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Testing Premiere Pro 7, 8, 9 – Identical Projects, Updating Projects & Problems.
Over-all, an interesting day to test a newly acquired MacPro, and have it updated, and tested different versions of Premiere, opening the same file, and doing some buggy things.
Ok, before we pit these versions, let me give you my newly acquired mac’s specs.
Testing Premiere Pro 7.2.2 (2013), Identical Projects, Updating Projects & Problems.
Findings:
1.) This is the version of Premiere Pro that I “left off” using for client work. Upon installing this same version on to this new Mac, the first thing I noticed, was the Premiere was not reading or detecting my Quadro K4000 card. This is a bummer, as the Adobe Support team said this card was ‘supported’, however, it is not being read. Here is the screen I get.
2. When I turned the option on, to see, it did say that this was the option I was choosing, see picture:
After clicking “Ok”, all the video stuff disappeared. See Below:
So, I tried multiple times, and the GPU Acceleration option turns my video signal off. When I change it back to “Software Only”, I get video signals again, ok. But I want GPU Acceleration. Moving on:
The other thing that is very surprising is that exporting takes a long long time, almost the “same time” as my older Mac.
However the rendering goes by really fast, but Premiere doesn’t really care about rendering to export a video, like the old FCP7, when you’re rendering, if done first, ensured a faster export, however, in Premiere, the only reason to render is for smooth playback, not for a faster export. So, what I need to have is faster exports. Also, I noticed that the playback, whether rendered or not, yellow or red, I opened up several projects and timelines, and the playback quality was great and smooth, it played without any problems at full preview quality, regardless if rendered or not.
Testing Premiere Pro 8.2 (2014), Identical Projects, Updating Projects & Problems.
Findings:
1.) I closed Premiere Pro 7.2.2, and duplicated the file that I just opened, and used Premiere Pro 8.2 to open the same exact file.
It asked me if I wanted to “Update” the project, and I clicked yes. However, I was suddenly greeted with a crash. Project crashed multiple times, and after about 4 times, it actually opened ok. That being said, in the past, projects that crashed on start-up to me means the project will continue to crash throughout the editing project. So, maybe It will not crash. Off to a great start.
So, the project finally boots up, and it asked me if I wanted to “Update” the project, and I clicked yes.
Everything looks ok inside of Premeire 8.2, but, like the previous test with my Quadro K4000, I have no video preview.
So, before we get crazy, I go into the Project Settings, to check on a few things, and this is what we see: GPU Acceleration is turned “On”.
All my other prefs seem normal:
Overall, when I leave it on “Stware Only” I get video playback, but when I use GPU-Acceleration, the video preview disappears…
Playback is smooth and it plays fine whether rendered or not, the playback is snappy and I get the same ‘snappiness’ with the previous version of premiere.
Testing Premiere Pro 9.1 (2015), Identical Projects, Updating Projects & Problems.
I duplicated the project 2014, and renamed it 2015, and opened it, and Premiere asked me if I wanted to update the project, I clicked “yes”. Project opened ok, no crashes. However, the Software Only feature brings me my video signal and setting it to GPU Acceleration turns it off. So, after this test, I think this leads me to believe that it is my card. However, I’m going to start a new project and see what happens…
So upon starting a new project, I imported some EX3 footage, a SxS card, imported fast, playback smooth, however, changing the Mercury Playback Engine to GPU, it killed the video preview.
But when turned it off, and back to Software Only, video previews came back on… Playback was again, just as smooth as the other tests with the previous versions of Premeire. I also went into the settings, and wanted anyone’s opinion on this RAM allocation and if I need to set it for “Performance” or “Memory”? See pic blow:
Based on my Mac, is this allocation of RAM ok? See specs:
Another initial note, before this test, I had both monitors originally plugged into my NVideo GeForce GT-120, and booting up into Premiere, lots of things were buggy. Video previews were all weird, and video signal was not coming in at all, lots of green lines and I could tell that the video signal was not coming in clean at all, audio was ok, but video was all weirdly displayed and distorted – just previewing inside Premeire, version 7.2.2 was fine, but Premiere 8.2 and 9. Monitors were displaying images on normal computer ok, but once I got intside Premiere, video signal and playback was crazy weird. 1t couldn’t interpret the video signal inside of Premiere. All sorts of lines, colors, static vide noise, stuff like that…
When I unplugged my main (left side) monitor into my NVideo Quadro 4000, the video preview in any of the Premeire versions tested, were fine, so does this mean the NVideo GeForce GT-120 is a crappy card? My other Mac card in my other MacPro tower, with the ATI Radeon 5770 held clean video signals fine with two monitors, using premiere.
