Quad Core and Premiere Pro

[Bob Kiger]

Thanks to all for cluing us in on CS4 and memory usage.

There does seem to be a fairly consistent pattern of opinion here:
Vista 64 bit is a memory hog. Photoshop is the only true 64 bit application in the CS4 suite and October 22 is the release date for Windows 7 [our “hypothetical” ASUS notebook comes with an automatic upgrade to Windows 7]

Adobe is beta testing CS5 right now, according to a heap of stories on https://cs5.org/ and the schedule seems poised to hype at the upcoming CEA and NAB shows for release Spring 2010.

Of course Apple will counter with their FCP 64 bit package.

Timed to appear with Windows 7 is a WAVE of quad core computers that are now entering the China pipeline. On May 22 Fry’s Electronics online advertised a “hypothetical” ASUS G71Gx-A1 for $1799.99. We tried to purchase on May 23 but they were out of stock. So were 9 of the 10 other “sellers” that suckered for an ASUS Press Release.

One vendor [yet unnamed] offered this product on eBay as “Buy It Now” which we did using PayPal credit card for $1999.99. Long story short…they could not deliver, citing “parts problems”. On 7/3/2009 they wrote me: “Hello Bob, The ETA on the new G71Gx-A1 is 7/13-7/14, and we will send out the same day that we receive. Also will notify you via phone with the discount + the gift. And if we send out between 7/13-7/14, you should have it in 2 business days.”

In the very same email they changed the model number to ASUS G71G-Q2 17″ 2.0GHz Quad Core/6GB/640GB/Blu-Ray. We’ve called and written and received promises galore but none of them were honorable. They continued to list it on eBay until July 19 and they’re a top rated Power Seller.

We’re still waiting, so if/when the item arrives, this entire thread may another one of those “teachable moments” that keep popping up. Clever way of whittling away at the China/US trade deficit 🙁

Given all the above factors should we demand refund or should we hold their feet to the fire?

Bob Kiger seminal author of “videography” [OCT1972-AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER]
http://www.videographyblog.com

[Vince Becquiot]

Unless they are paying you interest, I would request a refund 🙂

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Mike Prindle]

Bob,
It’s just my opinion, but from my experience I think that reliable, consistent video work needs around 2.5GHz (3.0+ is safer) — either Duo or Quad – especially if you author Blu-Ray; 7200rpm internal HDDs (externals seem to bottleneck & stifle thru-put); 6-8GB DDR3 (12 is better but expensive) depending on how many apps run simultaneously; and, hi-end graphics card w/at least 512 (I’m also a fan of Sli). Currently, I think my notebook is insufficient for video.

Some may feel this is overkill, but I reason that eventually the software developers will bring everything up to x64 – soon I hope. I like Vista only because I have been lucky with my system in that I haven’t experienced the Vista problems that many others have cited. Rumors are that Win-7 is faster and more efficient…… we’ll see?

Assuming someone wants to spend the money — I still defend getting the big guns early because eventually everything will catch up; then I don’t have to drop another $4K a year later. Wow, Bob you got a good price on that ASUS!! Sorry things are dragging out.

Bob, in answer to your question about x64 and smaller programs, Vince answered the question for me — DRIVERS!; I assume smaller companies are hesitant to spend the money to develop x64/multi-thread software until it’s absolutely necessary. So sometimes it’s a trade-off – x86 vs x64 – depending on what’s more important to you.

If people strongly disagree with my position, please reply – since I could be wrong. I’m always willing learn from others’ experiences.

Regards,
Mike

Sager NP9262 Notebook, Intel Quad Q6600, 4GB DDR2, nVidia 8800m GTX Sli, 3x-Seagate 320GB, WUXGA, Vista Premium-64 – CS4 Prod Prem

[Mike Prindle]

Bob, I found this in the CS4 guide (likely most veteran users already know this). This suggests that more cores and more memory helps:

“Optimize rendering for available memory

By default, Adobe Premiere Pro renders video using the maximum number of available processors, up to 16. However, some sequences, such as those containing high-resolution source video or still images, require large amounts of memory for the simultaneous rendering of multiple frames. These can force Adobe Premiere Pro to abort rendering and to give a Low Memory Warning alert. In these cases, you can maximize the available memory by changing the rendering optimization preference from Performance to Memory. Change this preference back to Performance when rendering no longer requires memory optimization.

1. Select Edit > Preferences, and select General in the Preferences dialog box.

2. In the drop-down menu next to Optimize Rendering For, select Memory.

3. Click OK, close Adobe Premiere Pro, and reopen the project for the new preference to take effect.”

Hope this helps,
Mike

Sager NP9262 Notebook, Intel Quad Q6600, 4GB DDR2, nVidia 8800m GTX Sli, 3x-Seagate 320GB, WUXGA, Vista Premium-64 – CS4 Prod Prem

[Peter Berthet]

i actually got the warning a few days ago when rendering a 7 minute 1080i timeline.

i believe their definition of ‘memory’ in this case is available hard drive space rather than RAM

instead of changing the optimization to memory, i changed the scratch discs to an empty external SATA drive and it happily rendered away.

it was running out of ‘memory’ because it was trying to render using an (almost) full system drive

~Peter Berthet
Sydney, Australia

[Bob Kiger]

Just got another phone call from the “unnamed” Seller. There are further delays from ASUS and he said he will be sending me their email regards the particulars. Something to do with the LCD on the unit.

He is polite guy and that has what has held me from going ballistic on the whole deal. They will, in effect, be paying me interest because they just agreed to install 2 500GB 7200rpm hard drives in place of the stock 320s. A walking Terrabyte.

My persistence in this “project” is also based on the timeline of events that will lead up to CS5 64 bit. I’d sure like to get into THAT beta group!

