Andy Prada
Forum Replies Created
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Ok Matthew, thanks for taking the time to update me on this.
I think, once the CS5 trial software has whittled it’s way down to 0 days, I’ll just quietly let it drop for a while and see how things develop. CS4 might have its limitations but at least everything works with it.
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OK Matthew, having now sussed your mail address, I’ll ask you straight here:
If Graffiti is key to my own workflow with regard to animated text, what other software options can you offer to mitigate not being able to use it with CS5?
Problem is, I’ve seen the promised land (the Mercury Engine) and I want a piece of it now, not in six months time.
best
andy
BTW andy@pradamedia.co.uk is as good as any place to reach me.
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With respect Matthew, In my previous post I was actually having a whinge and sharing this whinge with the creative community. I come at things from a creative demand point of view not from a technology supply corner. I’m an Editor not a Media technician. I don’t appreciate it when companies release software out of sync and I don’t have much time for those who defend it.
Whatever anyone might say, In my opinion Premiere (even in CS5 guise) does not have a good enough feature set for professional broadcast editing without the support of third party vendors. Adobe flagged up their focus on optimised 64 bit with CS4. What probably threw 3P vendors thereafter was Adobe’s decision to remove 32bit support for CS5 completely. Hence the scrabble for catch-up.
My point is that, 64 bit complexities aside, all software companies need to be more integrated in their approach to new release. After all, what good does it do Adobe if a decision to upgrade to their latest version is thwarted by a key plug-in vendor not being ready? Is it because the code isn’t being made available early enough or is it because a particular piece of plug-in software has reached the end of a road and can’t be adapted without major hassle (read delay)? Please accept that I’m not having an exclusive pop at Adobe here. This is something all software companies need to consider.
In my particular case Artelsoft are a BIG company with great products – not some two bit outfit – and most decent AVID setups (Indeed any set up I expect to work on) has BCC, Graffiti or equivalent software as standard. I make a point about Boris Graffiti because, as you already know, high quality text manipulating software for MS Windows is not exactly jumping out at us.
https://www.adobe.com/products/plugins/premiere/
According to this url Graffiti is compatible with CS5. Hype,hope or just a bit careless with updating the website? It took several emails to get a firm non out of Artelsoft!
P.S. Just for the record neither am I looking for advice about when to software upgrade. I attended one of the first National Film School courses for AVID in the UK on release way back in 1990 and have worked on just about every AVID release since. That together with Speed Razor, Premiere 1-6 and Pro versions for both MAC and Windows, FCP etc etc. So I do know a few things about non-linear editing and plug-ins.
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Couldn’t agree more. But you know Vince, it’s kind of wearing for us guys who’ve stuck with and supported the whole process of continuous change for probably two decades or more, constantly having to cope with leapfrogging software that never quite seems to gel in the planetry software schedule.
It’s not actually the dosh. It’s the time wasted.
Surely it’s not beyond the wit of software companies to coincide their releases with plug-in providers in order to minimise hassle for the customer.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in asking for this.
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I’m sure that the recommended cards will make a substantial difference to the performance of your system. My own trial utilising a Core i7 950 PC based system without any fancy gfx card (GT9600) is that CS5 video layers play back smoothly and accurately in preview (un-rendered) even without a CUDA based card compared to CS4.
Perhaps you need to weigh up the cost of an overall upgrade of all your software to a genuine 64bit environment before making the plunge. In my opinion, some companies have some catching up to do.
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Do you mean an uncompressed file?
You have two issues as I see it. One is to make an image technically compliant: (colour, luminance etc) The other is to get the best output format from which to encode further.
If so there are parameters in Media Encoder to make uncompressed versions of your timeline, either 8bit or 10bit. Simply apply your effects as normal then export to an uncompressed format.
Having your capture, sequence and export settings set to the same should enable an output as near as possible to you input.
Does this make sense or are you asking something different?
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I’ve just done a quick PAL DV trial with CS5 for what its worth. (I say quick because the trial version is so limited it’s almost worthless.)
However, I wanted to test a couple basic claims about the Mercury Engine and the response of CS5 in general as a 64bit engine.
I took an eight layer 25″ pic-on-pic section of timeline from a CS4 project and pasted into a new CS5 timeline. I then tested the difference in performance.
My specs are Corei7 950 W7 64bit / 12gb RAM X58 deluxe Mobo and 2 graphics cards – nVidia 9600GT and an ATI 4500. (No fancy graphics cards as you can see)
The CS4 timeline stuttered and spluttered over this sequence in preview (red line) mode. This is what I experience in my day to day editing at the moment.
The CS5 timeline played all eight layers smoothly without any interruption whatsoever.
Looking at task manager in the latter and one can see the CPU pushed to the limit as it played back the sequence in CS5. More importantly it shows the CPU quite happy to take on the task of the GPU if the latter is of no substance or not a supported architecture.
My conclusion is that, hefty CPU aside, an Adobe supported CUDA card can only be a further significant enhancement to an already improved playback engine. Whether you go for FX3800 or GTX285 you will likely see significant benefits. I will probably go with the GTX285 because my work is mostly HDV rather than HD and I will spend the extra funds on Boris BCC7 64bit which is imminent.
Early if encouraging signs!
One gripe…..CS5 has virtually no difference in feel to CS4. very few enhancements, additional effects or DELIGHTS. I know this is a trial version but come on Adobe…reward your loyal customers!
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[What would you say Motion lacks when compared to AE?]
