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Troubles moving from FCP7 to PPCS6(&CC)
I’m a long-time FCP user who is now tasked with making the switch to Premiere Pro. My big mistake was believing that it would be a smooth process. Now, I’m beginning to think that our Mac is “too old.”
So, let’s get the specs outta the way:
MacPro (2,1) w/ (2) 3GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon CPUs
16 GB 667MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT 256MB (standard, I believe, for this model)
Mac OS X 10.7.5
Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.5)
AJA ioEXPRESS w/ 10.4.7 software
Have I forgotten anything?We upgrade from OS X 10.6.8, upgraded all the CS6 apps to their latest versions and upgraded to the latest AJA software. After getting settings where I thought they should be, we were getting stuttering audio and video and dropped frames upon playback of existing AVCHD ftg. Also getting the same for DVCProHD ftg in a DVCProHD project, but that had been exported out of FCP (ref file), and I didn’t really expect those 2 to play nice.
At this point, we upgraded from 4GB RAM to 12GB RAM. I thought that would fix issues with AVCHD and non-FCP ftg, but the issues remain. We pulled 8 sticks of 512MB and replaced them with 4 sticks of 2GB, leaving 4 slots empty. Are empty slots detrimental to performance? (Other than the fact that more memory is always better.)
Now, I’m looking a bit suspiciously at the graphics card. I know the MacPro and the NVIDIA card are “old” in terms of technology. I’ve been looking at an upgrade for the NVIDIA, but I can’t find one on the PPCS6 list (CUDA) that will also work with the MacPro2,1 machine. Am I barking up the wrong tree? I’m inclined to think not, because newly-captured footage looks fine when played back from the network storage or local media drive(s).
I didn’t want to have to send this post, but I’m quite frustrated by now, feeling like a dog chasing his tail. I figured I’d see what others in the cowmunity had to say before I decided to back it all up and reinstall everything from the ground up. TIA for any enlightening thoughts, and I apologize for the length of the post.
Thanks, again!
James Buck -
2 Replies
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Hi James,
I think you’ll be much better off with AVCHD footage if you get a sturdier graphics card. Make sure it is capable of supporting the Mercury Playback Engine and you should be good to go.AVCHD is a very complex format and takes all the hardware you can throw at it.
Thanks,
KevinKevin Monahan
Social Support Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter! -
Hey, Kevin. Thanks for the reply!
I figured the graphics card could be a weak link. The problem I’m having in sourcing an approved upgrade is that none of the approved cards seem to be approved for the MacPro(2,1). All of the cards on the approved list have a system requirement of MacPro(3,1) or newer.
Does anyone have a rock-solid PPCS6 system on a MacPro(2,1)? (I believe that particular MacPro was released in 2007.) This machine was rock-solid for me, using FCP7, but I can’t seem to get it to playback anything in PPCS6 without dropping frames.
Also….. We’ve got a lot of footage that we’ll be working with that was exported out of FCP7 as FCP/DVCProHD “masters.” Should that be transcoded and/or rewrapped before bringing it into PPCS6?
Again, I really appreciate your help!
James
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