EDITING H264 IN Premiere PRO CS5.5 IS VERY SLOW

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Pierre,

We don’t know anything about your editing hardware – Mac or PC? Laptop or desktop? Specs?

When using a Core i7 PC desktop, with proper Nvidia card to drive the Mercury Playback Engine, AVCHD should edit like silk. Older computers/laptops don’t like AVCHD so much…

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Pierre Conti]

Oups of course.
I’m on a 2×2.4 ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon w/ 12gig ram
OSX 10.7.

So.. I come to realize that I will have to convert all my footage. But why are so many people talking about smooth editing with H264 in PP?
From what I understand, this is not related to the graphic card (i have the ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB) since the accelerated GPU is dedicated to effects. I am correct?

3 questions:
– No way to get a smooth play of h.264 on a timeline in PP with my system?
– If not what should I convert into so that I don’t loose any quality and be able to scrub smoothly?
– Why oh why when I set a sequence to match exactly my footage codec do I have to render anything? This is driving me mad.

I used to work in FCP and there was lot of small buggy things but it was playing very, very smooth and with much heavier codecs. If sequence setting matched, no render was needed (because that yellow bar in PP means it needs render…).

AM I missing something really obvious here?

[Ben G unguren]

H264 is an interframe codec, which means if you want to read one frame, you usually need to read some of the frames before and/or after as well. This means that there is a lot more computer work going on (1) transferring data (multiple images) off the hard drive and (2) performing the extra decoding necessary for interframe video.

You might have a fast processor but a slower hard drive (USB, e.g.), or a lightning fast hard drive but you’re rendering in AE, playing iTunes, and running a web browser with 15 creative cow tabs open, which means you’re running 50 or so flash animations as well….

Or you might be running multiple clips at the same time, which ups the transfer and processing time immensely.

However you measure it, H264 requires more computer resources to run than an intraframe codec of comparable filesize. Kudos to Adobe for developing a playback engine that can handle it in real-time, but that doesn’t mean it can do it as effeciently than with an intraframe codec, like ProRes or DNxHD.

Ben Unguren
Motion Graphics & Editing
http://www.mostlydocumentary.com

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[Jeff Pulera]

The GPU-acceleration of the Mercury Engine does actually accelerate the editing experience all around, so it would be helpful to use an Nvidia card. The GTX 285 (discontinued) or Quadro 4000 will work in the Mac Pro.

Perhaps a Mac user can chime in here with a personal experience about performance gains when adding Nvidia to Mac Pro? I know I’ve seen a huge difference on the PC when working with AVCHD footage.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

[Pierre Conti]

Thanks, that is a useful explanation.
I’m cutting out of 2 external fw 800 7200rpm hard drives. Do you think that is too slow? I used to cut pro-res 422 without problems… on a 2007 laptop with FCP 7.
.

[Pierre Conti]

Yes, MAC user please advise.
What bugs me overall is that I need $8000 of gear to cut h264 in PP when I could do it in prores in FCP with my laptop, at same speed, with external HD.
I got a new computer, a new soft, and I got slower. Bugger.

MAC USER EDITING WITH h.264 in PP please HELP!

[Jeff Pulera]

Here is an Adobe video to describe some benefits of Mercury Playback – https://tv.adobe.com/watch/short-and-suite/gpu-acceleration-and-nvidia/

More MPE-CUDA info-

https://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2011/02/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro.html

Jeff Pulera

[Pierre Conti]

I can’t purchase that now.
So if I just give up on cutting h264, what codec do you guys recommend to me?

[Kevin Monahan]

If you’re on OS X 10.7 Lion, and you’re running Premiere Pro CS5.5, you’ll need to update to CS5.5.1. Have you done that? https://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2011/09/adobe-premiere-pro-cs5-5-update-bug-fixes-mac-osx-v10-7-lion.html

It has: “Improved playback/scrubbing performance of footage from DSLR cameras.”

I think this will help you with H.264 playback.

If you don’t use H.264, some users like Cineform. Since you’re on Mac, you could also transcode to ProRes.

Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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[Pierre Conti]

Yes i’m on 5.5.1
pro res 422 is behaving a lot better, but still not as good as I expected (switching from clip to clip very fast – like you always need to do on a timeline – occasionally result in freeze and lags).
Here is the setting I am using for Apple pro res 422L
Does this seem adequate?