Premiere Pro, Mac vs PC

[Patrick Murphy]

Hi Walter,

THanks again, that is such comprehensive advice.

I think i will try to use ProRes and Cineform together. I also see your point on the hard drives i think i will go for Tuxera and Mediafour as well, as it keeps everything more flexible.

I completely understand if you are fed up of dishing out advice but you seem so clued in that i was wondering if you might briefly be able to advice me on the PC i am going to get.

I was going to get a Dell machine, in terms of processors, is it better to get one top processor or put two of lesser quality in? And how will extra RAM as compared to a decent processor affect editing in Adobe Premiere and AE?

Like i said feel free to ignore this last, i have pestered you plenty for advice!

Thank you for all you brilliant advice, so so helpful.

Paddy

[Walter Soyka]

[Patrick Murphy] “I was going to get a Dell machine, in terms of processors, is it better to get one top processor or put two of lesser quality in? And how will extra RAM as compared to a decent processor affect editing in Adobe Premiere and AE?”

I use HP myself, but I hear the Dell workstations are very nice, too. You might also think about the ProMAX One workstation if you want built-in RAID 5 storage.

If you want to see the differences in performance between different configurations with Premiere Pro, check out some benchmarks at ppbm5.com [link].

The bulk of my work is done in AE, and my experience there is that performance scales with hardware. More cores are generally better for AE, but you also need a lot of RAM; I recommend 3-4 GB per core. If you get less than this, you may have a hard time keeping the processors running near 100% load during render.

The good news on RAM is that you can always upgrade later, and do so much more easily than you can upgrade CPUs.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Patrick Murphy]

Walter,

THanks again, i will check ppbm5 out and also have a look at ProMax One.

I cant thank you enough, the advice you have given would have taken me days of trawling the net, and i doubt very much what i found out would even have come close to it!

THanks again for being so patient.

Paddy

[Walter Soyka]

You’re welcome, Paddy — and good luck with your new system.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Patrick Murphy]

Walter apologies, just one last question, then you can have me off your back!! have just been looking at systems. DO i need to worry about the graphics card? Will this affect editing in any way?

THe ProMax looks amazing… have e mailed to see if i can get one in the UK.

THanks again!

Paddy

[Tom Daigon]

Im sure Walter wouldnt mind me adding my 2 cents.

Here is some data that can give you a good idea of the performance and cost effectiveness of the GPUs, which are a very important component in the working of the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine.

AE Performance https://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/cuda-performance-tests.321/

PrP Performance https://ppbm5.com/DB-PPBM5.php

Quadro cards are solid, but over priced and not as good bang for buck.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3