How stable is PPro on your system when editing large projects?

[Lance Bachelder]

Gotta cast my vote on this one – I’ve found PPro to be completely unusable for just about anything. I’ve even had it crash while just sitting there. I’ve tried it on many machines including cpu’s that are approved by Avid etc.

Great interface, but completely useless. Too bad, maybe Adobe is listening and will finally fix the instability issues. I was a beta tester this last round and Adobe seemed to disregard any professional input and listen to marketing.

Fianl Cut Pro is a much better solution – not as elegant as PPro but it works and I can deliver shows!

Lance Bachelder
Southern California

[Mike Chapman]

We’ve had similar issues with stability in our shop. Once we get above 100-or-so clips, project loading takes a very long time (several minutes, this on a fibre-channel array), and PP3, v 3.1.1 frequently crashes or “has to close.” When our blue bar in the sequence suddenly turns read and “paints” a streak as it advances, we know to save immediately before the app vaporizes. We’re running XP Pro on quad-core systems with 4 GB of RAM installed. Generally, problems occur once the PF hits about 2.75GB.

Frankly PP2.0 was more stable, even though it took up to five minutes to load a project of similar size. I’ve cut on Avids and FCP systems for years and never experienced problems like this except with alpha-level software — which supposedly this isn’t.

Mike Chapman
Senior Editor, DigiNovations, Inc
http://www.diginovations.com

[Deleted User]

Hello,

I have edited on Final Cut pro systems, as well as Premeire pro systems on Windows machines.

I have had crashes on Final Cut Pro and premeire pro. I am using Adobe Premeire pro cs3 on a 2.4ghz Quadcore with 4gb of Ram on Vista Ultimate 32bit. I have not had any crashes yet or errors.

I had problems such as cant open the file it is corrupted when working on cutting and encoding New York Fashion week on Windows XP pro laptop running Premiere pro 2.0.

That had many crashes, the footage was hdv, captured using the standard premeire pro hdv capture. Crashes such as unexpected error, and overall system stability. The edits were not very long as well. About 4mins for each fashion show.

Premiere pro cs3, so far has been very stable, I have not tested it with loads of clips though.

– – – – – – – – –
Leo Baker
Post Production
Sync Films
United Kingdom
http://www.syncfilms.com
– – – – – – – – –

[Heath Firestone]

I understand that some people have had problems with large projects in Premiere, but I know a number of people, my self included, who rely on Premiere Pro CS3 for their livelihood. I am constantly doing very complex projects with many layers, mixing resolutions and codecs. I have dones several hour long multicam programs mixing HDCAM footage with HDV, DVCProHD footage and DVCAM in the same sequences. Granted, my systems are all hardware accelerated with Matrox Axio HD and LE hardware, but they are as stable as any other machine I’ve edited on. I rarely encounter stability issues.

I’m not saying that anybody is doing anything wrong, I suspect that complex projects that aren’t hardware accelerated may cause stability issues when they rely strictly on the software to handle the processing. What I do want to emphasize, is that Premiere Pro CS3 can be used as a professional tool for complex projects, although you may need some hardware acceleration if you are going to be doing serious work. That said, if you are using it as your livelihood, there are a lot of other reasons to use hardware acceleration. The time saved with hardware acceleration allowing you to apply multiple levels of color correction and effects, being able to mix formats without having to transcode or convert formats, and accelerated exports, can save dozens of hours per project, paying for the equipment many times over. If this acceleration is what is making it stable for complex projects, then it is also an argument for using it, however I understand why people might have issue with needing this to be able to do long format projects. I can’t say for sure whether this is the case, because my experience with Premiere Pro CS3 is with the acceleration. I can say, however, that I know many people who do make their living using Premiere Pro CS3 in professional environments. I also know that with my Axio systems, I have had Avid Adrenaline users, whose systems cost several times as much as my Axio LE and Axio HD systems, who have salivated over my ability to mix formats like XDCAM HD and P2 in realtime in their native formats. Sure The Adrenalines can handle them realtime, but only after they convert them to DNxHD, which takes time, and four times as much space in the case of XDCAM HD which goes from 35Mbps in XDCAM to 145Mbps in DNxHD.

I know some people are frustrated with Premiere Pro CS3, but I assure you, Premiere can be used as a professional tool. I use it daily, and I have three very stable systems which I have used for very complex, relatively long, mixed format high definition projects.

Heath

[Erik Davis]

As someone who does exclusively long-form documentary style editing, I read this thread with much interest. Just today I was on the phone getting the process started for a quote on a complete Axio LE system running Premiere Pro and CS3. I especially took notice when Dave Friend said basically, “forget about it!”. I’ve read Dave’s posts for years on the old Edit forum. Heath gave me some encouragement that maybe my choice is on the right track since he stresses that he does do large projects on the Axio system without any problems.

The choices for me right now are PC/Axio/Premiere or Mac/FCP and I thought I had decided that the former was going to be the best choice but I need to hear some more on this subject I’m afraid. My deal is I can’t yet see myself making the switch to Mac and FCP leaving the PC world behind as that is all I know. I will be working in a XDCAM HD workflow and I like how the Axio system sounds like it works with XDCAM. I do want to stress that each of my projects easily have over a 1000 clips normally. Dave, are you running your PP on Axio?

[Vince Becquiot]

I went to Mac, and back to PC myself. It had nothing to do with stability or “the fear of the virus” (that’s marketing, I haven’t seen a virus in 8 years, and XP/Vista have almost never crashed), it had to do with usability, and freedom of experimentation. The Mac is in my mind a closed system. If that is the reason you are still on a PC, then stick to it.

As far as Premiere stability, again, it seems to depend on who you ask, but I go back to that closed system theory.

