Premiere CS6 – Much to love… but the performance is killing me

[Dennis Tzeng]

I’m a PC with an i7 2.2 ghz processor with 12 gigs of RAM and haven’t had any issues with playback and I run off a basic 7200 rpm edit drive. I playback DSLR, DVC Pro HD 100, XDCAM, etc and it’s all smooth for me.

8 gigs of RAM does seem kind of low for your system though. Perhaps you need to add 4 to 8 more gigs?

Dennis

[Kevin Monahan]

What happens if you switch off CUDA acceleration in Software mode?

Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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[Mike Jackson]

So far, the results have been incredibly inconsistent. Changing that setting in either direction (software only or CUDA) always tanks my performance so badly I usually have to restart Premiere. When I was doing very simple projects a couple of months ago, software only always performed worse. Now, on slightly larger projects (music videos with a lot of footage) I’m seeing no significant difference… at least not consistently. It might be that I drop a lot more frames but maintain better sound sync in software only, but I could just be imagining it…

[Mike Jackson]

Well, the performance you get on a completely different platform and OS doesn’t really relate all that much – Apples and Oranges as they say 😉

But regarding the RAM – If DSLR and RED footage are chugging with 8Gb, that’s disappointing but understandable. But there’s something REALLY wrong if I can’t get smooth playback from a single stream of ProRes on a system that *does* meet Adobe’s official recommended RAM (and is double their min spec). And keep in mind, FCP could handle 3 or 4 streams without issue on my previous Mac with only 3 gigs.

I’ll shell out for more RAM if it comes down to it, but right now I’m not even sure that’s the issue…

[Dennis Radeke]

Hi Mike,

I think I see a couple of things that I would suggest as you make the switch. Bear in mind, that the switch does require some learning and finding out where that equilibrium is with the hardware and the software.

A couple of generic reminders just to clear them out of the way:
1 – make sure you’re updated to the lastest version of CS6, which should be 6.0.2.
2 – ditto on the blackmagic drivers

To diagnose the problem and to aim towards consistent performance, I see two potential problem areas. One is lack of RAM and another is the BMD. I would try the following in this order.

1 – Get a bunch more RAM. Even if it’s a complete failure, RAM is cheap and always provides a more consistent, stable editing experience for any 64-bit editing app on any platform. You have an 8 core machine. Generally speaking, I personally recommend having 3-4 gigs of RAM per CPU core. That would put you at 24-32. If that seems excessive it isn’t. However, even boosting to 16GB of RAM will make a tremendous difference. It’ll cost you a couple of hundred bucks at the most and it will make your whole system feel and perform better
2 – in order to get to the bottom of the problem, you might want to consider pulling the BMD card until you can get a consistent editing experience. 3rd party i/o cards can be a factor. If RAM doesn’t cure your problem, pull the card and try again.

Beyond that, I would think about disabling the GPU card as Kevin suggested temporarily until you get it sorted out (again, removing variables). If you’re still having problems, then we’ll have to put our heads together and figure out what’s plaguing you. At that point, maybe there’s bad RAM or something else going on.

Finally, two general tips and maintanence ideas: Two tips

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Jeff Pulera]

Ditto on pulling the BMD card. Have not used it on Mac, but last PC system we built with CS6 and BMD was dodgy, ended up pulling the BMD card due to performance issues. Not to say that is definitely the issue, but if you can just try Adobe by itself, that will establish a “baseline performance” and removes the variable of the capture device.

If it still acts up, then you can start looking at other factors.

Thanks

Jeff

[Chris Borjis]

I have 2, 2009 macpro octocore systems with BMD hardware,
16gb of ram, Nvidia Quadro 4000s in each and external Raid 5 storage.

Both of them perform great with CS 6.01 and render very quickly.

Been using them for a year now and sometimes client supervised sessions.

Running 10.6.8 on both.

[Mike Jackson]

Thanks for the response Dennis! I don’t post often, but I’ve been really appreciating your involvement in the forums for a long time. After the debacle with FCPX (and Apple in general), it’s been so refreshing seeing you and Adobe get directly involved with us, helping us when we need help, and really listening to our requests and concerns. Thank you.

What you’re saying about my particular issues has me worried though, as I’m limited in how up-to-date I can get my BMD drivers. I’m still on Snow Leopard, and BMD’s latest drivers are Lion only… but I have very little interest in updating my OS and risking having a lot of other software and functionality I use daily get broken. And I know I’m not the only person in the post industry who would prefer (or is forced, in order to maintain their servers) to stay on Snow Leopard, so it’s pretty frustrating to see the third-party support vanish. Not that that’s your problem of course, but still… worrying.

All that said, both the RAM and BMD suggestions have their problems for me. Fine on a trouble-shooting level (and I’ll try disabling the BMD just to narrow down where the problem really is), but the cold hard fact of it is I need the BMD card more than I need Premiere. I’d love to make Premiere my workhorse… but both FCP Classic and Avid give me smooth playback with my BMD card, so at this point they win. Which hurts me deep in my soul, hence my coming here looking for fresh suggestions for a solve 😉

On a philisophical note though, I do have to say I worry about any software that has trouble playing back a single stream of video on a system with 8 gigs of RAM. Makes me think that either a) something’s gone VERY wrong with my system, or b) something’s very wrong with the code. I’d also humby request that Adobe revise the tech specs listed in all the documentation, since it sounds like the ACTUAL recommended RAM spec is 16 gigs or so, not the 8 currently listed.

Anyway, thanks for the help, and I’ll start unplugging and deactivating things and see what happens…

[Mike Jackson]

Oh, one other little tidbit. I don’t know if it means anything, but I have iStat installed on my Mac, so I get constant readouts of CPU and RAM use at the top of my screen at all times. When my system gets pissy and is at its most unresponsive (as it is at this very moment, can’t play longer than 5 seconds without picture freezing), my RAM reads at only 2/3 usage and all 8 cores are barely above idle…

[Mike Jackson]

Well, deactivating the BMD card *improved* the situation, but didn’t fix it enitirely. Still dropping frames, just less frequently.