premiere pro CS5

[Tim Kolb]

Where do you have your scratch disk targeted? Is it full?

1 GB of RAM? Is that right or did the ‘6’ that should be after the ‘1’ just not type out?

While determinig why the app stopped working will be a challenge, I’d have to say I’m a little shocked it worked at all on the system you’re describing. Are you only working with DV?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Fiona Wilkinson]

Thank you for the response. Yes, it’s actually 2 GB RAM (I mistyped). I’m not certain where my scratch disks are because I didn’t set up the program and I can’t even get into the program to check now or to change any settings. That is, unless there is another way without going through the program.

Yes, the files are mostly .dv there are other pprojs with HD.

I guess I don’t understand why it wouldn’t work on this system – our IT people made sure that the machine had all the specs/requirements specifically to run PPro CS5. And as said, it was working fine previously.

I’m quite perplexed about this. I haven’t been able to get through to Adobe, but I will keep trying.

[Tim Kolb]

Well…you may want to try to shut off automatic updates for Windows if that’s on…Microsoft seems to “fix” things with a toolbox filled with primarily sledgehammers from time to time. Then, attempt a system restore to a week ago or whenever it worked last…

You could also attempt to launch and dump the preferences…which I believe is still done by holding down “shift” as the app launches, but it’s been a few years since I’ve done it.

What was the last thing you were doing on it?

One thing about system requirements and video editing on computers…and Apple is as absurd as Adobe is when it comes down to the ‘spirit’ of what gets shown and what it takes to actually do what’s demonstrated to the customer.

The minimum system requirements for software in most industries is adequate to run the software in question…in the world of video where Premiere Pro CS5 is owned by people who work with standard definition DV footage all the way up to 4K RED RAW files and DPX and uncompressed 2K files for feature film work, the minimum requirements are what it takes to boot the software and look at the most minimal video clip in the timeline.

I have a laptop that is several years old and has a dual-core processor and 2 GB of RAM and I can get PPro CS4 to run (my system isn’t 64 bit so I can’t run CS5 on it) and I can even edit on it, but I am very aware of its limitations and I couldn’t edit every day on it.

Trade show demos are typically done on workstations using electromagnetic nuclear technology acquired from captured inter stellar spacecraft downed in New Mexico (not really…but the machines used for tradeshow demos need to have some serious stuff to show off all the features in a program like PPro CS5, particularly when using dynamic link.)

For those working in HD or higher on a daily basis, Premiere Pro CS5 runs productively on systems with 16 GB of RAM (compared to 2 GB), two 4-core processors that hyper-thread to give you 16 effective processor cores (your processor has 2 cores, no HT), and a CUDA-capable NVIDIA display card that can execute many effects across the hundreds of GPU cores on the display card.

If the machine will launch PPro CS5 and you can get things done, then I guess you’re good once you get this glitch figured out, but a word to the wise…most “IT guys” just don’t have the experience with video post production to spec a productive editing workstation system build. If this is the primary purpose of this system and your primary function within the company, you are grossly under-powered. If this is only a part of your job with the company and you aren’t editing video all day every day, it may be only annoyingly pokey and I would not pit this system against a hot deadline as that’s when an overachieving workstation will usually fall over.

At the very very least, I’d try to quadruple the RAM in the system and see if there is any chance you could acquire a CUDA card to help the performance.

If you should find that you have no ability to do anything with the system, at some point you may want to try out Sony Vegas as that’s an editing system that runs far better on limited hardware systems in my experience.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,