Premiere Pro CS6 Preview Render driving me nuts

[Tom Daigon]

Do you have effects on your timeline or just clips?

What kind of media/clips are you using?

Did you Create Sequence From Clip when you started?

Do you have a Nvidia card that has supported CUDA?

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[David Tunnell]

Unfortunately right now I am on a MacBook Pro 17 without CUDA on the video card. I am using a mix of .h264 MP4 and .mov files. I create sequences for the files and edit them and then I put the sequences in a final master sequence to edi them and add transitions.

Thanks,

David Tunnell
TunnellVision Productions

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi David,

In addition to Tom’s queries, can you please elaborate on the nature of the “problem” as you see it? It sounds like you are adding an effect, rendering a preview, and then changing the effect or editing the clip, which puts it back to a red bar, right? This is normal. I very rarely do any pre-renders and just leave things red, unless the clip just won’t play back. Most clips with effects still play back smoothly for me so I don’t bother with the preview renders.

What kind of computer hardware are you working with? Perhaps it is not up to par for the workflow you are using. I have a 2-year-old Core i7-2600 machine with GTX 470 graphics and 16GB and am quite happy with the edit process for long-form HD using full quality previews.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Tom Daigon]

As a test, if you select an h.264 clip, then Create Sequence from Clip, then add more h.264 clips to the sequence, does it play back without dropping frames?

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE COLORED BANDS ABOVE THE TIMELINE.

Does the sequence play without dropping frames?

Now try the same test with the .mov files , then get back to me.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[David Tunnell]

What I expect is to be able to edit and not have to do a preview render after every edit just to be able to see what I did smoothly and if the timing works without all of the stuttering.

I tried the experiment. If I play the files in their sequences they play fine. But when I had them into the master where I have titles, transitions and music then they stutter.

I did a preview render and they played fine, then extended a tutle a few frames, from the title on it would stutter.

I have a MacBook Pro 17 with 16 gigs of ram. As and experiment, I layered three of these files in Sony vegas and they play just fine with no stuttering. How does Vegas keep up and Premiere doesn’t?

One more thing … I have to use an external USB 2.0 drive. This could be part of the problem. But again, how can Vegas work with the same set up and no stuttering?

Thanks,

David Tunnell
TunnellVision Productions

[Tom Daigon]

A USB 2 drive doesnt cut it for HD footage. Problem 1.

Adobe and Vegas are different pieces of software with different ways of dealing with media. I know nothing about Vegas.

Premiere relies on the Mercury Playback Engine for its performance. This allows it to play most media natively. It means your computer needs a certain degree of CPU power, memory, GPU power and fast input/Output (ie media raid drives) in order to do its thing.

If you find its not working for you, maybe your workflow is more suited to Vegas.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi David,

Ditto on the USB 2 drive not being a great idea. Also, are you using Boot Camp to run Vegas?? Or is that on a different machine?

Sounds like you are nesting sequences? That can be problematic. Yes, it is built-in to Premiere, yet causes grief for a lot of users. I avoid it. Rather than nesting sequences, you can just as easily “select all/copy/paste” contents of each sequence into your “master” sequence, therefore NOT nesting sequences. Just combining contents into one larger sequence.

Maybe this would makes things easier for the laptop without CUDA to process?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[David Tunnell]

I was wondering about both of those scenerios.Not Boot Camp, Parallells. My employer bought Adobe Productions Premium for Windows because my main work station is Win 7, but I often work away from that computer. Then they bought me a MacBook Pro for portability and to run Pro Tools 10 and interface with a firewire presonus board.

Tonight I will test this on my main workstation that has CUDA and an nVidia Card, but in the past I have had some of these problems on it as well.

Nestin the sequences just seems to make sense to me for keeping things organized. But if I can’t I can’t.

Thanks,

David Tunnell
TunnellVision Productions

[Tom Daigon]

Good to know about nesting. I wasnt aware this was an issue for some folks. I only use it when prepping for multicam.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Wait…. are you saying you’re running Premiere on windows using parallels?

I used to do that, it was disastrously slow. Rebooting fully into windows was night and day faster. I didn’t have as much RAM though.

And I’ll echo what the others have said, USB2 just doen’t even remotely cut it for editing in Premiere. Vegas is probably doing agressive cashing or something and that’s why it works.

JM