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Is it my project or is it my computer?
Hello,
I am editing a school talent show project. We used three consumer grade camcorders and two audio sources (two H4N). All video is AVCHD (1920 x 1080/60fps) video and WAV files for audio. The total length of the video is about 1hr 20 mins.Premiere Pro Rig Specs:
Windows 10 (upgrade)
i5 4570 3.2hz
MB: Gigabyte Z87-D3HP
32gb DDR3
Geforce Nvidia GTX-660 (2gig ram – 960 cuda cores and 192 bit memory interface width).
OS on 128 Gig SSD
apps on separate 128 SSD
Video on 7200rpm Drive
Scratch on second 7200rpm driveI used this same computer last year for a middle school play project – but it was running Windows 7, the previous version of Premiere CC and only 16 gigs of ram. I had no problems with it. This year’s talent show video is similar in length and complexity (same cameras). But the audio sources are new.
I made a multi camera shoot consisting of three video feeds and the two external audio feeds (I did not use the audio from the camcorders). When editing the multicam sequence, Premier Pro CC is dropping frames like crazy. The CPU races up to 100% and it is using a lot of ram. When I stop playing the video the CPU usage drops to 10% or less, but memory usage stays pretty high (Like 18gigs). I have 8gigs reserved for other programs. I turned on the Cuda Render System overlay (Ctrl-shift-F11) to see what is going on. When I start playing the video on the program monitor, I see that it starts out not dropping any frames. Then a couple of seconds into the video (wherever I am on the timeline), the dropped frames gradually increase and the video eventually freezes – all of the frames are dropped.
I decided to open up last year’s play project. That project plays the multicam sequence without dropped frames (maybe one or two). I then decided to create a new project and import my current project. I still get the same dropped frame issue. I moved the source video to a different hard drive to see if the drive was damaged – no change. If I watch the raw video in some other program like the std. windows video player – whatever they call it in windows 10, the video plays smoothly. I have killed all other running programs including AV programs and cloud backup programs.
So here is what I know:
The raw footage is fine – no dropped frames.
The other project is fine.
The computer is globally slower on windows 10.
This project runs slower that other projects.
The only programs running are Adobe related programs in Task Manager.Here is my question: Do I start completely from scratch? Is there a way to keep the multicam sequence? Or is the problem with the computer. I already ordered an i7 processor to swap out and beef up the computer…
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8 Replies
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Hi Francis,
This really does sound to me like an OS issue, or the interplay of the Premiere version you’re running and the new windows 10 OS. Seems like you’ve crossed off the other variables pretty well and in my experience the added audio files wouldn’t do much to slow you down.
Maybe one thing to look at is antivirus or other background processes running with the new OS install.
That being said I’m not an expert (particularly with Win 10), so both you and I should probably keep our eye out for more sage advice.
-NatCustom Build PC
Windows 7 64
Adobe Premiere Pro CC // Master Collection
i7-5930K @ 3.5GHz
64GB DDR4 RAM
3x240GB SSD
1x12TB RAID Array
GeForce GTX 970 -
It could be an OS problem as Nat suggested. But I wonder if it’s your footage. In a multicam sequence, it might be trying to render all the video layers at the same time, that’s gonna take a lot of CPU power with AVCHD. Try converting your footage to something more edit friendly like a fairly high bitrate mpeg2 or DNxHD if you have that.
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AVCHD is the crappiest codec that should die but it won’t. Transcode to DNxHD.
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I do tend to believe it might be the OS. My User settings are split off onto another drive from the SSD (128gb) drive due to the size (My PST file from outlook is like 30gb!). I thought it might be the footage, but the cameras are the same (and the file formats are the same). A friend of mine suggested converting the source footage. I think I will try that. The only effects I had on the footage was auto color which I removed in order to lessen the load on the CPUs.
I am also going to due a fresh install of the OS on a new 500gb SSD drive I just bought and let you all know. Thank you all for your help. I have learned a ton from this site!
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Are you sure that the GPU is being recognized under Windows 10?
In PPro check that Mercury Play Back (File>Project Settings) sees the GPU and is not in “software only.”
Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
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[Tero Ahlfors] “AVCHD is the crappiest codec that should die”
That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
AVCHD is not the crappiest codec. You get about the same quality as MPEG2 at a fraction of the file size. And most of the time you can edit just fine with it. It’s basically the same as the h.264 mp4’s you get from dslr’s.
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[Chris Evans] “It’s basically the same as the h.264 mp4’s you get from dslr’s.”
Except h264 runs better than that unoptimized piece o crap.
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Thank you all for your posts. I wanted to post my resolution in case someone out there runs into this same problem.
After posting, I redid my rig a bit – I did a clean install and swapped out my data drive for a faster hybrid drive. It didn’t help much. I wish I could have added more ram, but my motherboard maxed out at 32gigs.
I finally called Adobe. Here was the culprit – MTS-AVHCD files! Thank you Chris Evens https://my.creativecow.net/Chris-Evans3 for giving me the sage advice about the file formats. I guess my rig doesn’t have the moxie to handle 3 sequences (1hr 45 minutes prior to editing) and 2 audio sequences(five streams in total). Those AVHCD files were big. Each Camera angle was about 23 gigs. Added to that size was the effects I had applied (three way color correction). The Adobe tech thought it could be the file size, the effects, or it could have been that I had deleted the Video tracks from the Audio only sequences. I was nesting sequences rather than just the files to make my MC sequence. I did that because I had five MTS for each camera angle.
So, here was my workflow:
1) made sequence of each camera angle. Added color correction, white balance etc. Exported each camera angle as H.264 using both high bit rate preset and the medium bit rate preset. The difference in file size between high and medium bit rate was sizeable- 23gb versus about 6 gig. The file quality was not that noticeable.
2) Made new sequences of each camera angle using medium bit rate files.
3) added MP4 files to project.
3) Created new Multicam Sequence using medium bit rate files. Edited MC shot as you normally would.
4) Once I was satisfied with the MC edit, I replaced the Medium Bit rate with the high bit rate MP4 files.
5) Exported the sequence for distribution.I probably could have saved myself the step of replacing the High bit rate files and been happy exporting the medium bit rate considering the project was going to end up on a CD, (at an even lower bit rate), but I was concerned about using “an Export of an Export” .
I used the same workflow with a school play (1hr:30 minutes) I did after this project. I added another camera to this school play and premiere handled it without issues. Thanks again for everyone’s input.
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