Happy with 6.0, not so happy with the Mac Version

[Erik Swanson]

hey guys,
I read through your posts, and I have to say that in my experience, the adobe products all generally perform a little better on pc. Hopefully that will improve with the newest versions.

I understand noone wants to go out and buy new hardware if they don’t need to, but all editing software has certain hardware requirements, particularly for video cards. (Smoke, and FCP even dictate which type of computers you need to purchase)

[Ernest Ratliff]

Support for 5870s would be the bees knees.

[Cliff Stephenson]

Tom, in Jim’s defense… All any of us can do at this point is speculative based on Adobe’s past performance/attentiveness to the Mac market. I’d be as happy as anyone to see Adobe really pull out the stops and exceed all of our expectations on CS6. But right now I still have to temper my enthusiasm based on past performance. I just finished a major project (all of the behind the scenes for the upcoming Ghost Rider 2 Blu-ray) and, while it was certainly smoother sailing than it would have been with Final Cut, it was also at times incredibly frustrating and difficult. I probably ended up with 12 different recovery projects from all of the times it crashed near the end (and that’s only the times it actually saved my progress before crashing. There were probably 20 more crashes that didn’t save). Third party software, like Boris and Blackmagic, woefully underperforms on the Mac side. I don’t think it’s a Mac thing, because they seem to get it to work on Final Cut and Avid… it’s a Premiere on Mac thing.

So while I can appreciate that it works great on your Mac… that’s the point- It works great on YOUR Mac. I have no idea the level of complexity in the projects that YOUR Mac has to handle. I did a short quickie project (20 minute featurette from about 3 hours of footage) and Premiere handled it like a champ (other than having to farm out extremely simple things like transitions). But producing a 90 minute documentary made from 200+ hours of footage? That was a different tale. Again, I’m as hopeful as anyone that Adobe really pulls out the stops and delivers a great package with CS6, but (and this is not just directed as Adobe) I’m getting awfully tired of “it’s in the works.” If I delivered a project with the names in all the lower 3rds misspelled and told the studio that the correct spellings were “in the works,” how fast do you think they’d kick me off the lot?

[Tom Daigon]

I understand and respect you and Jim’s POV.

Personally I think Apples is the real problem here. I dont think the possible demise of Mac Pros bodes well for Apples future in the video realm, other than FCP XXX of course.

In order to have a strong Mercury Engine, you need a powerful computer.iMacs just dont cut it for me. This is why even thought my old Mac Pro is doing fine, I (like lots of editors I know) are ready to make the jump back to (in my case) the PC.
I personally dont like Apples marketing plan for the future and dont feel they have my professional needs in mind. Its been a good run with FCP, but for me the writing is on the wall.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Chris Borjis]

Thanks Tom & Cliff for sharing your experiences.

I know in this day and age one “should” be able to have a single timeline
for editing, but it’s a common practice to break up long-form programs
into segments or acts for collaborative workflow and also to keep stability to a maximum.

We did a feature 2 years ago on final cut and the first thing I recommended was not
having a huge timeline that could slow things down. Everyone I know that has worked
this way has had less or no stability issues regardless of nle working this way.
Not dis-agreeing with you, just sharing my experience.

I have one of the first made, Black Magic Multibridge-Extreme (now legacy) SDI/Analog
interfaces. It works perfectly fine with premiere cs 5.5 in my experience. oddly
I’ve had more difficulty with my Kona LH-e in premiere than the black-magic I/O.

[Chris Borjis]

[Tom Daigon] “In order to have a strong Mercury Engine, you need a powerful computer.iMacs just dont cut it for me.”

Tom have you read the amazing results Walter Biscardi has had using the newer iMacs?

I agree with you, but it seems they can more than keep up.

Tom can you confirm the random stop playing of the timeline when you
play it…even if its rendered (green) is no longer an issue?

[Tom Daigon]

Chris, I take Walters perceptions with a grain of salt 😀

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Chris Borjis]

[Tom Daigon] “Chris, I take Walters perceptions with a grain of salt :D”

🙂

can you answer the other question about playback in cs 6?

[Tom Daigon]

Chris, to be honest, I never had that problem with 5.5. Playback issues involve so many factors like… clip codec…computer MPE abilities…raid speed. I can tell you in CS6 you have Continuous Playback. Which means you can loop the timeline to play while trimming or color correcting.Im sure the bug you mentioned would have become apparent while I used this new playback feature.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Chris Borjis]

thanks Tom.

it doesn’t happen every time, but quite often I hit the space bar to
play…it plays 2 or 3 seconds then stops. I hit the space bar again
and it plays all the way through.

minor annoyance.

it happens much more with yellow line indicating needing render but
“should” playback unrendered with 8 tracks of moving graphics stacked.

an unrendered single track of 1080P keyed footage plays perfectly
fine after the initial 2-3 second stop explained above.

If CS 6 does not do any of the above, I’ll be very pleased.
I’ve got rock solid high performance throughput/spec’d system.