[Al Bergstein]

Thanks Tom. I don’t want to get the tech support guy in trouble, if he wasn’t supposed to tell me that the cache corruption is more endemic in Windows. There could be a legitimate Windows issue that is messing with things, or maybe that is a bit more of a temperamental issue for Adobe. Both platforms have their specific issues. And I do appreciate him telling me that, if it’s accurate, as it’s worth noting that if one has the option, that the problem is less likely on the Mac. However, if that’s not true, then we should also know that. I’m liable to take a lot of time consuming steps over the next few months to move production to my Mac, which means formatting a lot of new drives and transferring the Windows formatted files to Mac formatted ones (which I did in reverse a year ago when I left FCP7 and left my slow older Mac Pro).

Again, thanks for your help, as the media cache as you recommended was apparently at the root cause of this.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Well, as I wait for all my media to conform yet again, I just got off the phone with Adobe tech support. The person was quite knowledgeable and also got to what appears to be the root cause of the problem. As you mentioned Tom, the media database and it’s cache is the cause, some kind of corruption that was not present a few weeks ago. Why did this start happening after months of rock solid work is unknown to them or me, but something caused the corruption with this timeline/footage.

Adobe took control of my machine, and deleted the same media cache and database that I deleted the other day. This is also after I created a new Admin based user profile, and moved to it. So the new profile helped only in as much as the old one was apparently corrupted (again why, I have no idea).

So it’s now conforming all the same footage as I conformed just Friday, and conformed for hours in months gone by.

A couple of things that I’ve learned from Adobe Tech support. I won’t hold all of Adobe to this, but these are worth noting.

-My project has many timelines. I am working on multiple chapters of a film, and will hopefully assemble them at the end, but now, I’m not so sure.
– AVCHD: I have a bit of AVCHD footage I use on some of the timelines, just a few of the project shoots used it as a b camera. Adobe said that I should *never* strip out the AVCHD MTS files from the original folder structure. Never. I have been under the impression, for some time now, that this is ok to do. They do play just fine. This is bad news because it’s much harder to rename files that are inside the folder and give the whole thing a unique name. It also seems to create the likelihood of duplicate clip numbers, yes?
The tech said that corruption is more likely to happen to AVCHD files that have been stripped. He said to simply work off the files in the folder, in it’s totality. But to be clear, my playback issues are on timelines that may contain *no* AVCHD.
– He said that it’s ok to use stripped MXF files from Canon, as long as I use the Canon utility, which apparently properly copies them. So that’s good news.
– The most destressing thing he said was that I told him this whole thing has been a new event, after months of rock solid work on Premiere. I said that I would be having to do a lot of work if my project was going to need conforming again every few days. I mentioned that I do have a high end MacBook Pro with 6.0 on it, that I could switch to in order to get to the end of the project. His answer was along the lines of “we do not see this media database corruption issue on the Mac as we see it on Windows, so you are more likely to not have to put up with this problem if you can and do switch”. Hmmmm. So whatever corrupts media caches are more something wrong with Adobe’s interaction at a low level with Windows, and it doesn’t have the same issue on the Mac. Well, all I have to do is move my 4 TB of footage to a Mac formatted drive I guess (G, sigh).

A couple of additional tips, given my experience:
– I likely will never mix formats in a single timeline if I can help it again. Despite Adobe’s insistance that their product can handle anything thrown at it. It seems that this is not a good idea, given my personal experience. (though MOV files seem to not be a worry to Adobe, they said they don’t see corruption from them, likely because there is no real folder structure to mess with. I’ll also have to see if using the full AVCHD folder structure actually improves this problem.
– I will likely try out moving my next project to the Mac, and see if media cache corruption shows up there too, and what issues the Mac platform has that Windows doesn’t.
– I will not create massive 1 hour projects on Premiere until this all gets resolved. If I have to worry about this kind of corruption, I’ll continue to break my larger projects into chapters and hope I can assemble them in the end without corruption (maybe render out the final chapters to MXF and assemble the timelines that way.
– This is all very aggravating as my Windows machine has been rock solid for months, Adobe has been rock solid for months, and if I thought that restoring to a month ago would be worth it, I’d do it. But I don’t think it would. It is not a comforting situation to run into after spending so much effort with Premiere. But maybe this problem will resolve itself.

