[Chris Davis]

[Shane Ross] He was spot on. That is why I didn’t chime in. If someone answers the question correctly, typically other won’t respond as well. When we do it is to make additions to the answer, or to correct minor mistakes…although that happens less to other people than it does to me…

Thanks. I seriously apologize for the faux pas. And Andy, sorry if I came across as impolite by trying to get a second opinion. I sincerely appreciate your time.

-Chris

[Chris Davis]

[Shane Ross] Your question has been asked and answered:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/132/857532‘

I was grateful to the one person who respond before, but did not get the sense that he had direct experience with the combo. When no one else chimed in, I noticed that the Matrox part of this site does not get nearly as much traffic as the FCP section, so I reposted several days later. None the less, I should have made reference to the fact that I had asked the question on another part of this site.

If you are saying that Andy’s answer is completely accurate, that does help.

Thanks,
Chris

[Chris Davis]

[Tim Kolb]
“At that time, very few of us who were editing professionally used anything but a Macintosh…Windows needed to get to Windows 2000 Pro before they really had a viable platform for this sort of thing. Once Apple bought FCP, it seemed that the relationship between Apple and Adobe seemed like it soured a bit (i have no definitive info on this…just a “sense”). As Windows 2000 took hold, Adobe Premiere ended up on PCs far more than Macs (proportional to the computer market itself…far more PCs than Macs overall)…

“In my opinion, those years of PC only cost Premiere Pro a little professional market share, not to mention that I think the general impression of PPro was still that it’s strong suit was still not communicating with VTRs and doing insert edits, etc…”

I had been wondering about this and had considered posting the question sometime…

“Premiere could edit Quicktime files (it started on the Macintosh), but needed third party help to capture from an external VTR using RS422 control and analog I/O boards with transcode capabilities, etc. Premiere wasn’t developed around the idea that it needed to communicate with other traditional broadcast equipment…it was designed to take digital assets and create a new digital asset.”

FCP at launch was somehow better in this respect?

I wonder if Mac made things purposely difficult for Adobe regarding Premiere for a few years while Mac built up its market base and tweaked the program. At any rate, it seems that not being available on the Mac really cost Premiere.

Interesting about insert edit example. This may sound silly, but in 2000-2001 when I was using Premiere, I moved all the clips by drawing a square around them and moving them each time I did an insert edit. Looking back, I had assumed that I just did not know what I was doing (it was a “video art” class, not a broadcasting/production, so I wasn’t really trained). But perhaps the program really could not do a ripple edit?

Anyway, many thanks for your time,

Chris

[Chris Davis]

Tim,
Many thanks for your thorough response. This clears up a lot for me.

[Tim Kolb]
“ heard testimony from any number of people claiming that one or the other is the clear real-time no-render winner.
… So…my guess would be that you’d be about even”

OK. This makes sense of why I’m reading mixed opinions regarding RT. Interesting how people can overly promote/defend their preferred editing system.

“..and on a laptop any effects on HD footage will cause a render state as the processor and drive speed just aren’t there to create a real-time effects preview.”

I’m using an external hard drive, but it sounds like the CPU just isn’t there for much RT on HD.

… PPro doesn’t lean on a GPU as much as some would allude to… After Effects preview and Photoshop will benefit from GPU cores however…

Interesting that PPro relies mostly on the GPU. I’ll probably still want a decent card for AE when the time comes.

…You can use CineForm, which is a bit faster and somewhat higher quality than Pro Res

Didn’t know about this. I wish PPro had its own codec but it’s relieving to know there’s another option.

…I think overall, in many, many respects FCP and PPro are pretty even (which is far more than most FCP users give PPro credit for of course).

I’ve posted and read a bit about PPro in the past few months, and I can’t make sense of how FCP came to make up more of the professional video market than PPro.

-Chris

[Chris Davis]

A clear way of asking might be,

Does PPro just plain have more RT capabilities than FCP (perhaps due to the fact that it makes use of the graphics card) even on fast (CPU) computers, or do PPro and FCP start providing similar RT performance once a fast (CPU) computer is used (due to FCP’s complete reliance on CPU for RT)?

[Chris Davis]

[Tim Kolb]
Matrox makes some PC hardware products that add proprietary codecs and effects as well as video interface for VCRs, etc that deal primarily with the PPro timeline as far as the added speed is concerned…

I looked into the Matrox RT.X2 LE that Alex mentioned, and this was indeed what I had seen before. It looks like a quad core PC plus one of these would give me more RT on PPro and AE than a duel quad core (8 core) Mac, for about the same total price. Would you suspect this to be the case?

I realize this kind of hardware is not available for Mac. Is there any way to get this kind of RT on PPro and AE on a Mac, perhaps with a really fast graphics card? I read that the Open GL thing was not working well yet on Mac and CS4.

Perhaps PC’s with the appropriate hardware will always give better/more RT for PPro and AE than Mac?

Thank for your time,
Chris

[Chris Davis]

[Tim Kolb]
If it was for Mac as well, it was probably an Open GL card…which helps to speed up graphic previews…though far more inside of After Effects than Ppro.

Not sure what an Open GL card is… just a really fast graphics card?

Matrox makes some PC hardware products that add proprietary codecs and effects as well as video interface for VCRs, etc that deal primarily with the PPro timeline as far as the added speed is concerned…

Pretty sure this is what I’m thinking about. On another post you said, “I run CS4 on my Dell laptop (M90 Precision) with WXP…” Is this a graphics acceleration device?

Then you have AJA and BlackMagic Design, which create hardware interface cards for PC and Mac that are basically video signal I/O (in/out) cards that have no speed acceleration besides custom designed project settings to optimize the interface with the card…

This would be like a BlackMagic Designs Intensity card, right?

Thanks,
Chris

[Alex Udell]
Photoshop and AE can benefit from Nvidia Display Cards.

Is a Display Card another word for a video card, such as the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB that comes on a Mac Pro?

Matrox RT.X2 LE and Axio LE provide superior performance in Premiere Pro and WYSIWIG to a broadcast monitor in AE and snapshotting to a broadcast monitor in Photoshop.

I think this is what I am looking for. Thanks.
PS – nothing like this available for Mac, right?

-Chris

[Chris Davis]

[Tim Kolb]”Are you referring to Open GL display cards or editing accelerators that have video I/O, etc…”

I’d have to say I’m not sure. I read a while back about some hardware people used for PPro on PC which dramatically sped up RT playback on effects, and I think included additional effects as well.

I thought I read about something like this for Mac as well, for around $2K.

[Chris Davis]

Does Leopard take advantage of over four GB of RAM on a CS4 PPro?

I thought it did, but am hearing otherwise on another forum. This would explain why I read on one post that PPro tends to run better on Vista than a Mac. (I am assuming that PPro does best on 8 plus GB of RAM).

https://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/processors/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211200998
“Jabberwolf is right – although OSX is a 64-bit OS, CS4 will run 32-bit on OSX, but 64-bit Vista can run a 64-bit CS4.

Don’t remember the specifics, but it had something to do with Apple pulling 64-bit support from Carbon after promising to leave it in. Adobe should have switched to Cocoa long ago though …”

Thanks,
Chris

[Chris Davis]

Paul,
What you’re saying makes sense to me. Many thanks for your time.
-Chris