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FCP user Experimenting with Premiere
Hello
I am a long-time Final Cut Pro user, looking to switch to Premiere (like all FCP users who aren’t switching to Avid). So I’ve been trying it out, and love the interconnectivity between Premiere and After Effects. Editing is editing…FCP, Avid or Premiere.
BUT…
If I try to do any kind of multilayering, Premiere becomes unusably slow. If I scale or move a video clip, it takes around 15-20 seconds to catch up (eg. I drag a clip from one side of the ‘program’ monitor to another, wait 20 seconds – I’ve timed it, then the clip actually jumps to where I’ve put it). The first time this happened, I did a ‘force quit’ assuming that Premiere had crashed. If I use the controls in the Video Effects window, I can scale, rotate and move the clip with instant updating. It’s just if I drag the clip, I get the 20 second wait. But I often want to drag clips around – is this just something to avoid in Premiere? I’ve tried having the program window on each of my two monitors to see if that made a difference, but it didn’t.I am working with DVCPRO HD footage on an 8-core Mac Pro with 32GB RAM (28GB allocated to Adobe products) and over 40TB of free disk space.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Paul -
11 Replies
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What kind of video card? Have you updated to the latest drivers?
Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter! -
In addition to Kevin’s questions, which Mac Pro and operating system are you using? Which raid array? Which version of Premiere Pro? Other folks with newer Mac Pros have reported this “drag lag”.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/913549
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 Digita / Areca 8tb. raid -
The drag lag which Tom’s link refers to is when dragging clips in the timeline – this is not a problem for me, it’s when I try to move/scale stuff in the program window. Even when working at half res, it’s unbelievably slow.
Full system specs:
The array is a room full of very fast servers connected via fibrechannel, serving about 20 editors using FCP with no problems.
Mac OS 10.6.4 – could my OS not being bang-up-to-date mean I’m running antiquated drivers?
Premiere Pro 5.0.4 (CS5) – I just ran the Adobe Updater and everything’s up to date.
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
Memory: 32 GB
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5770 -
My guess is that it has to do with the servers, but I defer to experts like Kevin and Todd for this one. I hope they can help you resolve it.
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 Digita / Areca 8tb. raid -
It’s almost certainly not the servers – they happily feed dozens of streams of HD ProRes video to multiple editors. I can easily stream 4 channels of HD ProRes within FCP (eg. when doing a multicam sequence) while the other 20 or so editors are doing something similar, without a dropped frame in sight.
The lag in Premiere happens on a still frame – the video is not playing when I’m trying to move stuff around. It’s a real pain, because it’s a vital part of the workflow, and from what I can tell from one day’s tests, the only area where Premiere falls down (although I haven’t yet created a large project with long sequences – I’ve heard/read that this can cause Premiere to wither and die).
I absolutely adore the After Effects/Premiere interoperability and could probably just about live with Premiere’s laggy multilayer adjustments if I need to. Maybe it’s fixed in CS5.5?
– Paul
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I would be interested on someone like Todd K. to chime in on this one.
I see you are working with an ATI card. That is a likely issue. I found the new ATI cards were causing crash issues with New Mac Pro Towers… I’d be interested in the performance if you started a small project and had the media on a local drive. That could help determine the server being a bottleneck.
There could be some server issues with the way it permits communication between PPro and the controller, but I am hardly one to speak about it.
Personally I am very keen to know more about server based NLE environments regarding post houses and broadcasters.
– JB
Jon Barrie
aJBprods
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter -
Paul, the reason I thought maybe that Premiere Pro was having issues with the servers were based on things discussed in this link…
https://forums.adobe.com/message/3776125
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 Digita / Areca 8tb. raid -
Tom, that server issue is very interesting – I assumed that if FCP can access large video files with no problems then Premiere would be able to do the same.
Jon, I am always so underwhelmed with Apple’s woefully inadequate offering of video cards – I look enviously at the super-powered offerings to PC users. I currently think that it’s more of a video card issue than a network issue due to the fact that if I’m moving, say, 3 layers around (very slowly), then those 3 frames have been loaded from the network into RAM (or VRAM?) and the network then becomes irrelevant. Probably.
My dream edit system has always been one in which as much video as possible gets loaded from the drives into RAM and all editing is done without further access to the drives. RAM is so cheap these days that having (as I have) 32GB RAM is not extraordinary. Obviously if you’re working on a two hour film, then you’re not going to be able to get all your rushes into RAM, but if you’re cutting a 30 second commercial, it’d be entirely feasible to get your 10 minutes or so of rushes into RAM. Some kind of intelligence built into the edit program could help – if you’ve been working on scene 27 for the past 10 minutes, the program would (in the background) load all the shots/rushes for that scene into RAM. Creating a RAM disk would be a way to manually do this, but an automated method would be far better.
– Paul
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Looks like you need a CUDA (Mercury Engine) graphics card, which means an NVIDIA card. CUDA is not supported on any ATI products.
I just recently moved to Premier Pro as well. I purchased a Quadro 4000 for the Mac. I’m not sure if there is a really a difference between the “for the Mac” version or not. I got mine at newegg, Apple charges more for the same card.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133367
Get the 4000, not the 4800. See some benchmark comparisons below. The 4800 is no faster (but more expensive) and you can see the “fast” ATI card is much slower running Premiere Pro. I did not use the Slave setup shown in these benchmarks, which seems to make a noticeable difference with DaVinci Resolve. With the Slave setup, you put the Quadro 4000 card in the second PCI slot. I’m guessing the card in the first slot does more “stuff” in general, freeing up the 4000 in the second slot to do more CUDA work. I’ll probably wind up making this change, since I have a second graphics card, driving a second monitor. I wound up getting one of Apple’s Cinema LED display with Display Port connector. Rather than buy a $199 adapter (see link below) to go from DVI (from my old 8800 card) to Display Port, I bought a $149 NVIDIA GT 120, also supported and sold by Apple. In fact, I think Apple is the only place to get one. I’d buy one, just for the cheap Display Port connection. Plus, I now have only NVIDIA cards in my system. I’m sure if I used ATI and NVIDIA I’d be on some other forum trying to resolve some weird compatibility issues.
https://barefeats.com/wst10g11.html
There are people using other NVIDIA cards which may be faster and usually hotter, but they are not supported by Apple. At least in terms of drivers. Apple still sells the 4000 and I dropped mine into my Lion based system with no added drivers. I popped out my 8800 NVIDIA card, popped in the 4000 with no issues. You do have to install the latest NVIDIA CUDA SW. Without the CUDA SW, you’ll notice that Premiere Pro only has the option for SW based Mercury Engine. (Project > Project Settings > General) The 4000 will work without the CUDA SW, so it doesn’t matter when you install it. But, you have to have it for Premiere Pro to run faster.
I got the latest CUDA driver here:
One thing I have not researched yet, is whether or not dual 4000’s would provide Premier Pro or DeVinci Resolve with even more power. Or if I’ll even need it.
Mac Pro 3,1
Quad Core Xeon, 3.2 GHz
Lion 10.7.1
24 GB RAM
NVIDIA 4000 Quadro
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
OWC 480 GB 6G SSD
eSATA RAID -
Thanks, Kevin, for all that excellent information – very useful!
– Paul
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