CS4 AVCHD Playback problems

[Adam Chesbrough]

Thanks for your input. My decision to possibly switch from PC to mac basically stems from my desire to go from desktop to laptop and am nervous that if this monster PC can’t edit AVCHD the way that I need it to (might be the configuration, would rather have XP) I can’t imagine that any $4K PC laptop will have any luck (the top of the line macbook pro goes for around $4k).

I just wish there was anyone at dell that I could speak with that didnt have to search for the answers to all my questions but could help make sure all of my hardware is configured properly.

Also as someone trying to get into the video and still image production market I think it might be a good idea to edit footage with final cut and images with photoshop since they seem to be the standards.

[Jeff Adams]

Yeah, they definitely seem to be the standards, I guess, although I’ve been in the business for over 4 years on my PC. I can’t say it’s been the smoothest road, but I know that no road is smooth, not even on a Mac… it’s funny because a Mac user will boast about how mac’s never lock up, never crash, etc… but yet I’ve seen them lock up and I’ve seen them crash, they’re all the same in that regard.

The only reason I can discern as to why a mac may have less problems is because it’s has less consumer driven crap on it. the PC is for the mass market of consumers generally speaking. And, therefor it needs to be more diverse and with that massive diversity comes the occasional conflicts that macs don’t seem to have because they don’t deal with drivers and what not, but this results in macs not being able to handle certain programs. PC’s seem to get significantly more viruses, but that’s probably because more people have PC’s, so if you’re a bad person trying to hack people for bad reasons then you’re going to have more luck trying to hack a pc, because you have a bigger market of people to hack. But, this in turn makes PC’s potentially (not literally because i really don’t know) stronger, or at least the data protection software, because we’re having to fight harder to protect PC’s within their diverse capabilities.

I’m not an expert on this stuff though, these are just my perspectives. I spent a week with a bunch of Mac users, I was the only one with a PC. I was tripping on them!!! they had the same issues I’ve had with lock ups, rendering times, etc… They definitely seemed to boot and power down faster, probably because they don’t have as many programs. I bet there’s 10 program options for a PC for every 1 program on a mac. It’s kind of like politics or something. Do you give options to create competition and therefore a better service? Or, do you just standardize everything and let the government run it all for better services? Who knows…

[Derek Ellis]

I’m having the same problem in CS4 with HDV files.

I have a Canon XH-A1 with a Sony HVR -DR60 Hard drive that captures m2t files and I am able to drag and drop into the Premiere Pro CS4 project no problem.

It plays DV files great but choppy in HDV. It is better in the source view than program but still halts – great audio but choppy video. It is a vista 64, core2, 4 gig, 7200 SATA hard drive, external terabyte 7200 rpm etc.

Is there a better work-around, plug-in to use or am I stuck in DV mode until I can get a new super system quad everything etc.

I do a lot of embedded videos in pdf and powerpoint presentations for government. I plan to move to more video training on DVD and flash/InDesign.

Any suggestions on how to move to HD without breaking the bank?

[Thomas Smet]

I hate to sound like a broken record but I am also having playback problems with HD material in CS4.

I have Avid, CS3 and CS4 and Avid and CS3 play perfectly but CS4 is basically worthless. Under cS3 I have been able to get 3 streams of full HD playing back in realtime. Under CS4 I can’t even get one.

3 streams compared to 1/2 a stream is a prety huge drop in performance.

I have a quad core AMD system with 6 GB of ram and a ATI 4670 video card with 1 GB of ram.

I have tried Windows XP and Windows Vista 64 and it works exactly the same under both. I have tried it with CS3 still installed and with a fresh reformat clean OS install. I have wiped my harddrive and reinstalled various versions of Windows 5 times now and there is no change.

I have tried 4 different ATI driver versions with no chnage at all. I have also tried chnaging the performance level in the graphic card drivers to every setting possible and there is no chnage in the system. Full quality and draft mode playback in CS4 seems to perform about the same. My cpu also peaks out at 100% for a single stream playback.

I would buy more copies of CS4 if they could just get it to work. Adobe doesn’t seem to be able or willing to fix this problem because they will not even admit it is there.

[Derek Ellis]

Thanks for the update. I thought I was going to have to spend some serious coin to make it work — just assumed it was me not Adobe.

I plan to work in DV for my projects and have done a few shots in HD 24f then encode to avi for editings. Looks ok for what I need to done in the near future.

If PP CS4 is not the future what does your crystal ball sugggest as a better mouse trap?

Cheers

[Dave Sung]

I have a canon hf100 as well and experienced choppy playback in the editor. After I adjusted the project settings it played smoothly!

Here’s how:

Go to new sequence settings
choose ‘AVCHD’
Then choose ‘1080i’ not ‘1080p’ even if you shot it in 30p
Then choose ‘AVCHD 1080i30(60i)’

drag a file in and see if it plays smoothly. I think the problem occurred with premiere trying to adjust the frame rate as it was playing. Hopefully this works for those of you that were having problems with playback.

[Adam Chesbrough]

Thanks for the advice, I’m def going to try that out. I was reading the specs for CS4 and it said that a RAID0 setup is required for editing HD content, my hard drives are currently RAID1 (mirrored), I was planning to install vista 64 bit and in the process change my RAID setup. Anyone have any thoughts as whether or not changing the RAID array will make a difference. Thanks

[Fred Campagna]

This did not solve the problem on my 17″ Macbook Pro. These were the settings I always used. The video playback is still choppy.

I have, however, solved the problem, and it only cost me $3000 to do it! An 8-core 2.8ghz Mac Pro with 10GB RAM and a 2TB striped software RAID setup will edit AVCHD in Premiere Pro CS4 without a hiccup.

After researching the problem for more than two months, I have come to conclusion that it is strictly related to system performance. My new Mac Pro works with the footage effortlessly, my Macbook Pro struggles with it.

Hopefully, Adobe and others will find ways to better handle the AVCHD files with future releases.

[Derek Ellis]

Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me. I guess it I will continue to put money aside to eventually build the monster PC (all my clients and software to date are windows-based) I will need to use PP CS4 to its potential.

Cheers
Derek

[Dave Sung]

So I noticed how my clips would start up smoothly and then start to get choppy as the cpu usage went up and it would stay at 100%. This caused me to think that the cpu was the issue. I checked the cs4 manual and it said the minimum cpu requirements to edit HD is a 2.8Ghz dual core. You might think well as long as I have more cores at a slower speed it should compensate. But more cores cannot not make up for the speed needed. I don’t think it matters how many cores you have but just the speed of it. I had a 2.0ghz dual core on my system. I purchased and installed a 3.1ghz dual core on the same system and the playback problems are gone! Well just as long as I don’t do anything else while I’m editing. Like I said 2.8 is the minimum and 3.1 is not that far ahead. Now I can play the previews of edited clips without rendering them first. My cpu usage ranges now during playback from 50-80%, where it used to hang at 100% all the time.

So I don’t know if this just works for my system. But yea I would close all other programs anything that can rob cpu usage when editing. But it seems that you need a dual core 3.0 and up to edit comfortably. Getting a quad core at 3ghz will probably be even better for rendering time. For AVCHD it seems raw speed is what is needed to playback smoothly.