PrP performance on Mac vs. PC

[Peter Corbett]

Tom, I have a similar concern and system as you. I switched from PC to Mac a couple of years ago (and from Adobe to FCP at the same time) because of the need to interact with our Mac-based agencies. The main reason was something as simple of font compatibility.

I have a 2.25 octo-core with 8tb RAID-5, 16gb RAM, FX4800, Blackmagic Extreme 3D, etc etc.

I too get jerky playback with Premiere sometimes depending on the program complexity, but if I render all is okay. I just feel with my system specs I should be getting smoother operation on the timeline. I however DO notice fewer lockups when I edit on a non-Blackmagic timeline (ie native Adobe timeline). I noticed the same result when I had an AJA LHe card. (I thought the AJA was slowing it all down, so i swapped it out for a Decklink which didn’t change anything).

I have since read there are editors who edit on a native timeline, then cut and paste the sequence into an SDI-based third-party card timeline at the last minute to do grading and checking. I’m not mad about this method of working.

Personally I suspect that a more highly powered PC-based system would give better performance than my Mac-based CS5.5. I just bought 32gb of RAM to see if more memory will help.

If I didn’t have to integrate with other Macs so much I would swap it out for a PC. And for me, I think there is something in process where Premiere has to output video to an external SDI card. I’m convinced that has something to do with these issues. The conversion to SDI somehow just can’t keep up with streams of 1080 HD.
I’d like to stay with Adobe. I just got back from SMPTE (Australia’s mini-NAB) and spent some time in the Avid display which was quite a big one. The reps didn’t know a thing about the upcoming 6.0. I knew more than them and they seemed disinterested and bored with my inquiries. I keep hearing Avid has changed; I hope so.

Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
http://www.php.com.au

[Ray Tragesser]

I think the conversation got derailed here. There are little things that make the MAC experience more tolerable, but when directly comparing to the PC, even a much less powerful one, the PC is running circles around the MAC version of Premiere. I have both the MAC and PC and right now today 7-21-11 the MAC version is not working nearly as well.

There is a well documented GUI problem that makes it feel like your are editing underwater. The laggy performance of moving clips around the timeline needs to be addressed by Adobe quickly. This seems to be affecting the newer 8 core and 12 core machines primarily. You can read about it here:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/826437?tstart=60

If you add in any capture card, be warned that the user experience will be drastically different than using the GPU for full screen playback. Another major area that needs overhauled.

[David Cherniack]

The general consensus from Adobe people is that both platforms perform about the same. It’s usually driver issues from third parties like AJA, BM, and Matrox can can slow things down.

Peter, one thing you may want to try for the choppy playback has cropped up in the AJA forum. In preferences they found if they changed the audio hardware from AJA to Adobe the choppiness disappeared.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Tom Daigon]

Peter my playback issue in the Program / Right monitor is resolved. I just took David C.’s advice and zoomed in on the timeline. Now when I scan it is very smooth. Also I checked out the CPU activity monitor and all 8 cores fire up nicely to 100% when I playback a Red sequence. At this point my system (Mac Pro 3,1) is functioning nicely. I hear that the near Mac Pros are the problematic ones.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com

[Ray Tragesser]

Regardless of hardware I/O driver issues….With the current MAC only GUI bug, the MAC platform performance overall is way way less than the PC. Hopefully Adobe targets and corrects this issue sooner than later.

[Tom Daigon]

Ray, this is probably the only time that I have been thankful that I have an older machine. Thats usually not the case.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com

[Alex Hawkins]

[Peter Corbett] “I have since read there are editors who edit on a native timeline, then cut and paste the sequence into an SDI-based third-party card timeline at the last minute to do grading and checking. I’m not mad about this method of working.”

Hi Peter, I have an AJA LHi card and occasionally do this due to similar problems as yourself. I get laggy playback and scrubbing alot of the time on an AJA sequence. The native Adobe sequences are beautiful but then you don’t get any monitor output.

From everything I’ve been reading lately there does seem to be some issues with PPro on a newer Mac and outputting with a 3rd party hardware card. Changing the Audio hardware default device in preferences to Digital Out or System Out helps with audio performance in playback.

How was SMPTE for you? I saw the Digistor FCPX demo and was singularly unimpressed. It looked more prosumer than I had even origianlly thought. (Can I type in a T/c point and get there?) Mind you it was standing room only…

On another note, what are you archiving to these days? I had a good chat to one of the guys from Powermedia (do you know of them) about archiving and he was trying to lead me down the LTO-5 path from Quantum. Do you have any thoughts/experience with them?

Cheers,

Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia