Is your CS4.1 system stable? What are your system specs please?

[James Iles]

I forgot to mention I’m on PC. But what about people using a Mac Pro with the Mac version of the software? How stable is it with large projects and working in HD with formats like XDCAM EX?

I am thinking of switching to a Mac Pro. Alternatively I am considering something like the HP xw8600 or xw8400 or xw8200.

In case you are thinking that this has been covered to death, I am asking this with regards to CS 4.1 because in the past I’ve had good experiences with CS 2 and 3 on my PC computers. But since 4.0 it’s been awful, so I’m focusing specifically on this version.

Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Peter Berthet]

how large are your projects getting ?

if your doing stuff in HD are any of the problems similar to those described here : https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/3/894260

its not uncommon that large projects = poorer stability , so i wouldnt write off your system too quickly

although i wouldnt disagree that a nice Mac Pro will lead to a happier and less stressful editing environment! 🙂

~Peter Berthet
Sydney, Australia

[James Iles]

Thanks for that link Peter. It was useful reading. The issue about large projects is another one I’ve experienced when using CS2. I never did anything giant in CS3 but CS3 did perform better in my experience than CS2 and I had high hopes that CS4 was an improvement on CS3.

The CS4.1 update has made project load times faster but I notice at the bottom of the screen the media is loading in the background and in some ways it works best to let it load before working. The update has improved stability for the edit machine but hasn’t made it stable enough to make editing comfortable.

The theoretical workflow of the dynamic linking between After Effects, Soundbooth, Photoshop and Encore (I haven’t touched Illustrator much), is great. However, in practice I’ve had mixed results. When it works, it is simply fantastic but more often that is tolerable it doesn’t work or works at first and then like with bloated project files starts to deteriorate.

I worry that investing in a Mac Pro will just be an expensive way to encounter the same instability on large projects. Anyone who has experience on Mac please educate me if its better. I’m already convinced that I prefer OSX to Vista64. So it’s not an issue about the Mac Pro it’s an issue about Premiere.

One think I am thinking about though is that I’ve noticed that Premiere CS4.1 has the feature to open Avid project files. I haven’t tried it. I left off Avid at Xpress Pro 5.8; it wasn’t as flexible as Premiere CS2 was to my needs to edit high graphical content and Thai subtitles but it was certainly more stable. So I have thought about editing in Avid and then finishing in Production Premium Suite by importing it into Premiere. I could also try FCP to do the same thing.

However, it would be far more satisfactory to be able to just edit in Premiere and have the luxury of those features that link up with After Effects, Encore etc.

Sadly, I feel that right now I have to know if there is any way to get the Production Premium suite working satisfactorily or should I take the move right now to use FCP or Avid as my main editing work horse and do the round trip to After Effects etc.

I’m leaning towards FCP actually.

[Peter Berthet]

PPRO appears to be more stable on mac as far as im concerned, we run it on a mac pro here and most of the suite works better under OSX

However id recommend leaning a little further towards FCP, and perhaps jumping in the pool.

Its got some kinks of its own, but it far outweighs CS4 in terms of comfort and stability

~Peter Berthet
Sydney, Australia

[Eric Addison]

1. Works great for me on both my HP workstation and HP laptop. It does have the odd crash every now and then, but not anymore then any other app.

2. The workstation is an HP 8400 with Vista64 and dual quad core xeons with 8 GB RAM. The laptop is Vista32 with Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM.

3. No additonal hardware.

—Eric

[David Dobson]

CS4.1 was a big improvement. I am running it on two systems that have been very stable.

System 1: Built in January (using year old tech)
VisataHomeBasic 64 – Service Pack 2
AMD Athalon64 X2 Dual Core 3.8G
8 Gig RAM
Asus M3N78 Pro Motherboard (nVidia Chipset)
Geforce 8600 Video card + onboard Geforce 8300
400W Power Supply

System 2: this one has been unchanged for years and has been very stable since CS4 (CS3 wasn’t too good, but it worked enough to use it for real jobs paying real money.)
XP Pro Service Pack 3
AMD Athalon64 X2 Dual Core 3.4G
4 Gig RAM
Not sure what MB this is – Abit I think – also used nVidia Chipset.
Video Card is also nVidia based – probably an earlier Geforce.
350W Power Supply

Before the upgrade on System 1 I had an ATI based chipset Mother board and video card and it was awful. Also, until last night, I still had the ATI video card in this nVidia based board and it blocked the onboard geforce video card. When i put the Geforce card in the onboard came on – amazing. Now I have 3 monitors – one being the HDTV I use for clients (editing on 3 screens now).

For all video I am using exterior SATA Drives. On the Asus MB system they are true 300Gb SATA drives and I can do compressed HD at high quality with no lag plus they are hot swapable. On the XP system, the SATA drives are treated as IDE’s (though still hot swapable) and for some compressed HD (AVCHD and XDCAM) I need to edit in draft mode, but the finals are full quality when rendered out for to disk for layback elsewhere. DV and HDV playback in High quality fine. All this without an additional $1K Kona or Blackmagic or Matrox Video card.

