slow response

[Mark Buchanan]

hi Again Tom

I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 but i have had to dial back some of the quicktime updates as they stopped my system being able to read the files from my firestore FS5 DTE.

I have checked the things you mentioned and they all seem fine.

I am not using a raid. I am using one of the internal drives on my MacPro. I downloaded the AJA system tester and it is giving me read and write times of about 90Mb/sec.

These seem a long way from the figure you quoted for your system. Do you think this could be the problem?

Cheers

Mark

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Tom Daigon]

Most definitely! You need a raid system with speeds much higher than that to utilize the Mercury Engine and edit in HD.

https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2011/02/optimizing-for-performance-adobe-premiere-pro-and-after-effects.html

https://www.video2brain.com/en/videos-5353.htm

Also I find QuickTime 7.6.6 the best one to use.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Mark Buchanan]

OK. Thanks for the advice. I will sort out a raid and see what happens… I’ll let you know…

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

Hello again.

Well I went out and bought a G-Tech G-Raid 2TB and have transferred all my footage for this project to it. I have caches and previews assigned to other internal drives so the raid should only be streaming the actual footage files. They are about 25 minutes long so file sizes are around 1.5Gigs each (1280 by 720 HDV @25fps)

I have it connected via Firewire 800 at the moment with no other firewire devices connected.

Basically I cannot see any appreciable difference in the time P Pro takes to respond to the play command.

My project comprises two camera angles plus a video track which is the export of my keynote presentation exported as HDV 1280 by 720 @ 25fps.

If i disable the keynote track and one of the camera angles then i get almost instant response after pressing play. But if I enable either of the other two tracks, the problem kicks in again. Sometimes I get audio but the video does not move and sometimes i get neither for up to 20-30 seconds after which it all plays fine.

Once it starts to play, I can jump around the timeline as much as I want and response is instant.

However, once I switch out of the P Pro window – for any reason – the problem kicks in again.

I have tried with no other applications running but even then, switching to the finder and back will trigger the problem.

What to do?

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Tom Daigon]

USB is usually not fast enough for HD, especially running 3 tracks simultaneously Run another test on these drives to see what its performance is for starters. All my systems have been SCSI or SATA which allows the fast transfer speed.Trying to run 3 tracks will definitely demand high performance from all facets of the Mercury Engine.

Could you clarify this statement? Im not sure what you mean by switch out of the PrP window.

Once it starts to play, I can jump around the timeline as much as I want and response is instant.

However, once I switch out of the P Pro window – for any reason – the problem kicks in again.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Mark Buchanan]

I’m connecting the RAID with firewire 800 not USB. Apple says that should give me up to 800Mbps. The G-drive does have an eSata connection but I am a bit wary of spending another £170 without being sure it will definitely solve my problem.

By “Switching out of P Pro” I mean, if I switch from P pro to a finder window and then back again, the problem kicks in. So, for example, if I am working in P Pro and then I “Alt-Tab” until I get the Mac OSX double face icon and then Alt-Tab again to get back to P Pro, There will be a long pause after I press play before P Pro responds.

The thing that is puzzling me is that once playback does start, it will play flawlessly from then on as long as I stay in the P Pro window – even with the 3 tracks of HD. Do you think P pro might be caching the video tracks somehow rather than playing them straight from the RAID?

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Tom Daigon]

I would run a test on the drives regardless of what Apple says. 😀

What color render bars are you getting? Caching is a possibility, but when my system caches, it does it once for footage and then its good from that point on.

I must admit Ive never come across a problem quite like this.

Heres a long shot. Try what this link suggest.

https://kb2.adobe.com/cps/842/cpsid_84287.html

If that doesnt help, read about optimizing your system to make sure we havent overlooked any obvious things.

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3804339#3804339

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Mark Buchanan]

Hi again Tom

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to walk me through this. It makes such a difference to know you are not on your own.

So, since your last post, I have bought a sonnet tempo eSATA controller card and installed it. I am now getting massive throughput speeds on my G_raid drive – 254.5MB/s Reading and 219.7MB/s Writing.

It made no difference to the problem – AAAAAAggggghhh!

So, I went back and had a long look at my files and the keynote output file was 2.5Gigs. I went into QT7 Pro and trimmed the file to about a third of its length and re-saved it under a new filename.

I then deleted the old file in my project and used the new, shorter file instead.

Hey presto! problem solved.

So, I am not sure if it was purely the file’s size or whether there was some sort of problem in the first part of the file but either way I am getting instant playback even when I switch in and out of the Premiere pro window.

I am not sure if I needed to buy the raid and eSATA card but I guess I have a more powerful system now which may serve me in the future.

Thanks again for your help and support.

All the best

Mark

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Tom Daigon]

Im so glad you are up and running. You wont regret having a fast raid. It will enhance your capabilities from this time forward.

At one point in our trouble shooting I thought that the excessive file size might be an issue, but I discounted that notion since I never have heard of that being an issue.

Again, congrats for hanging in there and solving a very challenging issue. Your system now will handle just about anything you can throw at it. 😀

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3