You see, most Mac users don’t install much besides what comes with their machine (Some whould argue they don’t have to), windows users tends to have a lot of stuff running that shouldn’t be there, they like to experiment. We are all guilty, intall then uninstall, but everytime you affect your system a little, and it accumulates. Blame it on software makers. I won’t even bring up Codec packages.

All that stuff can make or break a system with large projects.

To go back to my experience, I just reloaded an old project on our newer dual Quad machines, it does have about 800 clips of all kinds, mostly SD, some uncompressed. It loaded / rendered very fast, was working on it for about 3 days, no issues whatsoever.

However, I do remember having some issues working with this on location with the client on a Dual core laptop. The render files would get corrupted, sound and video. This laptop was not dedicated to editing, but with 2 external SATA drives and 4 Gigs of RAM, it certainely should be able handle the same project as well as the current machine is.

So your guess is a good as mine, but I would say that as long as you dedicate your machine(s) to editing, and have close to the latest hardware, you are not likely to run into problems. AXIO can’t hurt either.

Vince

[Heath Firestone]

Eric,

My experience with the Axio is primarily on HD projects using their proprietary MPEG2 I frame codec (supports 50-300Mbps) at 150Mbps for HDCAM captures, and DVCProHD, and HDV in the same timeline. I like the fact that with the Axio, there is no confroming of HDV files, and they only take up their 25Mbps as apposed to larger data rates used when files have to be conformed to an I-frame structure.

With XDCAM HD, the Axios support it, but on longer format programs, people have had issues with memory usage causing problems. It always takes more memory and processing power to process Long GOP footage. I know Matrox is improving this, and it will get better, but there are some caveats with regard to doing long format XDCAM projects with the Axio at this point. That is not to say that it isn’t an option. Apparently for shorter format stuff it works great. There are some very usable workarounds in the meantime. If you want to stay PC, and you want the realtime advantages of an Axio, and are willing to use a reasonable workaround until Matrox gets things optimized so that there aren’t memory issues with long format XDCAM HD projects, then, I would still highly recommend
the Axio. I don’t know if you would have memory issues with your projects, but I know that it can be a problem. The workaround which I know some studios are using, is that they capture their XDCAM footage from HDSDI (I know this kind of misses the point of captureless editing, but you’d have to copy the files onto your system anyway, which would take some time). You can capture to MPEG2 I frame at 100Mbps, which should give you visually lossless capture quality, or you could capture to DVCProHD, or any of the other codecs the Axio supports. It will take up more disk space that XDCAM, but less space than an Avid or Final Cut machine, which I believe have to convert to either DNxHD or ProRes, at a minimum of 145Mbps.

By the way, the Axio supports playback and editing of XDCAM EX at 1920X1080 now, although export to XDCAM EX is not yet supported.

From my perspective, even if I was working entirely in XDCAM HD, I’d still use Axio LE systems. But, I’d probably use the workaround I described for longer projects until Matrox releases a version of their drivers which handles XDCAM HD flawlessly.

I hope this helps,

Heath

[Erik Davis]

Heath,

Thanks for the important response. Losing the drag and drop would be a big deal to me as I spend way too much time digitzing as it is. I will definitely have to take this information very seriously and be even more thorough in making my choice. I’ve got a Mac/FCP evangelist coming over in the morning so we’ll see how that goes. From my point of view it is going to be an Adobe vs. Apple battle over the next 5 years for editors like us and I have to make my decision within the next 30 days.

I dropped a big chunk today on the XDCAM HD workflow but I feel comfortable with that choice. Who knows, maybe I can get by with Vegas and Combustion for awhile until I get more comfortable with Adobe or Apple options. Vegas certainly doesn’t have any workflow issues with XDCAM HD.

Thanks again,

Erik Davis

[Bob Cole]

Great thread.

re: the FCP-PP decision: PP with Axio is quite appealing, especially if you intercut various formats. FCP will handle many formats, but mixing them on a timeline can involve re-rendering for even a single frame edit. Integration with AE and PS is a point in PP’s favor.

I chose FCP, but I am keeping my eye on PP. Despite many frustrations with FCP, I haven’t seen a good enough reason to switch to PP.

Bob C

MacPro 2 x 3GHz dualcore; 10 GB 667MHz
Kona LHe
Sony HDV Z1
Sony HDV M25U
HD-Connect MI
Betacam UVW1800
DVCPro AJ-D650

[Heath Firestone]

Eric,

I should point out that drag and drop capabilities exist with the Axio, but there is the potential for problems on long projects. I don’t know that this is a universal problem, by any means. I do know that some people have had problems on Intel machines, which haven’t had issues on Opteron machines. Without testing a large project with my machine, I can’s say whether this would be an issue or not. I just wanted you to know there may be a potential issue, though I know that Matrox is making improvements, and I expect the problem to be resolved, hopefully in their next release.

If it is a RAM issue working with Long GOP, you would suspect that there would be similar problems with HDV, since the Axio works with the native Long GOP files, not transcodes as Premiere and other programs do. It can do this because of the hardware acceleration. I can attest to my machine’s ability to handle large long format DV projects, as I just finished on with over 65 hours of HDV footage, cut down to an hour and a half final video.

Just as a point of reference, HDV is 25Mbps MPEG2 Long GOP, while XDCAM HD is 35Mbps MPEG2 Long GOP.

I wish I could tell you it could handle it with ease, but since I haven’t tried it, and don’t know what configuration the people who have encountered errors, have, I can’t say for sure. I do, however suspect that with the right configuration, an Axio LE could handle long format XDCAM HD projects. If not now, then soon.

Hope this helps. For my application, which can be very demanding, the realtime performance I get, along with the ability to mix HD formats (and SD for that matter) in the same timeline without rendering, has made it invaluable.

Heath