I also work a lot in Final Cut Pro on OSX and it’s quite good. I can crash FCP occasionally; just like in the PC world it’s possible to download updates that screw the whole system, though it happens less often. I would say that for all the money you pay for the Mac hardware, you get stability. My Vista System cost about $400 (just the box: mb, cpu, gfx, case and power supply) to build. An equivalent Mac runs about $2K.

In conclusion: I believe the Mother Board and Graphics Card chipsets matter a lot – both which kind and which version. The HP systems – I have read – updated all their motherboards for Vista and that’s why they work better than many Intel based Systems. I am sticking with Asus motherboards using nVidia chipsets and Nvidia based graphics cards. I buy last years version rather then the latest stuff for cost and because you can catch bad cards in the reviews rather than be the idiot who gets the lemmon ann writes about it (been there, done that.) I am a fan of AMD CPUs as well, but I haven’t had an Intel CPU in ages.

I also prefer Premiere Pro over Final Cut. I learned both interfaces simultaneously and PPro makes more sense to me. And I do like being able to do real audio mixes in the timeline and I really like the new Media Encoder and am learning to love the Dynamic Link capability to add After Effects Graphics to PPro timelines – it makes making changes so easy. Still have to render – but then just once. Also really like Dynamic Link in Encore for making DVDs – client changes to video are automatically updated in the DVD – so you can build the DVD before the videos are even done. Just be sure to revert to originals if you’ve already encoded.

[Larry S. evans ii]

I have the Adobe Master Collection CS4, so in addition to PP, After Effects and Encore, I also have the “hooks” that go into the graphic design, image editing and web production apps as well.

And yes, it is stable on two systems.

I am running an HP xw8200 that is about three years old, dual 3.6 GHz Xeons, 2GB RAM, a SATA array for storage, with an Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 and Windows XP Pro SP3. I have a Vista test bed on a virtual PC on an old computer that I do not use for actual production, but I will not put Vista on any of my production machines.

The other machine I am running it on, should not actually be able to run it, but aside from having to do a reinstall because of a driver conflict with a Flip Camera, and upgrading to a better video card, I’m had no serious issue. This machine is a Sony Vaio with a hyperthread Pentium V (it’s about 7 years old), 1.5 GB RAM, a couple of external 500GB Firewire drives for media and scratch, and a Matrox G450 Multimonitor card. Also Windows XP 32 Pro SP3.

I grant that the Vaio is not nearly as zippy, but that it runs at all with the overhead amazes me. The G450 card is not what I’d recommend for video production, as it’s really more for having a 4 monitor rig in an office or data center. Still it provided an option to actually open Premiere and Encore- really to open the Media Encoder headless app that bridges them. The onboard Intel based video card was having none of it after the second or third upgrade to PP, and so I used one of the extra cards we had around. It provides sufficient rev of video interface, but no real speed.

Based on my experience “stability” here seems to be related to those darn video cards and their drivers, and will often result in problems and crashes you would never ever suspect as having anything to do with the video card. In fact the crash that prompted me to upgrade really shouldn’t have had anything to do with a video card, but it did. Codewarriors getting way too creative.

So before trashing it all. I would suggest you look at a good Nvidia board, and do a full de-install, drive de-fragmenting, and re-install of the whole suite, followed by an immediate application of the service packs. You may find it works.

Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions

[James Iles]

Thank you for your responses. Very useful.

It seems to be that if using the right combination of hardware and software (including OS and service packs) then CS 4.1 and Premiere in particular, becomes productive.

The bad egg in my opinion is Premiere, not its features, simply that it has been unpredictable in its stability (on my machine, which is an ATI chipset and AMD X2 4800 cpu with Vista Home Premium 32bit; CS2 worked fine on XP on this machine). So if changing the machine will make Premiere better then I will do that. Otherwise though I have to consider the use of an alternative editing app and then use the rest of the Production Suite with that editing app.

I am leaning towards the idea of a Mac Pro and FCP, then I’ll have to get my version of Production Suite switched to Mac. One of the reasons for thinking of switching to Apple is that I’m unsure of where Vista will go.

[David Dobson]

That is the problem with all PCs and PC based software. There are infinite combinations of hardware that can totally screw up especially delicate software. I assure you that if Final Cut Pro were written for Vista or XP, it would be just as unstable on the wrong system.

[James Iles]

Hi David. Sure would:-) Dealing with vastness of the PC world was something I could spend a lot of time with when I was younger. Now I’d hope to simplify things. That’s why I like it when Avid actually list specific systems they recommend for their editing apps. FCP is lucky to have the advantage to focus on a tight selection of machines.

My original objective with this thread was to establish if Premiere in particular for CS4.1 was stable on other hardware to my own. Seems to be that the answer is YES.

Since After Effects works all right on my current machine I am considering getting FCP and a Mac Pro and then have two production machines. I will lose part of the advantage of the dynamic linking but at least Premiere is considerably more stable with small projects (maybe using completed edits exported as complete video files from another edit app) so it may work. Perhaps when CS 5 comes out I’ll migrate to the Mac version in the upgrade.