David Cherniack
Forum Replies Created
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[Vincent Becquiot] ” there is no way Adobe had planned any of the many OS changes ahead of time.”
I sure hope you’re wrong about that. Consider that the code for Premiere Pro 1.0 was written what, 5-6 years ago for XP. Consider that the development team, despite many appearances to the contrary that upper management and marketing probably should take the fall for, are not fools. They must have known that the architecture of the program would push to the limits, the resources provided by XP. If they didn’t code the thing for an eventual transition to 64 bit OS’s they’d be dumb beyond words, right? They’re not that dumb, right?
I’m asking. Anyone care to answer?
David
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
Vincent,
Uncompressed HD projects are not the issue when it comes to PPro’s resources problem. In fact, because the material is uncompressed it tends to be be less demanding on the hardware.
I’ve had DV projects that fold up within 15 minutes and require a reboot – 10 to 15 a day. They had lots of very large sub-timelines – sub-timelines are something that can quickly bring PPro to a grinding halt. Try scrubbing a few 4kX4k graphics with motion moves and lighting effects in a half complicated, otherwise, not demanding, project. Adios.
And in case you think it might have been my hardware, I’m running an HP9300 with dual dual-core Opteron 275’s and 3GB or ram.
The problem is almost certainly in the initial architecture of the program. For whatever reasons they made a terrible blunder (or a calculated risk, depending on how you look at it) in the way PPro allocates Windows XP resources. Simply put, at some point, as a project demands more and more resources, a critical mass point gets reached and once that happens you’re in deep doodoo. Without Adobe issuing any guidelines on what things to avoid doing in your projects, the best rules of thumb is to keep them as small as possible, avoid subtimelines with large source clips by rendering them out and pulling the render into your timeline instead, and be careful about complicated effects and large graphics.
Many users have been complaining about this problem since version 1.0. It especially effects the high end community as their project resource requirements are larger. I know many people who are spitting nickles mad about it. In my first project on PPro, at certain points, I would have strangled the architects of the program, had I but got my fingers around their necks. But I learned. I now routinely break my projects up by acts and follow the above guidelines. Though I still have crashes and memory warnings I only have to restart on average under 5 times a day, and most of them are preventative. They’re not of the ‘do five things and then restart or crash’ variety that I experienced then.
The fact that Adobe has not corrected this problem by version 2.0 indicates that it’s probably deeply imbedded in the architecture and they’re relying on a Vista version to solve the problem. Well, until that happy day, (and the addition of full blown media management, and the streamling of inefficient work processes) PPro will not make much headway against Avid and to a certain extent, FCP, in the high end arena. Do they care? Well, if they want to be taken seriously as an NLE player, they should.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
South Video, your problems most probably (if not certainly) have nothing much to do with your hardware. The suggestions being proffered you will increase performance but most likely will not solve your memory errors. PPro is not yet an appropriate NLE for larger projects. It eats memory and doesn’t give it all back. Eventually as project size increases, it reaches a critical mass, and frequent crashes follow.
Please do yourself a favour and do a search on memory problems in this forum. You’ll find lots of threads. Many people have experienced this problem. Many have not but in all liklihood they’re just not running the large or complicated projects that cause PPro to reach the necessary critical mass.
About the only solution to this problem is to break you project up into smaller projects if you can.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[Tim Kolb] “This is the one area I’m placing some hopes on for the next rev…I hope they can get it straightened up.”
I sure hope so, too, Tim. While I have made every attempt to use a workflow that doesn’t tax the program in its weak areas, it still runs out of resources often enough for me to pray you’re right.
