Changing Workflow Advice, or… I’ve Got the Left-In-the-Dust-By-NLE-Developers Blues

[Jon Barrie]

Hi Gates,

I will attempt to assist in some of your queries. 🙂

Mercury Engine is always active in CS5 and CS5.5. There are just two modes of it:
1. Software mode
2. GPU Hardware Accelerated

The main differences are that in GPU mode you gain some extra Realtime support when using the GPU accelerated effects on clips in the timeline while keeping the Playback resolution set to Full and the frame rate maintaining realtime.

When working in Software mode the CPU is doing all the work – even when the GPU accelerated effects are being used. The options to alter the playback and pauese quality in fractions is basically the way the Mercury playback works allowing slower CPU systems to keep frame rates realtime with a lower resolution of image.

Keep in mind the effects that are not part of the GPU accelerated listing such as “Alpha Glow” will still use the CPU to process and benefit from playing back in a lower resolution even with GPU Mercury mode.

The biggest difference with Adobe Premiere Pro timeline and FCP is that if you see the red line on the timeline, that doesn’t mean you “need” to render to get any kind of playback. Most cases setting the Playback to half can keep the playback decent quality and realtime frame rate. 🙂

– JB

Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Todd Kopriva]

Here’s some more detail about the answers that Jon gave you:
“CUDA, Mercury Playback Engine, and Adobe Premiere Pro”
“Red, yellow, and green render bars and what they mean”

These resources should help you to get started with Premiere Pro if you know FCP.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
———————————————————————————————————

[Gates Bradley]

Hey Jon, thanks a lot for responding. This is kind of what I feared, but maybe you could help clarify things further? It seems to me regardless of what I do, I’m just going to have to wait for something to get proper fast, real-time playback on things. I was initially under the impression that this sort of hardware accelerated playback was inherent to Premiere CS5 (Adobe fail to mention that half the video card market is excluded in their press releases).

The thing is, the sort of scaling down of the res and/or frame rate to achieve realtime playback is already something that is done in FCP 7. Do you think that, given these features existing in both programs, Premiere, via its 64-bit nature would still see a significant performance boost? That promised boost is the single biggest reason I was willing to completely overhaul my editing workflow, but now I’m starting to feel like I’m doomed to 2008-level performance regardless of which NLE I choose.

When do you guys think things will just be what they say they are? Shoot, OSX has been touting it’s 64-bitness since Panther back in 2003.

[Todd Kopriva]

There are lots of things that you can do to make working with Premiere Pro faster. One thing to note, though, is that working with a laptop necessarily limits performance, since you’re almost certainly using a single hard disk, you don’t have as much RAM as in a workstation tower, et cetera. That would be true with any NLE.

See this page for resources about making Adobe Premiere Pro work faster.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
———————————————————————————————————

[Jon Barrie]

Hi gates,

I have used FCP since version 1 and know all about the resolution playback from the timeline settings along with the dynamic setting. 🙂

PPro is 64bit and using all the RAM available as a 64bit native app. PPro also uses all the cores of the CPU to render and export. Which is not done by FCP.

I don’t know what information you have been getting about realtime playback of everything…

Hard Drive setup makes a huge difference to datarate playback ability. RAID 0 is recommended for HD material. An internal Drive that is also running the OS and Apps is not the best way to go. As a MBP you’ll be wanting a thunderbolt drive setup.

There is a great video showcasing PPro using it here:
https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/sgentry/story/adobe_premiere_pro_on_thunderbolt_by_dave_helmly/

I am not sure you have understood the processes of video and the massive data rates and compression that requires decompression (CPU) before clips have effects on them (where GPU comes in).

There is another great video by Dave Helmly about the new MBP and PPro even using Software mode Mercury engine:
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/davtechtable/adobes-mercury-playback-engine-apples-new-macbook-pro-17-wthunderbolt/

The Mercury engine doesn’t just allow the resolution breakdown it does allow for better playback in general.

PPro saves time on not requiring to convert captured video file structures into another format before it can be edited. FCP and PPro are worlds apart in use of 64bit technology and native file format support.

Keep in mind that even FCPX requires background rendering with effects applied…

– JB

Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

Tweets by suiteskills

[Tim Wilson]

First, yes, the software-only performance of Premiere Pro on your laptop will still exceed anything you’ve ever experienced with FCP.

[Gates Bradley] ” I was initially under the impression that this sort of hardware accelerated playback was inherent to Premiere CS5 (Adobe fail to mention that half the video card market is excluded in their press releases).”

Gates, having owned every model line of portable Macs since 1989 (see below for a picture of the first one – not exactly a laptop), I say respectfully that you can’t expect the typically (but not always) lowest-powered Macs, with typically (more often than not) the least powerful graphics cards, to provide top-of-the-line hardware acceleration.

(I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro.)

Which is to say, if your software vendor hosed you now, your hardware vendor set you up for a fall long ago.

In addition to the Tech Specs page linked from the very top of the Premiere Pro home page, you might find this link from NVIDIA regarding graphics acceleration in Premiere Pro helpful, if also a little exasperating. As a Mac owner since February 1984, who started using the then Mac-only Premiere in 1994 as the NLE center of my Mac-only production company, I’m reminded once again that Apple has never been interested in providing the hairiest beasts of graphics support for its machines.

In a world where graphics card acceleration is increasingly the name of the game, Apple users like me and you will find ourselves being pushed further and further back into the world of second-class citzenry — not because Adobe and NVIDIA love Windows best, but because there are limits to Apple’s interest in maximum graphics performance.

I even remember being annoyed that Mac was the dead last personal computer to get any color support whatsoever. Even the Apple II had color before Macs.

Which is why you’ll find people all over the FCP forums who are looking at making their next computer purchase one running Windows.

Having used Macs for longer than many people in the COW have been alive, I’ll say, again, with all the respect and compassion in the world, that you’ll be blown away by the performance of even very low-cost Windows laptops — quite a few of which feature NVIDIA cards specifically tuned for Mercury Engine support — compared to top of the line MacBook Pros…which again, I’m writing on right now.

So, not to start a platform war, I’m just making a friendly observation to you in the context of workflow advice, and once again a really peeved one to Apple for continuing the slower graphics cards monkeyshines, that no Mac has yet been designed for maximum graphics performance. Ready to take bets whether the next ones will be?

And to conclude where I began, Premiere’s software-only performance on a Mac laptop is light years ahead of FCP…which I started using when it was still at Macromedia…and ran on both Windows and Mac…

Feeling your pain,
Tim

Hey, and here’s my first “Mac Portable,” which at 16 pounds was, uhm, not very portable, and at $6500 then, nearly $12,000 in 2010 dollars. But hey, it came with one MEGAbyte of RAM, so no wonder it cost so much. 🙂