Editing 7D footage smoothly on Premiere Pro CS4

[Ryan Holmes]

You have a lot challenging you here Jonathan. Off a quick read of the specs of your computer I would say these are your main struggles:

(1) ATI video card – CS4 was the beginnnign of CUDA engine I believe (maybe it was CS5). However, CUDA technology is an Nvidia language only. ATI cards don’t work on it.
(2) CS4 was not 64 bit (I believe CS5 is the first 64 bit offering from Adobe)
(3) Low RAM – more RAM would help Premiere (however, you’d need to move to a 64bit Premiere to really enjoy a noticeable difference)
(4) What type of hard drive are you running the footage from – internal RAID, external RAID and how is that connected – eSata, Firewire, USB? If you’re editing of your system drive then you’ll probably always see sluggish performance regardless of computer type, Adobe version, or computer specs. Video demands a lot of resources and fast drives.
(5) Also how full is the hard drive you’re grabbing media from – anything more than half full and you’ll likely notice slower performance. As a drive fills up it’s more challenging for the disk to read all the different blocks of data required for 24fps or 30fps video.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Jonathan Buck]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks very much for the detailed response.

1) Is there a card I can get that would noticeably improve performance?
2)I did buy CS5 at one point but it had some odd problems crashing on this OS for some reason so I ended up switching back. Is it really worth moving to it?
3)Guess there’s not much I can do about the RAM till I upgrade to a new computer.
4 & 5) Until recently I was grabbing footage from my external HD which was pretty full. Recently though I’ve started grabbing it from my C Drive which is considerably less full, though it is over the halfway point so that likely isn’t helping. Guess I should consider getting another larger ext. HD. I though one terabyte would be enough! How wrong I was.

Cheers – J

[Ryan Holmes]

Sounds like it’s time to start considering a new machine. CS5.5 and CS6 are very robust pieces of software. It may be time to look for an upgrade.

As far as hard drives for video editing you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever want to work off of your system drive. Primarily because that drive is feeding your system – apps, cache, temporary disk space for apps that need to write information, etc.. So if you’re trying to feed video files to Premiere from a hard drive that is already spinning to maintain your operating system it stands to reason it will have poor performance for video. In terms of other hard drives, it’s best if you can work from a RAID. If you’re going to work from a single drive (which is possible now-a-days with several formats) you want to maintain some drive space. Once you get over 50% full you’ll start to notice a performance hit where the drive can’t access the information quick enough to get it to Premiere. Once you close in on 75% full then it’s time to buy another hard drive.

You’d have to do some research regarding which video card would fit in your configuration. To take advantage of the CUDA engine inside of Adobe you have to buy a Nvidia graphics card. If you upgrade to a new machine and get CS6, then you could still use ATI as Adobe rewrote some code to take advantage of ATI cards (using openCL). I think on the whole Nvidia cards are still faster in CS6 than ATI, but there’s much more parity across the board in the newer version of Adobe.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Jonathan Buck]

Hi Ryan, thanks again for the extremely thorough and helpful advice. I’m saving up for a new machine for the new year and will take all your suggestions into account before I purchase anything.

One last question, I’m not that familiar with RAID’s. From what I understand its a way for the system to recognize several external HD’s as one which improves both performance and storage. If thats correct, does that mean I can hook my existing ext HD up to it and then add more or does it already contain several HD’s when I purchase it? Which type of RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1 etc)do I require?

Thanks again for all your help. – J

[Ryan Holmes]

You are correct. A RAID is a set of at least 2 hard drives (can be many, many more) that act in a simple sense as one hard drive. Depending on how the RAID is setup you can go for speed, redundancy, mirroring, etc. As for what type of RAID you want to setup I would implore you to read through a simple primer on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Brand wise, I believe many here on the COW use G-Tech. They seem to be cost-effective and reliable – https://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid.cfm

Some use Lacie – https://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10061

I’ve even heard of people using Drobo to edit from (though I wouldn’t recommend it as Drobo seems to be more for a backup type solution than for fast video editing) – https://drobo.com

If you want more options just do a Google search for external RAID enclosures, or external RAID. You’ll have more options than you’ll know what to do with!

Hope that helps!

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Jonathan Buck]

Hi Ryan, so does that mean I can still effectively use my current HD and add it to the RAID?

[Ryan Holmes]

You won’t be able to add your existing HDD to the RAID most likely – though with a Drobo you might be able to. Most RAID setups want matching disks – size, speed, etc. So your HDD probably won’t work for that.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep using that HDD as an internal drive . It can still be a good drive to hold stills, export footage to, etc.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Tim Kolb]

The Mercury Playback engine was introduced in CS5…as was CUDA acceleration.

CS5 and later are 64 bit programs…Vista 64 minimum, but 64 bit Windows 7 is best.

The other thing you may want to try in the meantime is to use the “medium” setting in CineForm when transcoding. High quality is great, but with an aggressively compressed source like the 4:2:0 MP4 you’re shooting with your DSLR, CineForm Medium Quality will give you excellent image quality and much better performance.

Filmstream quality levels in CineForm are crazy high quality, but significantly more stressful to process.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Jonathan Buck]

Thanks for all the help guys! I’m currently in the process of buying a RAID…only thing is they all seem formatted for Macs. Is it actually worth getting a RAID for PC and if so which ones are suited for it?

[Tom Daigon]

I recommend Dulce systems. They prepped my raid for use with a PC when I bought it from them last July. Check out their products then give them a call. I found them knowledgeable and extremely helpful.

https://www.dulcesystems.com/index.html

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid