Premiere Pro alternatives

[Tim Kolb]

[Micah McDowell] “Somewhat like you, I’ve always had issues with longer form projects in Premiere.”

I have heard this before and seen some of it myself. Earlier versions of PPro had issues once the project file got above a certain size (I never was able to determine what the tipping point was, but the longer the edit, the more data, the bigger project file…)

Adobe has been promising to work on this as many of us have been pointing out this issue…I’m working on some longer form stuff now…so far so good on CS4.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Maarten Mylemans]

-get the RAM up to 8 GB minimum, 16 GB preferably

-get a couple 4 core processors

-get rid of the gamer card and get a Quadro

-make sure you have some speedy drives in a RAID configuration.

Thanks for the info, I can see how 8 GB could help, but since PPro is still a 32 bit application, it won’t see anything above 4 GB, so I don’t see how 16 GB will give me more workpower (because Windows 7 only uses about 1.5 GB of working RAM). The rest of course yes, that would be a big improvement 😀

Maybe it’s better to just go for an HP workstation that’s been optimized? So to reduce system incompatibility? Whenever I’m looking at how my resources are used when I’m working in PPro, it’s doesn’t look like it’s taxing my system very much. And CS3 runs fine , except for the bugs of course.

So the bugging out (like the wrong in/end points when copy/pasting between PPro and AE) might be because of not enough power? I’d rather know that that’s the problem for sure before spending a couple of thousand dollars on hardware!

My hard drives are seperate, I only actually use just one drive out of the four for video editing. Once a project is done, it gets backed up. Since my projects are generally fairly short I never need more than 750 GB for a project.

Thank you all for the feedback. For the time being I’ll give Sony Vegas a try and keep using PPro CS3, as that seems to not bring my system to its knees. I’m gonna try copy/pasting between PPro CS3 and AE CS4 to see if that’ll fix the in/end points 😀 (between PPro CS4 and AE CS4 I haven’t had that bug, so that’s one thing good!).

We’re starting production on a feature film in the near future and I’m gonna use that chance to have a thorough look at our post workflow and completely redesign it to be more stress friendly. Nice thing will be that the budget will allow us to buy new software and hardware, so that’s why I’m looking around to see what the experiences are with other packages. Because I don’t see myself editing a feature film on PPro again, until someone else does it on a new version and tells me they didn’t have problems 😀

So either an HP workstation with AVID media composer, or a MAC Pro with FCP. Is there anyway to test these things? Or reviews?

[Phil Lowe]

Yes it will run on home built systems, but it’s at your own risk.
at home i’m running Media composer on a home built system and it solid as a rock, but i did a ton of research before i built it.

Agree 100%. I do, however, use my systems to make money. I recently had to upgrade my homemade desktop system that was 4 years old to a new system. I decided to buy “off the shelf” for the first time since my first computer purchase in 1986. I studied the latest Avid specs and got a system as close as I could to an Avid supported system. The machine works great (better than the ones we have at work), but attention to detail is important when shopping around.

[Tim Kolb]

[Maarten Mylemans] “Thanks for the info, I can see how 8 GB could help, but since PPro is still a 32 bit application, it won’t see anything above 4 GB, so I don’t see how 16 GB will give me more workpower (because Windows 7 only uses about 1.5 GB of working RAM). The rest of course yes, that would be a big improvement :-D”

It’s true that PPro can’t use more than 4 GB…but you have 3 GB in your system and your OS uses half…leaving 1.5 GB available for everything else including PPro. However, remember that if you open your processes tab after launching PPro, you’ll see there are other Adobe app engines running, waiting for the command to dynamic link…

Even with nothing else on your machine, PPro itself is likely getting access to less than 1 GB of RAM at any given time, at times much less I’d guess. Now try an “edit in Photoshop” command and suddenly you’re splitting that RAM into smaller pieces yet. 4 GB of RAM actually available to PPro (8 in the box minimum) would likely more than Quadruple what it’s getting now on your 3 GB system.

If you had 16 GB of RAM, you could give PPro a full 4 GB (and Photoshop gets its own 4 GB, and AE gets its 4…when they’re all open, they all need resources) and it makes a runnability difference without a doubt. No, it doesn’t fix any bugs, but it sounds as if you have general instability problems with big projects, and this is one way to reduce that considerably.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Maarten Mylemans]

Tim: that’s absolutely true. Guess I’ll be upgrading soon.

Now I’ve discovered that you can run Windows on the new Mac Pro’s? So actually I can have the best of both worlds now… Have a shiny Mac Pro with FCP, stable hardware and if I need Windows, I just boot it up on the same computer.
Hmm… does seem like a nice setup. And since FCP has been proven to be feature length friendly, I might just make the switch.

[Tim Kolb]

[Maarten Mylemans] “Now I’ve discovered that you can run Windows on the new Mac Pro’s? So actually I can have the best of both worlds now…”

I know many who have done just that and are quite happy.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Maarten Mylemans]

Hmm, so I’ve been reading up on user’s experiences with FCP, and seems there are quite some gripes with that program as well. Like Apple changing the way something works and it’s apparently very picky about the version of OS and Quicktime you’re using.

Oh, booh, can’t software just work? 😀
Anyhow, before I’ll be making the jump and start spending on hardware, I’m trying out Sony Vegas (which has a weird workflow if you’re used to PPro) and AVID. Although I will miss the Dynamic Link option. Maybe with PPro CS5 the program will grow up…

I will probably stick with PC, if so, is it best to go for a preconfigured workstation like one from HP or 1beyond, or can I design my own?

[Tony Salso]

Marteen, I read with interest the dialog here about PPro CS4. My experiences are very narrow and are amateurish compared to yourself as well as the others responding. However, I do record and edit our church’s weekly services for uploading to our web site: https://www.redhillssbc.org/Sermon%20Video%20Folder/Sermon%20Video.html .

I am using a Sony HVR-V1U, recording and importing in HDV about 80 minutes recorded on two HD tapes. The final movie is anywhere from 45 to 70 minutes, and my platform is a PC.

My sys was built new by a computer store using Intel MB DP43TF and Intel Quad Core 2.66GHz Processor using W 7 Ultimate 64 bit Op Sys/8GB RAM/NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS.

PPro CS4 runs flawlessly on my sys. My only problem is inexperience and having to learn the functionality of CS4. I have not had a seconds worth of trouble running the program.

When I use the monitor gadget (within Win 7) it shows RAM use and activity of each of the quad core processors. When exporting to Windows Media Player all four processors are running close to 100%, and RAM is about 3388 of 8123 Mb.

My prior system was XP Pro SP3 with many upgrades over about 5-7 years. That system was replete with difficulties running PrPro CS 3 and 4. I wanted to build the fastest badest computer myself, but when I talked to the computer store they told me to get rid of my problems I needed a “new” install of either XP Pro or Windows 7. I had no intention of going backwards, to XP so I decided to have them build my computer as long as it included a fully functioning version of Windows 7 as a new install not an upgrade over XP. That was in August and at that time Windows 7 was not available top the consumer as a full operating sytem. Best move I ever made as PrPro CS4 has been running flawlessly on the new system. While I am not earning a living using CS4, I am volunteering and do value my time as much as anyone who earns a living.

Hope this is useful.
Tony

[Tim Kolb]

[Maarten Mylemans] “Hmm, so I’ve been reading up on user’s experiences with FCP, and seems there are quite some gripes with that program as well. Like Apple changing the way something works and it’s apparently very picky about the version of OS and Quicktime you’re using.”

Yes…isn’t it interesting how even when one company makes the computer, the OS, AND the NLE software…there are still issues.

As far as CS4 growing up…(by all means try Vegas, but…) once you get an updated 64 bit, 8 core, 16 GB machine, I’d guess you’ll find that CS4’s puberty will largely be in the past…

(I run CS4 on my T7400 Centrino with 2 GB of RAM and XP Pro and I only have real issues bogging down when I dynamic link.)

Vegas is an amazing software program in a lot of ways (I have Vegas as well as Adobe), but it has limitations like everything else.

It’s all a matter of what works the way you think.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Maarten Mylemans]

[Tim Kolb] “As far as CS4 growing up…(by all means try Vegas, but…) once you get an updated 64 bit, 8 core, 16 GB machine, I’d guess you’ll find that CS4’s puberty will largely be in the past… “

Well, Tim, your positivity about Premiere encouraged me to take another look at my software issues and see if they aren’t indeed just my view filtered through a good bit of “rage view”.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my last feature project only ran into two bugs (crippling bugs nonetheless), and it only began after having edited about 2/3 of the movie (every scene was a seperate project, to reduce loading, and only after the complete movie was done did I combine all the projects into one).

It was a quicktime bug, that broke my VFX files, so I had rerender them, and the in/end points going from PPro to AE (not all the time, but I had to be careful). And the biggest problem in the end was getting it out of Premiere (because of the quicktime bug) in a format that was playable and watchable (we were using a laptop to stream the movie to the projector at the cinema, as I didn’t trust Blu-Ray enough at the time because it was still a brand new technology).

I’ve also read on the Reduser forum that a representative from Adobe spoke less than kind words about Apple and Quicktime, which leads me to think maybe I should start using other codecs (than a Quicktime wrapper).

Also, I edit HDV natively, which I read is actually very taxing on your system, maybe I can try an intermediate codec.

Tony: that’s wonderful that you do that for your community! Well, if you find that it runs well on your system with such long footage, I think the road seems clear.

Vegas is way too weird for me to get into, I tried it, but, after 9 years of Premiere, I just can’t get into it 🙂

In the end it probably won’t matter what software I use, as long as it’s one that I’m comfortable with and on a system that can actually handle it!

Thank you Tim, for many good insights and feedback. Now on to search for the perfect editing machine…