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CS4 Playback problems
I’ve inherited my editing computer and this creative account from the previous guy that worked here and it looks like he’s had some problems with the system for a while now that he was never able to solve so I thought I’d try one last time to resolve the issue. Here are the hardware specs:
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
Premiere Pro CS4
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
Thermaltake 850W Power Supply
Intel I7-975 3.33GHz
Blackmagic Decklink Studio 2
Kingston HyperX DDR3 PC3 16000 6GB (3x2GB)
WD VelociRaptor 10k 150GB system drive (latest firmware)
WD VelociRaptor 10k 150GB cache drive (for Windows and Premiere) (latest firmware)
3ware 9650SE-4LPML Controller Card
2x WD RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB Drives running RAID0 for video and audio
2x WD RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB Drives running RAID0 for audio/video previews.I’m just working with SD footage here so this system should be overkill for anything I’m doing.
The system captures footage just fine, and it will encode and export files just fine (well there’s one odd issue with a plug in transition but I’ll work on that later) but for the most part it will not play them back in the time line. I get dropped frame errors all over the place when I try to play the time line, either rendered or not rendered. Sometimes captured footage will stutter and sort of flicker on playback then other times that same footage plays correctly. I would say that I’m experiencing drive issues but the drive speed test utility included with the Blackmagic card show the drives read/write speeds as overkill for SD footage… so I’m at a loss. Everything in the system is running the latest drivers. I’ve defragged the drives, made sure indexing was turned off and verified that they have no hardware issues with diagnostic tools from the 3Ware card. I’ve also gone in with an air compressor and cleaned out the system (even removing cables first). The system was running a RAID5 and I broke that apart into 2 RAID0’s to boost performance of the audio/video previews files, but still no help.
The one thing I have yet to try….. the system is running everything through blackmagic… encoding, playback, codec’s… etc… So I plan to try just a basic DV and switch the system to adobe playback to see if this alleviates my problems, but I’m not hopeful.
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3 Replies
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Hi Matt,
It could be a couple of things. If the RAID is onboard, it’s most likely sharing some resources with other components, including the CPU. I always recommend standalone RAID. If you haven’t done a full wipe of the drive and reinstall, that may cure your issues, although I understand it’s not a small job.
BlackMagic is, well, cheap. I know, Decklink isn’t that cheap, but it’s been nothing but problem for us. And forget about using it a CUDA card unless they made some recent changes.
I long gave up and went with AJA. Not perfect, but a long way from BM.
Vince Becquiot
Indigo Live
San Francisco – Bay Area -
Well my RAID controller is a stand alone card with it’s own processor but it is an internal card. I am starting to think that my Blackmagic card may be the issue.. even if my RAID was slowing down the system, we are still talking about DV footage which shouldn’t be too demanding. I’ll try a reformat to see if that helps but I think I may pull the Blackmagic card first and see what that does to the system.
Thanks for the advice! I may give AJA another look, it’s been a while since I’ve looked into one.
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Well I tried a project just using all Adobe codecs and settings and had no problems at all, so I’m guessing it’s the blackmagic card at this point. Unfortunately I probably won’t get any help there since it’s older and I’m using an outdated version of Premiere. Time to look for new hardware I guess.
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