CS4 Solution

[Tim Kolb]

It sounds like your page file is getting too large… Re-focusing to another window will likely shrink it a bit. Running with your task manager open to the performance tab will show you proc usage and page file size.

What are your system specs? If you were running CS2 on the same machine, it’s a couple years old at least…32 bit or 64 bit OS?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Aaron Cadieux]

Hey Tim,

Thanks for your reply. I actually just built this machine within the last 6 months. It’s running XP Pro on a 32-bit OS.

Intel Etreme Series Mobo – DX48BT2
Intel Quad Core 3.00GHz
4GB of RAM (actually 3.24 on the 32-bit OS)
Primary Drive 1TB Segate Barracuda 7200 RPM
I edit on a 3TB RAID-0 Segate Barracuda 7200 RPM
Nvidia Quadro FX1700 Video Card

This project is quite large in size. It’s difficult to separate it into multiple separate projects because a lot of the elements from sequence to sequence are shared and/or copied and pasted. Importing sequences into new projects won’t work with how the project is set up.

Thanks,

Aaron

[Tim Kolb]

As I’ve posted in other threads, a 64 bit OS makes a full 4 GB available to each app in CS3 or CS4, even though they’re 32 bit apps. A 32 bit OS is very limiting. It’s tough to judge CS4 on a machine that can’t very likely make 2 GB available to PPro (Adobe has other background apps running under PPro, plus your OS and whatever else is running on the machine is taking resources before you even boot PPro…)

Even with CS3, there is a pretty good track record of people moving from a 32 bit to a 64 bit OS and things smoothing out considerably.

CS3’s issues with large project files was a carry over from earlier versions, so the tendency to have problems with large project files goes back some time for most of us.

In my experience, CS4 has been an improvement over CS3…and that is even on my WXP 32 bit systems…

I’m not a fanboy (the folks at Adobe can tell you that…I’m to old to be a cheerleader as I have work to do), and other NLE systems have strengths as well, but I do think that, in many cases, CS4 is being condemned for being unstable on machines that simply aren’t beefy enough to run the apps.

Maybe Adobe should have cut off 32 bit OS’s on CS4 instead of CS5…?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[John Frey]

I fully agree with you, Tim. I build all of my own systems (4 Primary edit workstations in the past 18 months). They are all 64 bit Vista Ultimate with 8GB of ram, Quadcore procs, etc. I have used Adobe Premiere since old version 4.1 (very old). CS4 does not crash on large projects that I work on. It has been very stable compared to the old days. There is usually something else going on somewhere that causes Premeire CS4 users issues. I did find that a recent crash problem (the only one)was fixed when bringing in 1920 x 1080 mp4 files (in a Quicktime wrapper) by turning down hardware acceleration in my display card settings. Problem solved!

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[Dennis Radeke]

Yep, 32 bit OS can be a limiting factor which is why Adobe has officially announced that the next version is going to be 64 bit only:
https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/10/its_official_64bit_is_the_futu.html

I blogged on the importance of 64bit on CS4 about a year ago. Here’s the link:https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/03/64_bit_os_and_adobe_products.html‘>
https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/03/64_bit_os_and_adobe_products.html

[Tracy Peterson]

I have had my share of bad crashes and troubles with CS4 but overall I find the app stronger than CS3 (and FCP) in many ways. Unfortunately the advantage of cost, that we gained from installing it on homebrew, cheap hardware, doesn’t work anymore. You really need a great system, custom and dedicated to the software to make it work well enough to really work all day on it. I’d have gone crazy if I didn’t finally just upgrade to a monster system running 64 bit Windows 7.

Everything works GREAT on this system. The only troubles I still get are with my black magic design card, but in their defense (which I never am) this is their first Win 7 rev of drivers.

CS4 works flawlessly in all applications.

I wish that it were true that CS4 could just work across all hardware platforms in all the possible iterations, but it just can’t. The trade off in power and versatility as an editing system makes us compromise in the cheapness and randomness of our hardware.

They’ve done a great job in bringing the software up to date, just not the hardware compatibility. I know this doesn’t help, but know that like you I have suffered and have found my way. Consider new and dedicated hardware OS combo. Or go mac!

Tracy Peterson
http://www.onetwomany.com