To be clear, Adobe phone tech support was superb, and I appreciated their help.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Valerie, this is likely one place where adding way more RAM might help. 4 GBs is reallly not a recommended RAM size for running CS6 and trying to do something like warp. I believe that Adobe recommends 8GBs for running Pr. Also you don’t mention the setup of your computer, i.e. hard disk setups, sizes, etc. There could be a basic issue that is happening that we are unaware of because we don’t know how you have setup your machine. If I thought I had to do a long w.s. frequently , I would consider going to at least 16GBs of RAM. And maybe run it on a second computer (G).

You might want to do a 30 second test to see if it’s slow there too. But yes, it’s been my experience that warp stab. is a slow process.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Well, I’ve not tried to run the headphone jack into the line in on the Mac, but I bet it would not work without an adapter. I personally use my Mixpre D in this kind of situation, as it has a USB converter that pumps the audio out through the USB. Sort of made to do this.

https://www.sounddevices.com/products/mixpred/key-features/

Al

[Al Bergstein]

That’s great info Michael. I’ve been happy with my footage from the 5D mkiii, especially when it’s the only footage on the timeline. I add a bit of sharpening, and it really is beautiful. My only concern was whether others were finding the transcode added anything to stability, quality, etc. Seems as if you are saying that just the opposite has been your experience. So for now, I’ll keep on keeping on. Maybe after this project I’ll do a bit of experimentation, but I have my hands full for now.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

I think what you described is a good plan. I’ve not heard though that the newest MBP have no ability to upgrade their memory. I would make sure that’s accurate. The one I bought does allow upgrading of RAM.

As to moving to PCs, I’ve done it. I would say that you should go slow there. The W8 transition is terrible, and if you do move to a Windows world, do it on Windows 7 for now. While I agree that you can get a ‘cheaper’ box, I’ve found that it still comes back to less problems from the OS and hardware with the Mac. I just spent two days offline on my work fixing a problem of a corrupted Windows user profile after having a rock solid platform for over 6 months. That alone cost me the difference in price between the two platforms. I’ve used Apple products as long as you have, and I have never experienced a corrupted user profile, though I know some do. Software though seems like Premiere has more issues on the Mac than Windows, from what I’ve seen on this board. Might be just my limited perspective.

Apple is slow to move sometimes, and there is a possibility that T.Cook will have some announcements in May/June for the pro users. This will be the year that tells the tale, whether Cook will move the professional market forward (it would have taken about 2 years for his leadership there to produce something with his stamp on it), or by years end we will know that Apple really doesn’t care. Cook has made public announcements that he will work on getting us the right tools from Apple, and their continued work on FCPX is positive, even if they lost folks like me.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Wendall, i just recently ordered the MB Pro model Neil mentions. I don’t believe Jeff. Is correct, in that you can already buy RAM upgrades for it , at OWC, a vendor I’v worked with for years for upgrades.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3_1600MHz_SDRAM
I opted for the 1 gb video card and likely will replace the dvd eventually, though it’s awfully handy at times.

While expensive, i recently sold off a lenovo 520, a nice machine in many ways. I felt i needed to have the option of running either mac or windows software, and this version of Mbp will allow that easily. Either boot camp or one of the virtual machines will do. And the addition of two USB 3.0 ports is great. Much cheaper than TB drives.

My concern in buying now, is that given the REtina models not coming with FW 800 ports, and other ports, we might see all of them abandoned in future models. I have quite a few 800 drives from my Mac pro, which I’m also selling.I prefer the non glare glass too. I find the super high res Retina a bit tiny in the fonts for my older eyes. So i’m not too worried and save some money.

It’s somewhat disconcerning that Apple is not offering more flexibilty in high end models, like the retina. They serve a market that needs it.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Thanks. I’ll give it a try. And yes, the last thing I want to do is give myself more work on fixing computers…

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Wondering what to do with my Mac Pro, which has 10.6.8 and Adobe CS 6 along with FCP 7. My gut feeling is that some sort of dual boot is an option. Buying a new drive, swapping out the “old” one and leaving it in limbo. The installing 10.7 or 8 on a new drive, This should work. Or backing up the old drive, doing a disk image and upgrading in place.

While I don’t need 10.7 or 8, there is functionality I’d like to take advantage of. And I don’t use FCP much anymore except when called upon to edit an older project. So it’s not worth it for me to spend the effort in accidentally killing a perfectly workable setup.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

It seems odd that it’s using 15 GB of RAM at times. Must be something inherent to the clips.

Al