Upgrade to CS4 causes video to stutter

[Mark Mckittrick]

Unfortunately I can only offer another hinky situation. We have a project running on Dual Core Xeon processors running Windows 7 (64) w/ 10 GB of ram and a project that was started in CS3 is now suffering a lot of lag during playback.

We have run into dropouts of audio as well when recording out to tape. The timeline keeps on going with no sign of error, but on review of the tape, there are definitely audio anomalies. The worst part is trying to recreate the problem is nearly impossible. Gremlins are definitely running amuck.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jon Barrie]

What is your graphics card? Is it using the correct drivers?

The Cache may need to be cleaned out and rebuilt for a CS3 project to run correctly in CS4. It’s recommended that software/hardware upgrades aren’t done in the middle of a project.

– Jon Barrie

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net

[Mark Mckittrick]

It’s got an nVidia Quadro FX 3500. Pretty sure the drivers are up to snuff, but I’ll give it another go-round. I’ll also check the cache as you suggested. Should I tell the editor on this system having issues to muscle though this project (which is almost complete anyways) and preform the diagnostics after this one is off the table?

Thanks again for the input!

[John Teti]

Thanks John. Good advice re: upgrading in the middle of a project. My main issue was why the sequence would play unrendered in CS3 and be erratic in CS4. I thought that I may have missed something.

JT

[Mark Hollis]

CS4 taxes your processor a little more and may not take full advantage of your Mac’s dual cores. Adobe has been writing better software for Windows than they have been writing for Macs because their Mac-based applications all use the Carbon API (which Apple told them in 2000 was an API that was for transitioning between Apple’s former System Software to their then-new OS X).

I do not think Carbon applications will ever be 64-bit, either, which means that as other applications for Mac’s OS X make that transition, Adobe will be left behind if they don’t move to Cocoa.

Here’s how to avoid dropouts in audio and dropped video frames in video applications:

Use a disk stripe. Striped disk arrays can thoroughly saturate the SATA or Firewire bus and give you the throughput to do video of any size, including HD.

Don’t run anything else. When you’re editing video, make your Mac clean and lean. Take everything out of your “opens on startup” in your System Preferences. You can create an “edit” user with a slimmed-down bootup. Don’t be tempted to allow “fast user switching.”

Use current drivers. Make sure any AJA or Blackmagic Design I/O card has the latest drivers and firmware.

Use seperate Firewire channels. If you are using Firewire to capture and you are capturing to a Firewire array (or drive) you can get dropped frames if the array (or drive) uses the same Firewire channel as your VCR or your camcorder. Sometimes what you have to do (if you only have one channel available) is to capture video to your boot drive (on single-drive Macs) and then shuttle the material out to a Firewire array for work. You can find out how many Firewire channels you have by opening “Aboud My Mac” and clicking “More,” and you will open up your System Profiler and you can see what is attached to what. Remember, Firewire 800 runs at 400 speed when there is a Firewire 400 device in the chain.

If you simply cannot get CS4 to work, reinstall CS3 and return the CS4 package as incompatible with your computer. If Adobe gets a lot of those types of returns, they may actually go out and get themselves a steaming hot cuppa Cocoa.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[John Teti]

Thanks so much Mark.

John