Al Bergstein
Forum Replies Created
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Why isn’t the board feed good enough? Thenuse the zoom for ambience.
Al
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I use both. Pr is much more stable. But some features are harder to use. I prefer adobe’s titling, but dislike it’s layout. Still, Pr has a much better integration of all the adobe suite, as it should be. Support is much better than Sony’s. It feels like the difference between a small product in the world of a giant corp, vs Adobe’s focus on pros.
I think you’ll like it, once you are over the learning curve.
Al
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As Ty said, while you have given us a bunch of good information, a bit more can really help pinpoint your needs.
For example, you don’t mention if you need more than two XLR mic inputs. That could be crucial. Nor if you need it to have timecode for multiple camera shooting/synching.
There are a variety of really nice semi-pro decks out there under $1000.00. I have owned a Tascam DR-1 (great audio, but no XLRs, a consumer product), a Zoom (XLEs, but no real line in, which in the music business is essential for great audio), a Tascam HD-P2 (a bit of a dated unit, but my sound engineer loved it.
I would *highly* recommend considering either the Marantz PM661 (which I currently own and love), or the Edirol R-44, needed for more than two XLR in’s. Both are high quality pro level units (at the lower end of pro). The Marantz is often standard equipment these days for news gathering on radio. I’ve used a Edirol, and they are excellent units.
And as Ty said, a field mixer, if you have someone that is a good sound guy, is a great addition to getting clean, low noise input to the deck. Almost all decks improve with one.
Al
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One other thing. To simply answer your question directly, I have not seen tests between the current Mac Pros and I7 Windows 64 as to which is faster, on a totally identical kind of box. My Mac Pro (like yours) is older, and so my newer I7 is much faster on rendering with Adobe.
Al
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Keith, the problem you are having often shows up in ‘no name clones’. Some work great, some are crap. It’s often about compatibility of bios and the diligence done by companies to keep up with it. Blue screens of death, instability etc, often are not the fault of Windows per se, but the underlying hardware. (not always true though, but usually). While you have had a bad experience, I and others routinely run Pr 5.5 and 6 on Windows 7 64 bit, on name brand hardware from both Lenovo (laptop), HP (prior hardware) and Dell (desktop). The issues you might be facing could have to do with the BIOS that gets upgraded by these folks, along with drivers. BIOS and other compatability testing is not a simple task. Those companies have teams inside Microsoft to work on identifying issues with BIOS.
Beyond that, some drivers for certain cards, like nVidia, can have their own problems.It could also be that some of this is caused by your anti virus software. I’ve seen terrible problems id’ed to using Norton, for example. I (and others like Windows Secrets Labs) have found that MSFTs Security Essentials, seems to be the least problematic way of protecting your software.
It’s the price you pay to Apple to not have these problems, (even though they sometimes have other issues) which is one reason why they are more expensive. As you get name brand workstations, the prices rise to Apple like prices. At the high end, the choice is not so much price, but whether you prefer the Mac OS to Windows.
If you want to stay with Windows 64, then I would seriously recommend you sell off this gaming machine, and buy a workstation from any of those companies above. All provide great machines that will work with Premiere. My wife constantly reminds me to buy the best tool, not just the cheapest.
But if you really want to go back to the Mac, the choices are limited and expensive, but do work pretty well. Except when OS’s change, and they abandon professional users like us for upgraded consumer editing software (G).
Al
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I’m thrilled with my Thinkpad W520. A bit heavy, but a totally professional workstation. High end graphics (nVidia Quadro 1000M 2GB Video RAM but only 96 CUDAs), in the docking station I can run three monitors if you include the laptop one. Easy expansion (DVD drive can be hot swapped for hard disk(!)), which is great for dumping footage in the field. Incredible docking station for desktop use. Laptop has USB3 and eSata, so no need for Thunderbolt, IMHO. Lots of RAM, superb keyboard, fingerprint reader for instant login, almost instant on. Just about the finest laptop I think I’ve ever owned. Now to get it down to 1 pound..(G).But that’s what my phone is for when I need email somewhere else. I’ve been through two Dells and a Samsung in the last two years. Dells have been problematic hardware (but my Dell desktop has not). Samsung was just not a great screen, nor keyboard.
This is what I should have bought in the first place…sigh.
Vegas runs very well on it.
Al
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Revisiting this post a month later. In this time, I changed *one* thing in my setup. I upgraded to a nVidia GTX 570 and a larger power supply. Now, I haven’t pushed my system in terms of New Blue add ins yet, nor any of the other FX that I usually use. But just to mention it, there have not yet been any crashes. Last week shot a 2 camera shoot and have not had any issues yet. This seems to point, given my frequent crashes before, (with Vegas and not with any Adobe products on the same system), that running the 570 seems to be more stable than with a lower class card. We’ll have to see if this ‘good news’ continues. I still feel that Vegas, when stable, is the fastest NLE I’ve worked on. More as the next progresses and I start heaping on the titles and other graphics.
Al
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Superb. You rock. Thanks.
Al
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Thanks. The notion of ‘importing them into the new project’ is what I was looking for. For now, I think I’ll be fine with separate timelines, as the project is small. There’s a use though I have for ongoing credits for a different project, and importing the credit project is probably the way to go. Thanks.
Al
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For present, all new projects are starting in Pr, and for ones like this, I’m rendering out to XDCAM 4:2:2, moving it to Pr and rendering out in SD there. It comes out just fine. I just don’t have the patience anymore to debug these kind of oddities with Vegas.
I did load a fresh copy onto my new Thinkpad, and I’ll have to try moving the project there, to see if it’s a corrupted version of Vegas on the older machine. The fact that it was fine in the beginning but now is screwed up, along with only some of us experiencing it, means that likely something gets messed up along the line with the application. Just out of curiosity, is your project an older one that you reopened in the new version? Mine was. Of course, the previous version of 11 was overwritten, so I can’t see if it worked fine there as well. sigh…
Al