Chris Knight
Forum Replies Created
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I’ll have some time tomorrow to dig up the benchmark results. I ran tests in Premiere (timeline and direct exporting), Media Encoder, and After Effects (as well as other non-Adobe software applications). A/C and battery tests on all, and again with the GPU manually disabled.
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Just go to File->New->Black Video (or Color Matte). Unless you specifically want text/logo and/or a transparent clip. You can rename it anything you want (either in the timeline or Project Window).
BTW – regardless of what option you use, If you nest it, you’ll also get an audio slug to match.
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Well, whatever you want to call it, Exporting h.264 out of Premiere is exactly twice as fast with a 540M GPU. Yes, I considered that unplugging might throttle down the CPU, which is why I also removed the GPU from the text file in the Premiere folder (and verified that Mercury Engine was running in software only mode). I performed many benchmarks on this laptop before committing to it.
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You can modify a DV-NTSC sequence to 486, but you have to change the Editing Mode (to Desktop). Once the mode has been changed, you can change the resolution to anything you want, and save the Preset. If you have an AJA Kona, the presets for 486 will be included. I would assume BlackMagic cards provide similar presets.
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You need to update your Premier 3.0 install, as MXF support wasn’t introduced until 3.1. Go to the Help menu, and click on Update (or Software Update, I can’t remember).
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Try Alt-left clicking the track, which allows you to select individual tracks without the need for unlinking.
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This functionality was removed when Encore was added to the CS suite (prior to that, Premiere burned DVDs directly).
You could always add a keyboard shortcut to the “Assign Encore Marker,” (under EDIT menu-> Keyboard Customization) and just keep hitting that key after PAGE DOWN (which jumps you to the beginning of the next clip). It’s not automatic, but you could add a marker or two every second, significantly speeding up this process.
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You can add a garbage matte to a black layer on top of your video, then blur that layer…instant feather (then track matte the video layer, and that mask is now applied to your video). Not a perfect solution, but it works for some instances.
Boris Continuum has masking, and it works in Premiere – but, honestly, it doesn’t take very long to learn AE’s masking tools, and it would benefit you greatly to learn how the two applications work together.
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Unplug the laptop. The nVidia GPU only works when it’s plugged in, and switches to an Intel chipset when on a battery.
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For portable editing (or, rather, a hotel room edit suite), I purchased an $1,100 Dell XPS 15 with an i7 Sandy Bridge CPU (base price – additional RAM, SSD, and W7Pro upgrade added about $450 more).
The GPU (2GB nVidia 540M) doubles h.264 encoding speed in Media Encoder (I benchmarked this with various source files), and allows for far more RT performance in the timeline. I’d say the GPU makes a massive difference, and is not something that should be ignored when deciding on a Premiere solution.
The laptop also has 2 x USB 3.0 and eSATA, so my portable RAID runs just fine from various ports. It has DisplayPort and HDMI outputs as well, and the 3 year next-day-on-site tech. support is a nice touch.
You don’t have to spend a lot to get excellent portable performance with Premiere/AE/ME.