will the iMac 5K Retina’s AMD Radeon graphics card be a problem for Premiere Pro CC and AE???

[Jami Francescon]

“The MacPro at work is a dream in this regard.” Can you expand upon this statement?

[Erik Lindahl]

The MacPro has a PCIe SSD, much like the one you can get in the Retina iMac given slightly faster. Never the less, having a disk that more or less guarantees 600-1000 MB/s or more read and write is a huge plus compared to the some what random performance of a Fusion Drive. The main reason to get the fusion drive is if you need more internal drive space than the SSD you can afford. The fusion drive will often be fast but you only have 128 GB of SSD “cache” so to speak which when dealing with video can get filled fast.

[Ken Donofrio]

Nicholas,

Did you ever get the new iMac w/Retina? I didn’t see any follow up posts on whether you did or not. If I missed it, I’m sorry. But I’m in the same position…getting ready to take the plunge and want to make sure this thing is going to be able to edit video if I max it out.

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Ken,

Sorry for the delay. Yes, I did and I’ve had no complaints so far. I would say that the 5K Retina iMac i7 with 32GB maxed out is marginally faster than my maxed out 2012 iMac i7. And so far I’ve had no issues whatsoever editing 4K video with Premiere Pro CC. No issues at all either with AE or FCPX. Very happy with my purchase. I’m sure next year will see an even better model, but I can’t complain. Being able to see everything razor sharp on the screen is pure joy. Since I use Illustrator and Photoshop a lot as well, I’m really enjoying working on the iMac Retina. No need to be worried, the iMac Retina works perfectly, at least for me.

[Jason Rhein]

I just bought the new iMac i7 4.0GHz 5k retina with 32gb RAM, the 4gb AMD 295X graphics card and a 512gb solid state drive. I mostly edit on Adobe Premiere CC 2014. After months of crashes and frustration on my early 2011 iMac I decided to “go for it” with this system. I am trying to edit a 45 documentary right now from an external usb 3.0 drive and am VERY FRUSTRATED to still be dealing with crashes and playback freezing on this new system. I contacted Adobe and they pointed me to switch to “Software Only” instead of “OpenCL” playback and rendering option in Project Settings. I had to re-rended the entire timeline and it momentarily appeared to work fine. But now it’s back to the same problem.

Why did I spend all this money for this supposedly bangin’ new system and still experiencing these issues?? I see some of you on this thread are not having problems. Maybe it’s the USB 3.0 drive connection? That’s the only weaker link in my chain.

[Joe Fannta]

Does the premiere freeze/crashes or the whole system?
Try to import clips to FCPX and see if any problems appear, if not, your usb connection is working fine. Or you can copy entire project to local SSD and try Premiere again. I had different problems with premiere but I switched to fcpx and im happy. The way how multicam and audio works together is awesome. Adobe is way behind…

[James Massey]

Hi Jason,

Looking at the same system you have and also expecting bangin’ performance. I have found PPro cc 2014 to be buggy at times. What seems to be a stable program last week is now hampered with freezes and crashes, I don’t get it. Have you had better luck running cc on the new retina iMac or is it time to move on and hope for better specs next year. I need a computer now but could wait if this model isn’t ready for prime time. I know others have had good results, just wondering what your thoughts are now on your purchase. Any insights would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

[Jason Rhein]

There are still some issues with playback freezes and occasional crashes. Hoping Adobe will release a bug fix to resolve. Meanwhile, I have found a workaround that has allowed me have a pretty smooth workflow in the meanwhile. When issues start happening every so often, here’s what I do:

I go into Project Settings and switch GPU from the graphics card to Software Only. It asks me if I want to delete previews. I say yes. Then I switch it back from Software Only to the graphics card. It asks me if I want to delete previews. Again, I say yes. Now everything works smooth.

Usually have to do this once or twice a day only when working on my massive documentary project. For smaller projects it’s not an issue.

Not sure if it’s a graphics card support issue?

[James Massey]

Thanks for the work around. I hope it has everything to do with Premiere and nothing with the new iMac.

So would you recommend the new Retina 5K iMac as an editing rig for use with PP and AE working mostly with 1080p and some 4K with basic effects and color correction? How do you like working on the iMac? Any negatives concerning the performance of the computer other than th cc issues?

Thanks in advance Jason.

[Kim Smith]

So I just purchased a maxed out imac 5k and all the theory above may be true but I’d recommend avoiding it.

It is slow with large photoshop files when it has to crunch (changing colorspaces, filters, etc), it is TERRIBLE in illustrator … so so bad, my old machine was way better, and I’ll report back on AE/Premier.

Honestly, I’m returning it this week and getting what I should have gotten from the start. A PC with Xeon processors and a nvida card so I can get illustrator running with gpu support (because it actually does make is smoother even thought it is “not needed” in the theoretical world). The kicker is, it will be cheaper to buy (including a 4k monitor, not as nice) than the imac.

What a pain.