Keying quality, speed of response on complex layered projects, filter set, ability to work well on most PCs (Motion is very resource intensive.) One thing motion does have which AE lacks is plenty of quick to use presets.
The reason big name people use Avid and FCP (I also use Avid Adrenaline myself although not so much now) is compatibility and stability. I’ll take the second issue first.
In a commercial facilities environment (as opposed to home studio) the need to have kit working solidly from minute 1 until the end of a session, often accompanied by clients, is the paramount requirement. Today’s deadlines simply do not allow for more than an occasional freeze or crash. Unstable software kills confidence and hence revenue.
Premiere can do creatively all that Avid and FCP can do – and more in some cases. That’s the reason why I went this route for my home office in UK. Firstly it was much less expensive, secondly (and this was important for me) it gave me more time at home with my daughter instead of heaving to commute 3 hours day to London and miss her growing up.
The downside was less stability and more time-shifting of my work patterns into the evening to accommodate freezes and long render times (not a problem when you work 3 seconds from home).
The first issue I raised was compatibility. It’s hugely important from a commercial imperative to adopt a system that everyone can use off-the-street or be trained on and has a solid body of existing customers.
In the old days Avid had the lions share of the broadcast and professional market. But it was quite expensive for an individual to buy because you had to have the hardware that went with it. (Why do I see parallels with the need for Cuda technology and CS5?) Creators tended to hire their edit suites on a daily basis rather than buy them so Avid built their reputation on rock-solid performance and stability.
Speed Razor (fantastic but functionally immature) and Premiere (a bit amateurish) were the home alternatives and were perfectly good for low end work. Later came FCP and then FC Studio.
Back to reality and todays’ market. My evaluation of Premiere is that it works perfectly well at the DV end with a couple of video streams and a few audio and video effects. It really struggles when the bar is lifted to HD and every aspect of the timeline has a green line due to hi end audio and video filters. This is not meant to be a criticism because the ask is pretty high.
But if you want to play with the big boys you have to have big boy’s boots and CS5 will need to have boots and then some if it wants to crack the real PRO market.
I leave this post with one example: – the inability of Premiere to digitise over time code breaks or discontinuous timecode.
All PRO environments use timecode and it often gets broken on tape when cameras are powered up and down. In Avid I can set it to digitise over breaks. It will simply pick up and continue. Premiere can’t do this. So a tape that may also be shot ToD (Time of day) is also going to have problems because Premiere can’t cope.
The end result is me having to go through the footage and log it all first to avoid the problem. THAT is far from PRO and another example of a revenue killer!
I reiterate my case – get proficient on as many NL systems as you can so you can work for anyone. Buy the system that will suit you needs both professionally or personally. But be aware that you get what you pay for.
best
andy
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I’ve worked on both FCP and Premiere for many years now. I currently have my own iCore 950 W764bit Premiere setup using BCC6, Graffiti etc (Uncompressed and HDV)and work out-house for clients using their own FCPs – (DV,HDV,HD etc)
In my experience all Premiere versions are buggy and unstable compared to equivalent FCPs. But that’s to be expected when the OS and the Edit software are not written by the same people. Apple clearly have an advantage here.
CS4 average crashes or freezes or go slows per day = 7
FCP = 1 (at most)If I had to be brutally honest, if it were not for AE and Photoshop, I suspect Adobe would be dead in the water as far as Premiere is concerned. It really is a flawed diamond of a programme that lacks functionality in some key areas. It’s only by carefully locking editors in to a creative suite that they have kept ahead of the game. Adobe tread a very edgy tightrope here because they know that logically AE and Premiere should coalesce eventually. But that isn’t good for revenue streams is it?
As for Creative Suite – it’s great as a concept but it’s hugely complex in terms of resources that it ties up – hence CS4 became all but unusable in a 32 bit environment and not much better in optimised 64 bit. CS5 should solve this (plus a healthy investment in GFX card hardware.) I say SHOULD.
FC Studio is a good attempt at emulating CS but Motion is no AE and they have no Photoshop equivalent which is pretty amazing considering how much Editing and Gfx merge these days. Apple really should get out more. DVD Studio is ok and allows for some high level scripting but I much prefer Encore. Livetype was fantastic (I say WAS because the latest FCS doesn’t include it any more) Soundtracks software is also good and has a better interface than Audition.
Where am I going with this you ask? Where indeed! I guess it comes down to hope and prayer. I actually think Premiere is a better editor’s tool than FCP and prefer it. I just hope that CS5 will sort the stability issues that have plagued CS4.
Meanwhile I think you are doing the sensible thing by becoming proficient with both and keeping your options open. At the least it sends a message to software providers that they haven’t got roll over and die customers for life.
best
andy
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Had this problem many times with 32bit XP! It rarely happens with my current setup – Core i7 950 Win7/64bit/12Gb RAM but I recently tried to import and render 750 Hi Def jpegs from a Commercials Agency in a sequence and CS4 simply refused to play. Conclusion: CS4 simply can’t handle complex stuff…period!
Two practical ways that might help your current difficulty: Firstly, instead of simply restarting your PC, switch it off completely at the mains..then switch back on after 30 secs. Don’t ask me why this helps but it has for me on many occasions.
Secondly, render the problematic sequence no more than one or two frames at a time until it is fully rendered. (ideally then export it to a mixdown to avoid future problems) I appreciate this could take some time.
As you may have guessed, this is all to do with memory and CS4’s ability (or non ability) to access it as a pseudo 64 bit lash up.
Let’s hope a native 64 bit CS5 will finally address these problems.