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Soliciting Hardware Advice
I’m in the process of switching from Sony Vegas Pro V11 to Premiere Pro CS6. Vegas is Windows only, but I have two hardware platforms available for CS6. Neither platform is current, but they are what they are. My use of Premiere Pro is strictly amateur; converting years of home videos to simply-edited DVD and/or Blu-ray for family enjoyment. This involves simple editing, some titles, a bit of color correction, a few fades, the incorporation of some photos, etc.
I’m soliciting advice on whether to go with either:
a) the Mac version of CS6, which I would run on a hand-me-down 2009 MacBook Pro with 8 Gig Memory and a very nice Apple 2008 Cinema 23″ HD display, or
b) the windows 7 version, which I would run on a home-made 2008 era PC (Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 8 Gig memory, with an ordinary 20 HP display).Given that either hardware suite can (and should) be vastly improved upon by current hardware, are either of those hardware suites “good enough” for my basic needs, or are neither good enough, or does one stand out from another?
Thanks in advance.
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6 Replies
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Sony Vegas when using h.264mov and AVCHD @1920 x 1080p from the newer cameras is a tad faster than Premiere Pro 5.5.2.and it has performed faultlessly for over 7 months /or 6. However, it is run on an i7 64 bit XEON 12GB 1 TB C Drive in Raid 0 @15,000rpm and an Approved Nvidia Quadro Fx3800 Workstation Quad Core Windows Professional 7 with a High performance 24′ Monitor. You would be best advised to test drive, incidentally CS6 now has the Warp Stabilizer included.
Check out the Minimum System requirements from Adobe.
Freelance Imaging & Video
AUSTRALIA -
The machines sound fairly comparable, depending on the CPU and the graphics card in the Mac.
You might, as Bob suggested, download each 30 day trial of CS6 and compare the performance on each machine. You will find that CS6 is much faster than CS5.5 in many ways.
If you need to upgrade, I assume that the PC will be cheaper to upgrade than the Mac. The first level of upgrade would be RAM, the second would be the graphics card, and the third would be your disk configuration. If you had to upgrade the CPU, you would probably be better off buying a new machine.
In fact that might be the best route, depending on the kind of performance you see on those two machines. You can buy a decent i7 PC with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB to 1 TB hard drive for around $500.
Add RAM to 16 GB for $80 and a NVIDIA graphics card for $120 and you would have a great editing machine. Or get those from the vendor in the base kit of course. Then if you needed faster disk performance, add a 120 GB SSD as a scratch disk for $80 – I just bought an OCZ 120GB with great specs for that price. (Watch techbargains.com for deals.)
You want an i7 if at all possible, because only the i7 has hyperthreading. You absolutely do not want an AMD.
You can look here at specs on graphics cards and relative perfoprmance. Even the cheapest CUDA enabled card will speed up processing on some tasks by a factor of 10 – 10 to 12 times as fast.
https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm
I have been editing the type of video that you are talking about quite successfully on a $350 laptop. I bought the laptop only for the web and Word, but I have been going through Adobe’s Classroom in a Book series on it with no problem. I have also edited Multi Camera, exported, etc.
It is an i3 with an integrated graphics card (no hardware acceleration), 8GB of RAM, and a 50 GB HDD. That is probably the minimum machine that I would recommend, but it performs fairly well with the 8GB of RAM. With only 4GB it would be dead in the water.
Good luck!
Michael -
Thanks! That was very helpful.
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Honestly, sign up for a year of Creative Cloud and you will be able to download on both systems and use them both for whatever advantages you may find. You will also be able to download any of the other Creative Suite applications.
You can have two active licenses of any Adobe software on either Mac or PC if you use Creative Cloud. It’s also much cheaper than buying a boxed version. But the drawback is that you will eventually decide to renew your software or not. But at the price, you can renew three years of Creative Cloud before paying for a full boxed Production Premium and you will always have the most up to date software.
Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary -
Thanks for the reminder; I’m considering that Adobe Cloud path.
On the hardware side, my 2009 MacBook Pro is only 2 years older than yours and has similar specs. Can you edit with Premier Pro on your MacBook Pro?
Incidentally, my daughter is a 2007 William and Mary grad. -
Check out Adobe for approved Nvidia Video Cards, otherwise the Mercury Engine for Accelerated graphics may not work,in our other graphics business we use the largest laptop monitors, 17″ and above, small ones are no fun. do a trial of CS6 and see if it handles the H.264mov and AVCHD codecs fast enough if you run Canon’s EOS 7D or 5D mark II or III
Freelance Imaging & Video
AUSTRALIA
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