EDITING H264 IN Premiere PRO CS5.5 IS VERY SLOW

[David Bicho]

I take it the thread subject is the bitter truth despite Adobes marketing words.

“EDITING H264 IN Premiere PRO CS5.5 IS VERY SLOW”

Don’t pour money into hardware – the only solution is to transcode it. End of story.

🙁

[Pierre Conti]

Since the first post I have installed 3 internal hard drives and 24gig ram. Still slow. The only quick fix i found is to render everything (still faster than converting to 422 and i must say PP manages renders quite well).
But then.. it’s well annoying to never see the footage at full quality. As to export a timeline in full rez, it takes around 12 hours for a 3 min clip! (lots of effects.. but really?).
Next step will be the quadro… the days of h264 inter-frames are counted and things should get easier soon in post.

For now it’s a headache! I use adobe link a lot and can NEVER watch any comp back from AE without rendering.

YES MARKETING! It is very amusing to find youtube tutorial videos where guys demonstrate how ‘smooth’ h264 is in PP and that you never need to render..”..and look! I turn the resolution to half and it plays great!”. Right. It’s just not there.

BEST THING ABOUT PP? AE! But please adobe.. why don’t you make possible to have the same shortcuts in both???

http://www.oneantred.com
PP 5.5 OSX 10.7 8 cores 24 gig ram
ATI gfx

[Tom Daigon]

Sorry to disagree Pierre, but just because your system is experiencing issues, I wouldnt assume that its a problem for everyone. I will say it again. I can play h.264 clips from my 5D just fine.

As to effects,if you have the Nvidia 4000 and use the accelerated effects things are faster. I cut a 4:30 minute dramatic piece on P2 that needed color correction on every clip. Using the PrP 3 way, I was able to see it play in real time AND export was only 3 minutes. When I used Colorista2 I had to render everything and export took 10 minutes. You have to know how the software works and take advantage of its strengths.

Of course transcoding is always an option if your system has issues.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Pierre Conti]

Hey Tom,

Yes I can play 5D clips on my system just fine. Is it smooth? No. It’s.. okay. Had to deal with a timeline that was 60 min long, and it was.. not okay. After rendering everything, then it’s smooth! But no more full rez…
Just loading a 3min project with a timeline full of AE comp can take 15min. Rendering colorista is not that long, it’s true.

I know my system could be better (well it’s just about that nvidia card now), but i find irritating all these ‘blazing fast editing from your laptop’ adds when I need to max out my 8 core macpro in order to get descent playback. I just thought I would post about it.

Now.. i do make all my work through pp and AE. It does work! But I remember editing a feature doc out of a laptop with fw800 external drives on FCP 7 w/ 422. Man, that was smooth! No comparaison! Not a skip, very little wait…. just had to set the sequence setting right and I would cut everything at full rez. It bugs me infinitely to have lost playback with a greater computer and using a ‘blazing fast’ editing software. It bugs me to have to render everything, whatever i do (unless you just play..).

My guess is H264 is the source of the problem. But that’s why I went to PP! Good marketing Adobe!

To be frank, i’m guilty of not having a quadro 4000. I should just shut up and get it.. even though you can find people still complaining about playback w/h264, and we’re now talking about a $5500 computer.

I can’t wait not to deal w/ inter frame codecs any more..

http://www.oneantred.com
PP 5.5 OSX 10.7 8 cores 24 gig ram
ATI gfx

[Tom Daigon]

Pierre, I understand your annoyance and frustration. Keeping current with editing technology deamnds new software, then new hardware and its never ending. Comparing FCP and PrP is Apples and Oranges. Remember transcoding 6 hours of footage for a client? Now think of just dropping clips right out of the folder to the timeline. I primarily work with clients that shoot P2 and Prores so my experience is different. H.264 is a beast due to its long GOP format. The sooner it goes away the happier we all will be 😀

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Shadi Eideh]

I landed here looking for a an after the fact answer; i am already editing my first h.264 project on Premiere cs5.5 on a late 2009 dual core macbook pro 2.8ghz/8GB RAM and dual nvidia cards (have to switch manually b/w 9600M GT for better performance/9400M for better battery life) . I am currently on 9600M GT).

Premiere works almost flawlessly editing h.264 footage. it became slightly sluggish after applying video effects on multiple video layers, so i am currently rendering. Still beats my sluggish FCP performance (same laptop).

I am so used to transcoding that i wasn’t sure if editing h.264 in premiere was a wise/stupid decision, I was already doing it as mentioned but needed some assurances.

I used to edit in FCP and used to spend hours in transcoding, I am happy that’s no longer the case.

I am waiting to see the outcome and I hope the quality will not be degraded.

[Tom Daigon]

Shadi, it nice to hear from other folks that are dealing with h.264. I sure hope it goes away soon since it demands so much horsepower and is so compressed. For delivery its fine, but as an acquisition / editing codoc it sucks. 😀

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Kumar Das]

my System i5

intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 760 @ 2.80GHz

14.0 GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 5450 ( Graphic Card )
when i edit in permier pro cs5.5 Avchd File It;s Very slow So,what can i do For Fast Editing..AVCHD FILEs…

[Errol Lazare]

Hello Pierre,

I had the same problem but once I upgraded my ram from 6gigs to 24gigs it was playing much smoother. Not saying that you need 24 gigs but maybe you need more than you currently have
Make sure you have enough ram in your system and you should see improvements. Seems like Ram improves playback as well as scrubbing. It also is important to make sure you are editing off a fast hard drive / raid for improved performance.

Errol X. Lazare
EXL Films
http://www.exlfilms.com

[Tom Daigon]

A year later I have an HP Z820 (see specs below) running CS 6.03 and I can play just about any media without the issues I talked about a year ago. You really need a system that maximizes the operation of the Mercury Playback engine.Thats CPU/GPU/Ram/Raid speed/File Placement.

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