[Chris Erlon]

I’ve been working on a long form documentary project in FCP; it’s pretty big, about 1.5 TB of 1080 footage so far in ProRes 422. My system is a MacPro 2×2.8 quad core w/12 gig RAM, 3 TB Raid, Kona 3 for monitoring. There are a number of sequences, and the master sequence is about 90 minutes; but I only have two tracks of video max at one time, and FCP has had virtually no performance issues because of the size. The basic dialog edit is pretty set; it’s mostly cuts at this point, but I’ve thrown a few crossfades and moves in there. I’m at the point of adding more B-Roll, more transitions, and compositions from After Effects, so it seemed like a perfect time to switch to Premiere (CS5.5).

The export/import process went very smoothly, with only a couple of clip settings not translating properly. But Premiere just can’t seem to handle the project. Any time it hits anything more than a single track and a straight cut, it chokes, stops, hangs, crashes, etc. I tried a little color correction, but the waveforms and viewer don’t update in real time. I have nine of the twelve gig of RAM allocated toward Adobe, but everything is just running S-L-O-W-L-Y, even when APP is the only program open. Before I bale and go back to FCP, I thought I’d check to see if any of you have ideas about what might be causing the performance probelm. It’s running so much slower than FCP that I think I must be doing something wrong, but I’m running out of preferences to fiddle with.

Thanks for your help.

Chris