To the people who never encounter this issue:
Please don’t imply of those that do that it’s the fault of the way that they’re using it. It’s not.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
Hi Marisu,
Thanks for the tips. I’ll start to watch page file useage but Axio systems manage PPro memory somewhat differently than software PPro. They also have a little system tray utility to let you know when things are going to get flakey. It still doesn’t help a situation that probably never should have occured in the first place and could have been addressed two years ago by Adobe had the company had the will to commit the resources. There are rumours that the company has sent out teams of developers to learn from whatever up-market users PPro has, what’s lacking in the product that causes people to shy away from it. While it’s true that the feature set is not as mature as the industry leaders, it is a very strong editor with an unsurpassed integration across all Adobe apps. But no one likes to have to restart multiple times a day – especially in front of clients – because of lack of memory resources.
If they were smart they’d have PPro 3 ready to roll out the door the day that 64 bit Vista ships. Of course there are probably a myriad of hardware driver issues (and a whole lot of lame other excuses) that will prevent that happy day from happening but no matter how you cut the cake the bottom line is:
Premiere Pro runing under XP is not well suited to handle large projects.
Now don’t get me started on its useability issues…..
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
Though they don’t say so in the promo literature the bottom line here is that PPro was not designed to handle large projects with ease. It’s heavy in the use of system resources. Adding plugins like those from Cineform or Matrox Axio add to the use of those resources and the program quickly runs out of room. You’re not the first to experience this, believe me. Finishing up my last project was living hell.
The problem is that the underlying design of PPro is at fault. What’s Adobe’s attitude to fixing this? They’ve never publicly acknowledged that the problem exists said but it would appear that they’re looking to the 64 bit addressing space of Vista to solve the problem….ie the user will have to throw gobs of ram at the system.
What to do till then – (probably next year sometime?) If you can, break up your project into smaller projects. Render each one out into a master project every time you want to look at the whole. If you can’t do this switch to another NLE and save yourself the misery.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[Tim Kolb] “Dave…if Adobe had documented it as a “use at your own risk” would you have been complaining about them doing shoddy engineering?”
Tim, I would not have complained at all. Instead I would have been extremely grateful for the capabilities it would have given me. I’m an old beta tester, and am used to “use at your own risk” as a work environment. All I can say is that in my individual case it would have been EXTREMELY helpful to have been aware of the copy/paste capability – as it is now on my present project where it’s allowing two people to work on the same project and easily consolidate their efforts.
Best,
David -
Thanks for responding here, Giles. It is appreciated and the fact that you have would seem to me to be something of a first for an Adobe product manager – at least a Premiere Pro product manager. Part of my unhappiness with the development of the product is that it never appears that anyone at Adobe is listening to the complaints and suggestions about the product especially from up-market users. I would hope that your response here signals something of a shift in policy.
[Giles Baker] “we didn’t disable it because it worked well enough in some situations”
Even so, it would have been nice to let the users know that it was there. It could have done me a lot of good on my last documentary, even if it worked less than perfectly.
A suggestion for the ‘official’ implementation of the feature. I’m sure that consolidation of a project from a timeline is on your list. The copy/paste feature can do it now in a fairly simple way but it doesn’t:
1. Offer the choice of shortening the clips to the lenghts of their actual use + a designated handle.
2. Deposit the copied footage into the same bin structure that existed in the source.
Both of these features would be highly desireable.
Best wishes,
David -
[Dave Friend] “Could it be you found something that even Adobe didn’t know about?”
Adobe? Not know about something? Don’t they know about everything?
Seriously. I just watched it paste an hour timeline with 4 levels of subtimelines, stills, graphics and titles into a new project. It really pushed the limits of my ram to do it, but do it it did. Adobe not know that it could do that? I think not. But hey, why tell us something that could be incredibly useful.
David
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I just ran a test with a timeline that was made up from a subtimeline. It worked.
In my last project I didn’t do an HDV recap because all the double system sound subtimelines made it too time consuming. I’m guessing I could have consolidated it from the master timeline had Adobe documented this feature – even as a “use at your own risk”….
Grrrrr.
Why do they keep giving me reasons to think that the company (not the engineers) is indifferent to the pain caused to its users by gaping holes in its software. Just another head shaker…
D.