The truth about Premiere

[Tim Nixon]

Hello,

The truth is that Premiere works with a lot of complicated codecs and has to jump through a few hoops to play and edit them.

What’s going on: The DSLR video/ AVCHD/ h.264/ mpeg4 is a tightly packed codec that Premiere has to 1) “index” (decode) and 2) “cache” (record and compare this index file in tandem during playback with the original file.

Waiting for it to index (lower right of screen will say “indexing” with a progress bar) and making sure it’s cached on a separate video capable drive(Edit/Preferences/Media)makes the difference between real time editing and what you’re experiencing.

Even an 8 core computer with loads of RAM needs a few minutes.

Tim

[Guy Ross]

Hey Todd,

I believe your article refers to still image sequences…?
Regardless, my frame size is 1080p, ie 1920×1080.
And so, if i understand correctly, the minimum required RAM is 1920×1080/16384 =~ 126MB
The GTX285’s 1GB is 8x that.

But pixels and math aside… you are on the Premiere team!

So, if you don’t mind, let me put you on the spot…

The GTX285 is one of only TWO video cards you recommend for Mac.

YES or NO – can Premiere reliably edit native Canon 5D/7D 1080p footage with the GTX285?

G

[Todd Kopriva]

> can Premiere reliably edit native Canon 5D/7D 1080p footage with the GTX285?

Yes. In fact, I’m able to reliably edit such footage in Premiere Pro CS5 even without using the CUDA acceleration features.

I have my playback resolution set to 1/2 and my paused resolution set to Full in the Program monitor. That really helps. If you’re having trouble with stuttering as you scrub, try setting the playback resolution to a lower value.

Also, I don’t see that you ever answered about your hard disks. Having multiple fast hard disks can really make a huge difference.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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[Tim Kolb]

First off, Adobe doesn’t restrict the Mac to these two cards…Apple does.

Second, if the GTX285 card is the problem, based on my experience with those who are using that card on a Windows machine…that’s probably a Mac issue…the card performs as expected on a Windows machine.(I believe Apple insists on creating the drivers for the NVIDIA cards which is why they only accept 2 cards)

Third, I’ve edited 1080p 5D footage as well as footage from a POV camera that may not quite fit the DSLR spec exactly, but is H264, on an 8 core Intel Mac (can’t remember which model, but certainly not less than a couple years old) seemed to play it back without a CUDA card without much trouble…certainly no jerky or intermittent playback…and I was training so I was running an interface capture app on the same system simultaneously.

So…

I’m not sure what the problem might be…perhaps try switching off CUDA acceleration and see if that works better…perhaps it’s the way the machine interacts with the card?

Also…can you describe the media’s path, (I assume 5D?), how it was transferred, have you processed the footage with any other application? (any camera format imported into FCP as “native” almost never is…etc.)

Any other conversions? File hierarchy changes?

Your experience with multiple machines (I assume not all had a GTX285?) makes me wonder about the state of the media… I assume it all plays back fine in QT player?

The Mercury Playback Engine’s sales pitch can make it seem as if it’s solely based on the CUDA card, and it’s not. Responsiveness during editing on many systems is helped as much by being able to drop to half-res (or lower) for timeline editing/preview (a feature you have regardless of whether you have a CUDA card installed or not) as any effects preview benefit from a CUDA card, depending on the format and the system configuration.

You need a massive harddrive system to playback something like uncompressed HD video, and Mercury doesn’t change that.

You need more processing power on the -CPU- to do the decompression of compressed formats (obviously less harddrive throughput is necessary for smaller bitrates).

(…and this is important…no matter what you’ve read from Adobe or NVIDIA that seems to imply that the CUDA card somehow helps decode more video streams, video decode is done on the CPU. Once you start applying effects that are CUDA accelerated (they’re indicated in the Effects Panel), THEN the CUDA cores kick in and of course, kick butt.)

…and of course, you need a hopper-load of RAM. Adobe’s published minimum system requirements for it’s video apps are typically only second to Apple in their sheer fantasy (last I looked, FCP would install on a system with 1 GB or RAM or some such nonsense).

I would not run CS5 for any HD work on less than 8 GB on the system for a workstation (I’m used to pushing my luck with laptops in this area…but on a workstation, I can tell you that 16 GB of RAM makes a difference, and I’m betting that 32 GB would probably be a noticeable improvement from that…)

(Disclaimer: I am not an Adobe employee, but I am a PPro trainer, so while I’m not exactly Switzerland, I don’t whitewash issues.)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Byrd Mcdonald]

Adding in my experience. Recently bought a 8-core Mac Pro (Mac Pro5,1). Loaded it with 20 gigs of ram. Purchased the Nvidia Quadro 4800 for mac. Also added a PCI-E sata card (that plays a later role in story).

Then I installed, from scratch, FInal Cut Pro 7, CS5, and a handful of plug ins (Magic Bullet Suite) and a few other apps I use in editing and producing.

This box has been in my studio for 3 weeks and it is STILL not stable. The initial problem was that my hard drives would “freeze” the system through the E-sata card. I tried a different card, same problem. Through problem solving, I found, though, that when I removed the Quadro 4800 card, the drives NEVER FREEZE. How one problem relates to another is, I think, the point of Joh’s posting. Sometimes, these problems are mysterious and never reveal an easy answer.

I do know that I have a Quadro 4800 card that seems to not want to be play well with the Mid-2010 Mac Pros, and that is a hard-to-swallow pill, indeed.

Byrd McDonald

[Tim Kolb]

I have a colleague that had to alter some settings when adding a second display card a year or so ago…particularly in relationship to how the second card was setup to use resources vs the SATA interface…

It wasn’t an NVIDIA card…it was some small ATI card…Apple approved, but it took some changes in some sort of hardware priority (I’m not a Mac user…I was watching as he was trying different options.)

If that isn’t the issue, Apple should know something. As far as I know, they write the drivers. That’s why there are so few NVIDIA cards approved for Mac.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,