[Alexander Freedman]

Nevermind. I think I’ve solved my own problem.

I’m going to get a 14TB+ array in JBOD and SPAN it. Just in case anyone else comes here looking for a cheaper solution than a 28TB+ RAID 1 lol. The redundancy isn’t there, I know, but with RAID 5 plus this backup – I feel safe enough.

[Alexander Freedman]

[Andrew Kimery] “Is it possible to get the 2010 serviced because there might just be something physically faulty with the power button or power supply. If you can hold on to your MP for a few more months I think/hope Apple is going to roll out new hardware this fall. “

Wow, I didn’t realize the MacPro’s weren’t refreshed either! With that in mind, I think I can certainly hold on to the 2010 a few more months to see what Apple’s fall lineup is. It really doesn’t deserve to be put down just yet haha. Great info!

[David Roth Weiss] “BTW, using your existing monitor as a second monitor with the 27″ iMac is NOT overkill… You will quickly find that Adobe Premiere is much easier to use with lots of real estate. I have three 27″ monitors connected to my older Mac tower, and I love it.”

I didn’t even think about a second monitor – What a wonderful idea! Well, that opens the door again for iMacs as a possibility but I think I’ll definitely just hold off and make my decision when/if Apple gives us a refresh.

The Mid-2010 lives to see another day! Thanks everyone for your great advice! What an A+ community!

[Alexander Freedman]

Thanks for the quick advice everyone!

Yes, I do convert all footage from a Panasonic AF100 to ProRes. I didn’t realize the latest makes were still 2014 models. Yikes. You all have confirmed what I was worried about.

Honestly, I think the current Mid-2010 MacPro I have is working just fine. It has a few kinks that worry me: I have to push the power button three times before it actually powers up, can’t restart the computer as it’ll just shut down regardless and never cut back on but once she’s going, and if she’s in a good mood, she purrs haha! My external 8TB HDD RAID array from 2010 just failed as well so it just seems like it’s on the last leg.

Budget isn’t too much of an issue: I just submit a form asking for it and it might get approved, it might not – so I was trying not to give my VPs sticker shock. The new MacPro (trashcan) price (the $3,000 model) is feasible, but I’ll need to buy all new HDDs as well. I suppose I’ll just have to bite the bullet and ask for it :/

[Alexander Freedman]

Thanks for the info, Tero!

Yeah, it looks like a nice external RAID would be the most cost effective choice.

[Alexander Freedman]

Wow! Thanks for the heads up, Chris.

I was just thinking about going home and updating tonight. Probably need to finish my project first 😉

[Alexander Freedman]

Michael, you’re a fountain of great information!

I haven’t installed any additional codecs other than what CC2015 comes with, so I will research that topic. Yes, I have an external 7200RPM 1TB G-RAID Mini by G-Technology that I originally had on my mac editing rig. It’s currently in a RAID 1 config for archiving, but I’ll switch it back to RAID 0 and trouble shoot the SSD’s.

As you suggested, I’m also leaning toward it either being the RAM or CPU. I’ve found some software that’ll stress test the RAM so I’ll utilize that and see what I get. I might also have missed something in the overclocking process, so I’ll just return the CPU back to factory settings and test that as well.

Thank you so much for these possible solutions. I’ll follow the other forum links you suggested and begin troubleshooting them over the next few days and get back with you if I find a solution.

You’ve been a huge help!

[Alexander Freedman]

Well Michael, I’m at a loss…

When I navigate to the folder with the 4k clips via Media Browser, this is what I see:

ppmediabrowser3.jpg

That clips was taken shortly before PP gives me an error saying “unable to create image buffer” and either freezes or crashes. I notice this happens once my RAM utilization in Task Manager hits 75% or higher, CPU ramps up to 100% as well. Sometimes I don’t get the error and it just crashes, sometimes it almost loads all of them before crashing. I double checked my preferences and Adobe is allocated 13GB of RAM set to “performance” (I tried “Memory” and didn’t see a difference), everything else is 3GB.

Searching other forms, I found the “image buffer” error can happen when you don’t have enough space on your disks for PP to create the image previews in your Media Cache, so I’ve tried multiple ways of optimizing my SSDs as mentioned on Adobe’s official forums here:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/662972

…and still had no luck in PP2015. Each disk I put the media cache and database on has more than 100GB of space and should be fine.

So, I deleted all my scratch and media cache files and rolled back to PP2014. Same issue. Same crashing.

Here’s the kicker:

I took the same 4k files to work and uploaded them onto my 2011 MacPro with Adobe CS6 and only 9GB of RAM (set to performance, 3GB to everything else) and when I navigated to media browser… everything was fine! Media Browser built previews for all the clips and they all imported just fine. Now, I couldn’t play any of the footage back without dropping frames (which was to be expected), but I was still able pass the import phase cleanly.

So I come back home, roll back to Adobe CS6… same problem. RAM passes 75% utilization. Freeze. Crash. etc.

I’ve double checked NVIDIA, both the website and “NVIDIA Experience” app says I’m up to date. Windows has no updates.

Could my RAM be bad? How would I know? I’m playing MMORPG games (like WoW, FFXIV, Elder Scrolls) just fine on this computer. Nothing else seems to be a problem. I’ve ran OCCT performance software when I was overclocking and the computer didn’t crash when CPU was being blasted to 100% for more than an hour.

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Alexander Freedman]

Michael!

Thank you for responding to my post! I have NVIDIA’s software updater installed on the computer and it says there are currently no updates, but I’ll double check their website for CUDA specific drivers I might be missing. I didn’t realize I needed to specify CUDA or Open-CL. I just selected the Mercury Playback GPU Acceleration in the project settings.

I did have CC2014 installed, but didn’t use PP during that time. I built the computer about a week before CC2015 dropped and hadn’t got around to actually using CC yet, but I’ll hunt down the cache files and see if I can manually remove them – just in case.

Yeah, it’s soo strange for the ram to spike on import. Now, it was about 50+ clips, all at 4k – I don’t know if that amount of clips being imported at one time plays a roll in it, but I’ve important at least that much 1080p clips before without a problem (again, not on this machine, but my last machine which was considerably less powerful). I run CS6 on a 2011 Mac Pro here at work with only 12GB of ram (9GB to CS6 and 3GB to everything else). I’m going to bring the 4k files here tomorrow and see the same thing happens.

Yes, as a last-ditch effort I’ll do a rollback and double check that as well. As with any self-built PC, there are always little tweaks the need to be made and I’m sure this is just one of them.

I’m at work now but I’ll attempt some of these options tonight and report back ASAP!

Thanks again,

[Alexander Freedman]

Thanks for the info on proper codecs/transcoding David,

You highlighted a hunch I had all along that it was best to just leave it in AVCHD and edit it that way. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – right, haha?

I guess I had it backwards about h.264 being lesser than MPEG2. Thanks again on that clarification!

Wise words about testing ahead of time. I’m definitely going to attempt both you and Paul’s suggestions and find what works best for me.

Many thanks!

[Alexander Freedman]

Ahhh, I see.

Apparently I’ve underestimated Media Browser and overlooked Prelude haha.

I’ll get on that right away. Thanks Paul!