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Mac Conversion for CS5 Nightmare
After FCP Supermeet announcement got tired of waiting and decided to make the switch to CS5.5.
Took the following spec’ed Mac and made changes to use CS5.5:Intel Mac 3,1 Quad Core
3Ghz
Up’ed Ram to 32Gb DDR2
Clean Install (reformat/erase) Operating System Drive (320Gb 7200RPM) of 64bit Snow Leopard
Updated Snow Leopard to 10.6.7
Installed base driver for Quadro 4000 for the Mac (you have to use another graphics card to install the first driver because of Apple)
Physically installed Quadro 4000 for the Mac graphics card
Installed Cuda driver for the Quadro
Used the Cuda app to update to latest Cuda driver
Install CS5.5 Production Premium from DVD’sHave a separate 750Gb 7200 Media Drive
Have an external PCIe dual channel 600Mbps read/write 8Tb 0Raid array for mediaNightmare!
Can barely play 1 track of h.264 video/audio with a DSLR preset timeline
Can barely play 1 track of Sony XDCAM EX 720p24fps that comes for training media in Adobe Classroom in a Book for CS5
The video stutters – dropping frames – audio glitching – even dropping Playback Resolution from Full – 1/2 – 1/4 – same results
Setup graphical Activity Monitor to view 8 core’s usage – at 1/2 and 1/4 playback there appears to be plenty of headroomI have tried both Mercury with GPU acceleration and Mercury with software only – same results
I have also lost the ability to playback NanoFlash and XDR recorded files which CS5.5 is supposed to do – error message upon importing “file format not supported”
The only out of spec item I can find for this rig is possibly the “Core audio sound card” spec is not there. But I have repeatedly seen CS5.5 running multiple tracks and effects on Mac laptops like butter. And I can find no info on “Core Audio” available sound cards.
Is this 2008 Intel Quad Core Mac too close to the edge for CS5.5? It seems to meet the spec though – and with 32Gb of Ram and a Quadro 4000 for the Mac graphics card with a super fast raid to draw from, it would seem like a decent setup.
Any ideas?
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3 Replies
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How do the files play in a media player—or any other application on the same computer?
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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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How did you get on John? I’m having some issues too with a 2009 octocore with CS5.5, 16gb RAM and Blackmagic Extreme HD card. Similar 8tb RAID to yours.
After doing a short amount of editing/chroma keying with 1080 MXF files (I too got the file not supported message), the viewers can go black and not update or output to the external SDI. I’m wondering if PPro is hogging all the RAM and I may need to up it to 32gb.
Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
http://www.php.com.au -
I would not be a good candidate for info in this conversion.
Our “former” IT guy really messed this trial conversion up from the start.
1. He supplied us with the wrong ram memory – gave us 667Mhz ram when the early 2008 Mac 3,1 required 800Mhz memory
2. He then gave us the wrong Riser board Dimm configuration when we dropped down to 24gig of ram.
I learned this all myself and then have started from scratch with a clean install. This project got delayed by paying work so this Mac just sat for bit and I am now back on it. In between when the system was semi-stable, Premiere was working nicely – ran all mixed formats including h.264 and multiple Pic-in-pictures and various filters and transitions – all in real-time at full res playback setting. But then the system would sometimes boot up unstable and cause headaches without any Adobe software running!
So I bit the bullet and have started with another Clean INstall of Snow Leopard from scratch as well as all apps!!! I will let you know how that goes when finished. But starting with the right memory and correct configuration would be the obvious.
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