Is the HP Z820 Workstation Class Machine…

[David Roth weiss]

Good job Duke. You did exactly what I was hoping you would do. You see, unlike Joe, who does all the work for you, I prefer to give hints, hoping you’ll actually dig a bit to discover things on your own, just as you managed in this case, As they say, “give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or give him a net and show him how to use it, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Now, get to work and edit… 🙂

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Duke Sweden]

Thanks, Dave, but if you saw my earlier post, and I do realize this thing is 80 posts long now, I did mention that I don’t sit around waiting for others to do the work for me, I do research on my own as well. This really seems for some reason to be above my brain limitations compared to what i’ve done in the past, so I appreciate the help.

Now, I updated my driver, I tried to install CUDA but it wouldn’t let me. It said it couldn’t find the drivers or something. However, CUDA is no longer grayed out and PPro actually defaults to it.

Now for some negative. I realize I don’t have the optimum setup right now (1 HDD, haven’t tweaked PPro settings, etc.), but I am extemely disappointed in the performance so far. It’s actually slower than my baby PC, sometimes barely faster. Is this to be expected until I add a 2nd HDD? I’m going to go over the stuff you guys gave me to do, but this thing better speed up a bit or it’s going back. (Hint: I’m looking for encouragement here).

[Joseph W. bourke]

Glad to see things are getting there. My shakedown cruise lasted for the better part of week. I had even made an Excel spreadsheet of all the software, plugins, scripts, etc. that I needed from my old workstation, and I was still playing catchup for a while.

I don’t know what the deal is with pasting the links. I generally just copy it off the URL display at the top of the browser and it works. The HP links are very long and complex, so I think they are part of the problem with them not always working. But as David says, sometimes it’s good to go fishing on your own :>)

Did you have any luck with the USB settings in BIOS?

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Duke Sweden]

I was just going to go into the BIOS after checking this thread. I’m really disappointed with the behavior of PPro so far. It’s dropping a ton of frames either scrubbing or playing the timeline. It can’t be THIS bad just because I only have one HDD, can it? You know how light on effects my videos are. Anyway, on to the BIOS.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Did you work through the video link on optimizing PPro for the HP Z800? I think that will help out. You may also want to check on the specs of the machine – did you download Speccy yet? You can use it to run the traps on all of the components and the CPUs to make sure everything is as it was promised by the seller. I know that on my Z800 not all 12 memory slots show up, but the total amount of RAM shown is correct.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Some more of what looks like useful information from Adobe:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1877068?start=0&tstart=0

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Duke Sweden]

I just did dl speccy. Everything seems ok. 4 cores, etc. I’m still tweaking. It just seemed to me that a computer with all this firepower should be loads faster than my consumer pc, even with default settings. Pressing forward…

[Duke Sweden]

You know, this is really shockingly bad. I’ve got PPro open, I imported some files. I have a video file open in the source panel. I scroll down the Project panel to get another file to put on the time line, and the Project panel is sliding up over the Source window! Seriously! I’m really getting po’d. I mean that’s Windows 98 quality graphic crappiness.. Here’s a screenshot. Interestingly while I was saving this to web, THAT popup box disappeared except for the slider that increases the image quality!

Tell me I’ve got a lemon herre, please. Look at the screen grab so you know I’m not nuts.

[Duke Sweden]

I just ran Premiere Pro again this morning and it took, seriously, 1 minute 11 seconds to load and open a simple project. This is going back today. There is definitely something wrong with it.

[Joseph W. bourke]

If there’s something wrong with it, you should definitely send it back. I’m just wondering if you haven’t taken enough time with it to set everything up and really get it ready for what you’re throwing at it. Of course, I can only give you the results I’ve had with my Z800, and it’s really fast, both with PPro and AE. I’m sorry that you’re having the results you are, but I wonder whether one day is enough of a shakedown cruise, and whether you’ve optimized all the settings you need to in that short space of time.

I had frustrations and what appeared to be problems with my machine for at least the first week or two, and they all turned out to be user error and setups I didn’t know at the time on my end. I spent a lot of time on the COW, and was helped out, especially by Walter Soyka, with problems I was having. If you feel you have to return it, of course do so.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com