Over-all, an interesting day to test a newly acquired MacPro, and have it updated, and different versions of Premiere, doing things.
So, after all this, does this mean my MacPro with the NVideo Quadro 4000, will NOT allow for GPU Acceleration? Or do I even need it? Since I’ve got 64 GB Ram, and a 3.33 GHz processor? I’m not doing any 3D or any VFX work, so I’m not sure that that matters or not. But, that was the point of getting this Mac, was not only to run the latest version of Premiere Pro, have a higher OS, but also utilize the NVideo Quadro 4000 card.
Any thoughts?
Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Digital Chop House
Salt Lake City, Utah
http://www.digitalchophouse.com -
8 Replies
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Hey Tom, did you install both the Nvidia Web Drivers and the Cuda drivers? Both are required.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los AngelesDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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They guy that I got the Mac from, said I shouldn’t have to install anything…? Where on my mac can I check this? How do the drivers work? Will they work on my Mac? Any issues? Any better or best versions of drivers, or ones to “avoid”??
I’ve also heard people installing newer or newest drivers, then Premeire having issues with the cards after that, and then having to revert to a previous version. This actually happened on my other MAcPro that I bought a few years ago. An IT guy installed a ATI Radeon 5770 card into my 2006 MacPro, and it worked ok with CS6, but then, I wanted to try and use the card for GPU acceleration, and the “Mercury Playaback GPU” part was greyed out int Premiere, so I installed a newer driver, and thought that that would fix the problem, but after install, and opening Premiere, the video signals were all bad, no video playback, noisy, fuzzy, digital artifact video, so.
I’m all ears, what do I do?
Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Digital Chop House
Salt Lake City, Utah
http://www.digitalchophouse.com -
David,
When you have time, let me know what I’m missing…I don’t think Premiere Pro is using or even recognizing the Nvidia card…
Thanks,
Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Digital Chop House
Salt Lake City, Utah
http://www.digitalchophouse.com -
Tom,
The guy you purchased the Mac Pro from was simply incorrect when he advised you that no drivers or software needed to be installed on the computer. The fact is, you need to change/update Nvidia drivers and Cuda drivers almost every time you make any changes to the OS, to the NLE software, and to hardware (especially GPUs). So, it’s no wonder your graphics cards are not recognized, nor is Cuda functionality working.
Unfortunately, I am on the road and unable to guide you further at this time. However, this is common knowledge on this forum, and you should be able to get good advice from many others here. Just make a new and simple post asking for help installing both the drivers for the Nvidia card and Cuda.
BTW, it’s likely that the Quadro 4000 is not supported by Adobe any longer, and that the newer K4000 is required. If that’s the case, then you should buy a new GTX Mac Edition card, and calling OWC is your best bet.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los AngelesDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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Its actually the Quadro K4000, yes, that I have in this machine. I did find and install the latest CUDA driver, and it showed up in Premiere and I clicked on it, so I guess it’s now working ok, because it’s selected. Do I still need to install the actual card driver? Here’s the website view, not sure which of the 5-6 specific drivers, for the Quadro K4000:
Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Digital Chop House
Salt Lake City, Utah
http://www.digitalchophouse.com -
[David Roth Weiss] “it’s likely that the Quadro 4000 is not supported by Adobe any longer, and that the newer K4000 is required”
no problems here with 2 systems having Quadro 4000 and latest premiere.
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[Tom Laughlin] “does this mean the NVideo GeForce GT-120 is a crappy card? “
Yes.
Also you really shouldn’t have a Quadro and a Geforce card installed at the same time as they use different drivers. There are some hacks for that but personally I’d throw that GT-120 to the trash.
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I completely agree with Tero, lose the 2nd GPU. That machine was most likely running Avid and/or Resolve a few years back, when both apps were optimized to run best with one card for processing and one for display. And, the K4000 was really the first modern Nvidia Quadro card, and the first with enough performance that it really didn’t need that 2nd card. Though your K4000 is still a nice card, there are newer cards that are vastly more powerful today, and for a lot less money too, however, since Apple no longer sells computers with PCI cards, there are fewer cards available now that work in these older towers, unless you buy one for Windows that’s been hacked.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los AngelesDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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