Do I need to spec up?

[Todd Kopriva]

Tell us about your footage and sequence.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
product manager, professional video software
After Effects team blog
Premiere Pro team blog
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[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hi Todd,

The sequence is an xdcam 35mbps 25 1080P.

The footage is a real mishmash of stuff we’ve shot for our client and rushes provided from then at various different frame rates and resolutions. Some clips have been upscaled using Magic Bullet Instant HD, which is pretty processor intensive.

In the past I would’ve taken the time to transcode all the non-PAL frame rates to 25P whilst scaling the clips at the same time outside of the editor, but I really wanted to see how CS6 would cope with differences.

The honest answer is pretty well! The step-up in the editing experience from 5.5 to 6 is amazing. Generally speaking, it’s handling things fine until I start applying effects and filters. Audio was a real bugbear for me too compared with the ease of FCP, but CS6 has really addressed that issue.

Playback has improved a lot of 5.5- I think as a result of the Mercury Playback Engine now playing nicely with more processors, but there is still this annoying lagginess in places – even if I render the clips.

My MacPro is an early 2009 model, so I’m not averse to the idea that it might simply be getting old. But I would like to hear professional opinions!

Cheers,

D

[Todd Kopriva]

If you’re mixing a lot of formats in the same sequence, and you’re using processor-intensive effects as you say, you may be a bit light on processor power.

Scaling, frame rate conversions, and a lot of other operations can be helped a lot by a good GPU. (See this page for details.)

Your CPUs are not the fastest, but they are pretty good. If you’re using a lot of MPEG-4 stuff (like AVCHD material from DSLR cameras), then you may need some more CPU power to handle those CPU-intensive codecs.

You also want to be sure to pay attention to the speed of your hard disks and interfaces to them. That is very often the bottleneck, as a slow hard disk often can’t feed the system with input frames fast enough.

See this page for information about hardware for Premiere Pro and After Effects: https://adobe.ly/pRYOuk

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
product manager, professional video software
After Effects team blog
Premiere Pro team blog
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[Dylan Hargreaves]

Thanks Todd.

3 year old machine, so it may be time to invest in a processor upgrade. Will check your links too.

Cheers!