[David Roth weiss]

This is a very common theme here Lawrence – you’re not the first to invest in a new computer, thinking you’d solved ALL of your performance issues well into the future, only to realize you’d neglected to understand that, without a beefy 8-drive RAID, you simply cannot playback 4K seamlessly.

While a single SSD drive may appear to generate blazing throughput that should be able to handle the task of seamless 4K throughput, the fact is, many SSD drives use “hidden data compression” and other tricks to generate faster data throughput, which simply does not generate the sustainable throughput required for 4K video playback without dropping frames.

Below is an excerpt from the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test manual that explains this…

Important note about Solid State Disk (SSD) speeds

Some models of SSD cannot save video data at the speed indicated by the manufacturer because the disk uses hidden data compression to reach these higher write speeds. This data compression technique can only save data at the manufacturer’s claimed speed when storing simple files or simple data, such as blank data. Video data includes video noise, and more random pixel data which does not compress much, so the true speed of the disk is seen.

Some SSD’s can have up to 50% lower write speed than the manufacturer’s claimed speed, so even though the disk specifications claim an SSD is fast enough to handle video, in reality the disk is not fast enough for real time video data capture. Hidden data compression mostly affects capture and often these disks can still be used for real time playback. (***FYI, BUT NOT IN THE CASE of 4K)

I’m prepping a Webinar on this very subject for Moviola Digital (THE SECRET SCIENCE OF VIDEO STORAGE IN A 4K WORLD), which will play for free on Oct. 6th. And, with the support of Iron Post Digital and G-Tech, I’ll be offering awesome discounts for my friends on Creative Cow. If you contact me offline at drw@drwfilms dot com, I’ll send you and any others here an invitation to the Webinar.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Premiere CC has no issues with the various Sony XAVC codecs, but you’ll need a pretty beefy RAID if you want seamless playback without dropping frames and if you want to see things at 1/2 or full resolution.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

[Brian Vawter] “The current model of users gathering in forum to figure out problems from each other can be helpful at times, but doesn’t it make more sense if the techs and designers at Adobe provide this service to it’s users with a site where official updates, recommendations, best practices and even troubleshooting procedures could be found, a sort of continuous, ongoing support website for it’s users?”

That sounds entirely logical Brian, but it would only be accurate if, like in many auto races, everyone used precisely the same hardware, OS, etc. However, that is not the case, the fact is, there are many users using older hardware, innumerable versions of OSX, and many simply update (inferior), while others do entirely fresh installs (better).

No software company on the planet can test every possible home-brewed configuration – to do what you’re asking Adobe would have to insist that all users use only certified configurations, and that simply is not something most users want.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

That emoji will definitely make the El Capitan worth the cost of an upgrade.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

A single i7 processor might be faster if your using an app that is not multi-threaded, but Adobe Media Encoder is multi-threaded. It would be kind of silly for Intel to sell Xeon procs if their less expensive processors had better performance, don’t you think?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

H.264 is a very processor intensive codec, so 30-mins is not out of line. Your single i7 processor is the issue, and this is why dual Xeon workstations exist.

If you do a lot of h.264 encoding, you can get yourself a Matrix HDCompress card – they are dedicated hardware encoding cards ($500), which will process h.264 5 to 6X faster.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

I have other issues with the newest iOS release, but that’s not one of them.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

The Mac is still very useful, I have one myself, however, the 2008 8-cores are very much available all over. It seems like you’re enthused about all the software onboard, which is undoubtedly pirated, also available all over. I’d look for a better deal, on a later model Mac Pro, preferably with a fast Nvidia card inside. There are a lot around, because a lot of people bought into the Thunderbolt craze, trading in perfectly good hardware for newer stuff.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

You’ll be fine as long as you don’t fill that RAID beyond 80% of its capacity. Transcoding to ProRes was a very good idea – once I saw that I had no problem giving you two thumbs up.

Good luck with the doco… Is it an oceanographic project?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

[Herald Francis] “I have recently bought premier pro cc 2015”

When you installed it did you install ALL of the updates?

If so, call Adobe Tech Support, they will jump on your workstation remotely and will troubleshoot it for free.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.