Lag and Choppy Video in Finished Product - Newbie

timmiles1989 wrote:
What I see on my laptop screen (some jitter in there on the panning):..

I watched it, IMO that is not normal. It might be an incipient hardware problem.

You can try running Apple Diagnostics, but it's a lightweight test so a clean pass doesn't mean much. But it's easy to run and If it finds something that is significant: support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

The Genius Bar at Apple stores have access to much more extensive bench diagnostics which can also run overnight. I don't know the procedure for that during Covid restrictions.

If you have installed a kernel extension that can sometimes cause the system to behave erratically. To examine kernel extensions, type this from terminal window. The "|" is the vertical bar, typically above the back slash key on most keyboards.kextstat | grep -v com.apple

Unplug all external devices including disk drives, USB/Thunderbolt hubs, external monitors, external speakers, and turn off Bluetooth and WiFi, then try playing the file.

You could also try resetting NVRAM and the SMC:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

Thank you! Let me give Apple a call and find out what is going on. Did you see the original RAW file and observe any issues? or did it also look smooth? 

The original file looked OK.