System for HD editing using Adobe production premium cs4

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Nathaniel,

Do you already have the PC components for the build? I’d recommend an i7 processor and motherboard over the older Core2 Quad, and also go with the 64-bit OS (Vista 64 or Windows 7). With i7 systems, ram is used in sets of 3, so 12GB would be beneficial and Adobe will use it.

Though more expensive than the Intensity Pro, have you looked at the Matrox MXO2 Mini? Offers a little more bang for the buck I think. Has external breakout box, monitor calibration utility, etc.

Realtime editing – that term is tossed round a lot and means different things to different people. Adobe is saying that the next version of Premiere will use the GPU to really offer “realtime” effects, meaning no red bar, no render.

Regarding your option of using dual GPUs, I really don’t think there’s any benefit with editing, that’s a gaming thing. Just choose a good GPU that suits the Adobe needs.

You didn’t say what type of HD editing you wanted to do. If you want to work with uncompressed HD, you will need a drive array and controller that is up to the task.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

[Gianni Squitieri]

I can not capture movies HDV with Premiere CS4 and Win XP Pro, Use a recorder SonyHVR- M15E, But I can only get the audio without images. I tried to put the camera Canon XL -h1, Equal. The project is completed for HDV. Anyone knows give me directions. Thanks.

[Brian Louis]

Hi Jeff
Does the MX 02 mini work ok with win7? supposedly Matrox is not making any claims about this and saying new drivers are coming soon, any insights?

[Mark Hollis]

Jeff’s comments are well taken but here is what I know about GPU-driven “realtime” video:

I have experience editing on an HP Z800 with a NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 OpenGL graphics accelerator card. The HP workstation is a screamer; it has a 2.93 GHz dual quad-core Intel® Xeon® processor. It had 12G of system RAM. So you have high performance in processing and also in the GPU. It was hooked up to a RAID array.

The system would reliably play back four to six HD video streams at once, but you still had to render if you intended on playing back to any tape format or you intended to send any file footage anywhere. This is because you would get dropped frames randomly — but mostly everything played back just fine, but that one DVE move would sometimes catch when it started, get sticky in the middle or catch when it ended. Text animation on the screen was not reliable.

Of course, on a system like that, render times are a lot shorter. Rendering color correction on an HD clip took about 5 seconds for a 10-second clip. You could reliably hit your [Enter] key to initiate a render when you were mulling over which effect to add or reviewing the script to make sure you had every shot in you wanted. Waiting time was pretty much a non-issue.

You definitely want to buy a top-of-the-line processor, as it’s used in rendering as well. And remember: You can always upgrade your GPU, assuming the slots don’t change that much.

Although…

If your current system is working just fine, why not wait until Adobe releases CS5 so that you have a firm handle on exactly which GPUs are supported.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Bob Dix]

Hi Mark,

I thought rendering in CS4 was a thing of the past. Obviously not. We are still using Premiere Pro 1.5.1 on HDV and Quicktime mov. out of the latest Canons, especially the 5D mark II at 1920 x 1080. I have noticed there are the odd dropped frame in the mov stuff but not HDV out of a Canon HV20. Rendering the mov files from the 5D mark II prior to editing on the timeline can be a bit of a pain 4-5 hours overnight for say 35 mins. But the resulting Export to tape is very professional.and this is with a Pentium 3.4GHZ @800fsb on 2GB ram and 400GB hard drive and a Ultra Sharp 24″ Dell Monitor and run on a Sony 46″ Bravia HD.

I would have thought the speed of your set up would get around these problems

[Nathaniel Ryan]

Thanks for the advice Jeff!,

Ofcourse my budget will start hitting a wall but i should be able to manage the faster processor/ board and am set on the quadro FX4800, might be pushing it with the capture card but will def look into it as it sounds more practical than the intensity,,

Yes when i said “real time” i ment “live” editing as in no render (uncompressed hd24), it sounds like this is pushing it even for the higher end systems as per recent posts/ comments no?

however this will presumably depend on res and frame rate: when i said full hd i ment uncompressed 1920×1080/ 24fps and up but at the end of the day i will edit and composite at the highest res the system will handle comfortably and if that is less than “full hd” then so be it, i really dont want to push it and end up sitting there for hours/days on end waiting for things to happen! so i guess the question is will this system as per
(i7 quad 2.9/ 12g ram/ FX4800/ 4x 1T raid +intensity/matrox) handle or not, if its going to start getting slugish or worse i might be over powering and wasting money when i can build something specifically for a lower res/ frame rate, as i said i’d much prefer a bit of speed and ease over the highest res/ frame rate etc.

