Stuttering Playback

[Steven L. gotz]

You really should not be trying to use firewire drives for video. Can’t you put in a couple of new internal drives? One for media and one for a scratch disk.

Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com

[Rajarshi Basu]

steven,

i have a 320GB Barracuda and 120GB Sata internal. For a documentary i neeed another 320GB more. The footage is in DVcam, downconverted from HDV 1080i, using sony Z1p camera. I plan to buy the new hard ddisk and use it via fire wire. Will I face the same problem of stuttering playback on the timeline?

Raj

athlon3000, 1gb ram, msi mobo, nvidia 6200 agp.

[Sammyblanks]

Hi,

I think I may have left out that I don’t use the firewire drives as my video drives. That was just to let you know, in case having those connected, was a factor in the stuttering playback. I have a 200Gb SATA drive that I am currently using as video drive. Do I need a seperate drive to use as scratch disk?

I’m seriously thinking about installing 1.5, and trying that. I never had these problems running my old 6.5 on a Pentium 3 1Gb Processor 765MB RAM PC. It seems to me this version of Premier is a bit of a “ball ache” to mess with.

Just more info, in case it helps shed more light on my problem – I have run no updates to my WinXP since installation, apart from SP2 upgrade. Do I need to tweak? PLEASE HELP…

[Blast1]

[sammyblanks] “I don’t use the firewire drives as my video drives”
What do you use them for?

[sammyblanks] “Do I need a seperate drive to use as scratch disk?”
If helps to have a separate drive for preview files, audio files, cache files, image files, etc, and use a separate drive for video source files only, don’t store any files on external drives that will be used in the project.

[Blast1]

[Rajarshi] ” plan to buy the new hard ddisk and use it via fire wire.”
The best external drives to use are eSATA, you can either buy a eSATA bracket which allows you to bring current internal SATA connection out the back if you have spares, if no spares buy a eSATA add-on card which can have 4 connections for eSATA drive enclosures, plus it cheaper to buy eSATA enclosures and install your own drives than buy commercial firewire drives, which can be of dubious quality if priced too low

[Paul Thurston]

The best way to fix the stuttering is to have a four drive RAID 0 installed in your computer, either made up of SAS or SCSI 320 drives, or SATA II drives as a last resort. Your RAID drives should be operating at 7,000 RPM at least. 10k RPM Drives are the standard for professional video work and should be used if you can affort them.

Since the DVCam video you are working with has a bandwidth of 25 Mbps (3.125 MB per second), most modern drives should be able to keep up with the sustained data throughput required for playback.

Based on your symptoms, I would advance your media drive is running at less than 7K RPM on start up and that since it

[Rajarshi Basu]

thanks for the info, but i dont think this problem happens with Avid, SATA or no SATA… maybe its the how Avid manages the data. this stuttering playback is premiere only problem…

RAj

[Benjamin Tubb]

Wow guys… that doesn’t make any sense. You’re all recommending that sammy upgrades the system, sets up a RAID, etc… but that shouldn’t be necessary. I run Production studio on my computer (which is about equal to sammy’s), and I have two sata 7200 internal drives. 300 GB for apps and documents and such, 500 GB for Source files. I edit 1080P DVCProHD with no stuttering playback. Sammy, I don’t think you need to upgrade your stuff. Here’s my question to you, and please excuse me if I sound patronizing. Are you rendering your work area for preview? And if you are, and it’s still stuttery, then try changing your preview codec to something easier for your computer to handle, like cinepak. You can do this in the project settings dialog.
And also, what kind of footage is it? Standard DV25? HDV? DVCProHD? Because if it’s High-Def, then yeah, it might be a hardware-not-good-enough issue. But if you’re getting this problem with footage off a MiniDV camera, then there’s just something wrong. Your equipment should handle that with EASE.

“and secondly, what is that message I get?”

What message are you talking about? You didn’t mention one, unless I’m just so exhausted I didn’t see it. Which is possible.

[Blast1]

Not to be factious but your recommendations are horrible overkill for a DV system, if I was intergrating a system for SDI throughput I might use some of your specs, a simple ATA150 SATA video source drive is sufficient for 3-4 streams of DV video.

A decent configuration for DV/DVcam is a system/apps drive ATA100 and up, an AUX drive ATA 100 and up for previews, sound, cache, misc clips, and a large SATA I/II drive for source video, As for the original poster who had stutter problems, drives could contribute to his problem particularly externals, also other things like backgroung programs, TSRs, and active drivers can cause the same problems, as we don’t know the configuration of his system and what he has on it, expensive recommendations are counter productive.

[Sammyblanks]

Hi,

I am not rendering my work area before preview. What I’ve worked out since my last post, and what I think could be the problem is my graphics card. When I connect firewire to my camera, and play the timeline through that to client monitor, I have smooth playback. So when I can (moneywise), I’ll change the GFX card and see what difference that makes.

Sammy