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premiere unusably slow – am I living in a different universe?
Hi people,
so first off, my specs are:
Core 2 Duo 2GHz
4GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 4330 512MBI know that a laptop with these specs is not the best (HD 720p) video editing environment. That’s why I’m not even dreaming about real-time, Mercury powered HD previews on a separate, perfectly color-calibrated screen, and all that cool stuff they talk about in promo videos. It is understandable that it’s just not going to work for my computer and no Mercury nor other planet can help me unless I buy a more powerful machine.
So I got used to rendering every single preview – it’s not a big deal to wait 30 seconds to see a major update. I even need to render clips that have no effects or color correction applied (just a trimmed part of the original quicktime file) – disappointing, but OK.
But how on earth is it possible that even the rendered prewiews lag? To be more precise, the whole sequence plays back smoothly until it encounters a random spot in a random clip on the timeline, which slows down the preview playback beyond 1 FPS. And just to make things clear, yes, the whole sequence is rendered. With green bar over the timeline.
I don’t get that. I know I’m not on a 4-core Mac, but I have set the preview files quality to 320×180 MPEG-1, for heaven’s sake. Quality so low It’s hard to tell people apart. Windows 95 could play that.
So I’m asking any experienced premiere editors in here – PLEASE, is there anything I can do? What could be wrong? Up-to-date video drivers installed, free disk space around 40 GB, media NOT loaded from an external HDD. What could be wrong?
Or, if I buy a $2000 computer, can I expect premiere to run smoothly, to work with HD DSLR footage without any lags or problems, just like MS Paint works with BMP images? Or does it run nice and fast only in the promo videos? I’d like to hear from a real person outside Adobe: Yes, premiere runs smoothly and reliably, my specs are… 🙂
Thanks for any reply!
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4 Replies
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I wouldn’t expect it to run well at those specs.
running media from the system drive is never a good idea and isn’t helping you.
You need to upgrade to a much faster system.
Premiere runs best on newer hardware and a CUDA supported video card.
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Yes, different universe. DSLR footage requires a powerful processor to decode. Your RAM is much too low and you should be using an external drive of at least 7200 RPM (according to Adobe no less). Even if you do render everything, there is always something that you weren’t aware of that could require the higher specs. It’s an unproductive way to work.
Never use media from your system drive. Yes it runs smoothly and reliably — except when your external drive is failing, like mine is. No matter what, you need a new computer and you can use the trial versions of premiere and FCP X to make your decision.
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CS6 runs very smooth on my laptop, with both 720p and 1080p. My specs:
Asus G53SW Quad-core i7
16GB Ram
Nvidia GTX460M 1.5GB Vram (hardware Mercury playback enabled)
500GB 7200rpm system drive (internal)
750GB 7200rpm media drive (internal)Total cost ~$1300.
I rarely have to render anything in preview, as using the hardware-enabled Mercury Playback Engine handles pretty much everything I can throw at it.
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Thanks for the replies, they do give me hope and ease my frustration; it’s good to know that a hardware upgrade is really all it takes! At least I have something to save up for 🙂
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