, either external SSDs Samsung T7 — they're rated at up to 1,050MB/s.

I'm experiencing the issue over many projects, also meaning over many SSDs, as I swap them on a project basis.

It's every video file, from every drive, on every software. System-wide issue.

Thanks for the support

Edit: for years, the machine has been performing great, on same drives. This issue appeared two or three weeks ago.

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Answer 10

J-2K Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 8, 2026 10:25 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I've been using those drives in the past without issue.

The issue, which started about 2—3 weeks ago, is happening on all video files, on all drives, internal and external (I have 15 external drives that I swap depending on project — and it's happening on all of those).

I connect the Samsungs directly to the Mac Studio - either in the front (USB-C) or the back (Thunderbolt).

Attached are BMST screenshots for one of those Samsung T7s, and for the internal drive — plenty of room here.

The Samsung gives 812MB/s performance, enough for 4K 24P, which is what I work with most of the time. But please note that the issue happens on HD files as well, ProRes or H264.

Note how fast is the internal drive. Video files played from desktop experience the same issue.

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Answer 11

J-2K Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 8, 2026 11:26 AM in response to den.thed

1) two displays:

HP Dreamcolor monitor HP Z27x (2560 x 1440)

connected from one of the 4 Thunderbolts on the back of the Mac Studio and into a Display Port (one cable single cable Thunderbolt to Display Port)

TCL TV 4K 50S451 (3840 x 2160)

connected from one of the 4 Thunderbolts on the back of the Mac Studio and into an HDMI port (one cable single cable Thunderbolt to HDMI)

This set up has ran fine for years, until a few weeks ago.

2) Attached is the report.

Thank you for the support!

EtreCheck report

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Answer 12

J-2K Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 8, 2026 1:40 PM in response to den.thed

Thanks for the insights. Indeed, I see that there's an update available for Premiere, and even for MacOS. Both were ups to date at the time the problem appeared (I remembering checking).

But since, those new updates have been made available. I'll update the computer tonight, and report.

When you say "Which might suggest, that there is some App incompatibility with those and/or possible data-base corruption. " Anything that can be done about it? Other than a clean re-instal?

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