Thanks again

Nathaniel Ryan
Graphic Artist/ Composer

[Nathaniel Ryan]

Have som enew specs im considering, let me know what you guys think, still a few minor technical issues left before im confident to go ahead with the build, anyways here it is:

Swiftech Quiet Power P180, enough realestate/ air etc.?

1000W-1250W power supply

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5

INTEL i7-950 Quad CORE PROCESSOR 8MCache 3.06GHz

HP Nvidia Quadro FX 3800/ 4800?? ive heard a lot of “post guys” and “PC integrators”: saying that the GeForce GTX 295 is powerfull enough to handle edting in uncompressed hd ?? any thoughts?

Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro, contemplating the HD Extreme?

Kingston 12G DDR3 ram

Internal: 2x Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm HDD – SATA2
1- os, progs/ 2- plugs, samples(audio),

Internal: 2x Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm HDD – SATA2 Raid0
capture, cache etc.

Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit: home, pro etc.? is there a particular one suited to premiere etc.??

Adobe prod prem cs4, 3d studio max 8, Z brush 3, cubase 5, fruity loops prod edition,

Samsung SyncMaster 275T, 42″ Full HD Plasma TV VIERA

I absolutley cant afford a “proper” colour correction monitor, does this counter the BM HD extreme and is the full hd plasma a worthy edition (the idea being that it has deeper colour depth than lcds in its price range)?

Well thats the idea anyways, any thoughts would be great!

Thanks all

Nathaniel Ryan
Graphic Artist/ Composer

[Mark Hollis]

Comment 1: Adobe hates Quicktime. I attended an event some years ago and asked about Quicktime specifically and Mac support in general and the company rep launched into a diatribe about how bad Apple was. I realize there are issues with Quicktime and issues with Quicktime Pro (Apple doesn’t have a 64-bit Quicktime Pro for either their own computers or ones running Windows — their Quicktime X for Snow Leopard is a player only). You can hate it (with good reason) or love it but, since the folks at Adobe have such an animus against Apple’s wrapper, I don’t think they’re ever going to optimize their systems for Quicktime.

Comment 2: HDV is like SECAM. It’s not a production format. It’s great for shooting video and squeezing it so much that it squeaks. It’s OK for archival material but I wouldn’t want my timeline to be HDV. It is so highly compressed that I’ll bet your computer is really heating up its processor figuring out what each pixel is supposed to be based on the iFrame and all of the math it has to do to figure the changes that you’re probably better off rendering HDV to a less compressed codec for actual editing. After all, you can recompress later.

Bob, you’re always going to be rendering something — be it in the foreground or in the background. Moore’s law suggests that we’ll be able to render realtime, eventually. But by that time, we’ll expect more layers on our timeline and more complex and interesting transitions.

My experience dates back to 3D animators laying their frames individually one by each from their SGI workstation to a 1″ C-Format VTR and hoping the machine didn’t do h-phase bumps while that was going on overnight and, sometimes for days. I’m pretty happy with render times like I described.

I think GPUs (which are massively parallel processors) will help a lot. The secret is to write for them. Adobe won’t have done that until CS5.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Nathaniel Ryan]

“it has a 2.93 GHz dual quad-core Intel® Xeon® processor”
As in 2x quad core Xeon’s ? which motherboard do these use?

As for cs5, i currently own production premium cs2, im not sure if there will be a respectable upsell to cs5 when it comes out, maybe better to upgrade now to cs4 then to cs5 later ?

Cheers

Nathaniel Ryan
Grahpic Artist/Composer

[Mark Hollis]

As for cs5, i currently own production premium cs2, im not sure if there will be a respectable upsell to cs5 when it comes out, maybe better to upgrade now to cs4 then to cs5 later?

Adobe has gone so far as to admit that they blew it with the CS4 upgrade in some circles. Here’s what I would do if I had CS2:

Wait until Adobe starts packing the channel with CS5.
Go on froogle.google.com and look for CS4 upgrade or an application that will ameliorate the cost of going to CS5. There will be inexpensive opportunities, there always are when retailers are trying to dump inventory in the channel.
Do the inexpensive upgrade.

This has always worked for me.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?