Bob Kiger seminal author of “videography” [OCT1972-AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER]
http://www.videographyblog.com

[Mark Hollis]

Pardon me if I steal a thread here:

Be very careful about scratch disks. I am very, very reluctant to use a boot drive for anything, save applications and storage of completed material, like that darned Excel spreadsheet my accountant had me produce.

But on my own computer, I have it back up everything all of the time (Apple’s Time Machine is a stroke of genius) to another hard drive that is 50% larger than my boot drive. I do not back up video storage. If I need safety, I run a RAID 5.

Scratch disks for all Adobe applications that use them must be a drive that is relatively empty and very fast.

As to RAM, in a 64-bit system, you want to add as much as is feasable for your budget. I believe the scratch disk is less used when you have more RAM and multicore systems will use more.

Today, I think the fastest first-tier Windows computer is made by Apple. HP may just have developed something very interesting, though. I’m not sure I’d ever do what Bob’s doing. Maybe I’m too conservative but I want a computer that the manufacturer will repair or replace within one day and get me back up and running with minimal fuss.

People who don’t earn their living doing this may disagree and, for them, any computer that will run the Adobe applications will be fine. But I prefer to spend appropriate money setting up a configuration that will emphasize reliability.

Hard drives will work as virtual memory just fine. Computer programmers have been using them for some time, swapping in and out large datasets with ease. Adding Real Ram will cause the application to work faster.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Dennis Radeke]

While it is true that only Photoshop (PC only) is a true 64bit program, it is an error to assume that Premiere Pro and After Effects do not benefit from a 64 bit environment. The single greatest advantage to a 64 bit system is the ability to address more memory and that’s what Premiere Pro and After Effects do. You can access up to 4GB per core which means on a 4 core system, you could use 16gb.

Where this is useful is when you’re using the integration features of CS4. Dynamic Link, multiple programs sharing comps, sending to Encore, etc. These are all instances where the memory becomes a big help.

I straight out recommend that people use Vista 64 with 8gb of RAM if at all possible.

[Bob Kiger]

Thanks Dennis and all for the greatly expanding our knowledge of the many facets of converting to 64 bit computing as well as the state of play for CS4 today.

As I mentioned in my last post the [unnamed seller] had conceded a fair bit to honor our early purchase of the ASUS quad core notebook. They ate the CA Sales tax and shipping. They have committed to replacing 2 – 500 GB 7200rpm drives for the stock 360GB drives and they are sending an external drive case to facilitate data transfer.

In our last phone call they said they would send the email from ASUS. Here it is at https://videographyblog.com/ASUSemail.html
We haven’t seen such a heavily redacted email since the Pentagon papers were released 🙂 And it gives no firm date of delivery 🙁

This leads me to the guts of the matter. All the relevant technologies seem in flux right now:

1. Obviously the ASUS computer needs to arrive. Even if we got it tomorrow what OS would we load. We don’t like our experience with Vista and don’t want it on this computer. We don’t want to go way back to XP Pro. So we are in a wait and hold position for Windows 7 64 bit version. And the wait should not be long says ZDnet at https://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1195 which announces the date as today “Thursday, August 6, to be exact—when MSDN and Technet subscribers will finally get the chance to download the software legitimately and activate their copies with product keys.” The ZD review in general was pretty glowing so we will be glad to hop over Vista.

Now to the Creative Suite. As we previously mentioned we have CS2 Video Collection as a reward for past beta testing. [and CS4 Dreamweaver]. There seems no doubt that CS2 is going to run a lot faster on the ASUS quad core with 6GB memory than on our existing [beloved] Pentium M Gateway ROGs w/ 1GB of memory. A side note on why we love the old Gateways. It’s called Universal Drive Bay [UDB], which permits us to hot swap a hard drive right onto the laptop motherboard. We also have DVD burners and card readers and extra batteries that fit into the UDB. It keeps project management ultra simple because all the files for most projects fit on one drive. When we’re ready for another project we just slap in the appropriate drive for that project. Well that feature seems to have slipped into oblivion so we wanted a notebook that really covered the bases.

We have heard from several of you friends that 8GB is the ideal complement for CS4 and Windows Vista 64. Will that same 8GB be vital with Windows 7 64 bit? Since the ASUS can only accept 6GB how would that memory be allotted? [Using CS2 and “hypothetically” CS5 64bit]?

As of this moment we are still waiting and slacking the “unnamed seller”, who we believe is caught between a rock and a hard place [ASUS & US]. We don’t have any rush rush editing projects in HD. So our inclination is just to wait for CS5 thinking that by than we’ll have a pretty reasonable laptop editor. In the meantime we can shoot 1080p and catalog to our hearts content.

Why laptop editor? Because I/we travel in a small RV to archaeology sites around the SW and Mexico and laptop batteries are the best protection against power failure from the solar system on the vehicle.

Does anyone see a way to smooth out our plan? If so, kindly let us know.

Bob Kiger seminal author of “videography” [OCT1972-AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER]
http://www.videographyblog.com

[Bob Kiger]

An update on the situation. Today I received the ASUS Quad Core as ordered. It is sweet! So fast that I am even overcoming a long aversion for Vista…though I am hanging tough for Windows 7.

If anyone knows how I can get a clean Windows 7 permit without waiting until October 22, please let me know.

I am also hopeful that someone will open up an opportunity for me to beta test CS5 64 bit programs on this notebook. Please visit https://www.videographyblog.com and email me if you have an idea how this can happen! In the meantime I will give best efforts to proving the efficacy of PC/Adobe editing vs. MAC/FCP editing.

Mahaloha,

Bob Kiger seminal author of “videography” [OCT1972-AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER]
http://www.videographyblog.com