Settings to improve video editor performance I've assigned more RAM via 'memory cache limit' and use 25% 'proxies' with timecodes, are there any other settings that can be tinkered with to improve playback in the VSE? My CPU is always very idle while using the VSE and I'm dropping frames from 30fps down to 5fps depending on the number of items in the sequencer. Anything else to be tinkered with? I'm not looking for other video editors, so no suggestions on that front please.

I'm also kinda confused what is happening here in blender. Is it only using a single CPU core for all the operations? Is that why the cpu is never going full-on? Like using ffmpeg.exe it'll grab literally all my cpu and ram when it does its operations, blender is only using my ram up when enough is assigned in memory cache limit. Is it a case of getting a faster singular cpu core and having more ram = better performance? Can I do anything with my GPU outside of render operations?

Using windows I don't see any performance change recorded in the taskbar when I do or don't use the proxy...but playback is always showing extreme performance changes between the two. Why is that? If blender is getting jittery and freezing for seconds at a time pushing framing by frame going to no proxy, but stable at 25% proxy....but the taskbar shows no difference between the two...what's that mean?
Blenders VSE is an area that has not seen many improvements over the years. As you see one of its drawbacks is the inability to use all available cpus.

Someone recently agreed to work on improvements to the VSE, so this should start to improve over the next releases, but the improvements done in time to be included with 2.80 are limited.