[Dennis Radeke]

[Chris Jacek] “This is only a promotional price, good for one year. I must budget for 3 years. But even at $20 a month, my costs have more than tripled. There’s no way I can get a 300% increase approved.”

Apologies that I haven’t hit this forum in the last few days. You are assuming a 300% increase is based on the same version never improving. If you knew that you would get a new version and/or new features regularly, that should change the equation considerably. Your value is also improved by the fact that you are getting all of the Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, web tools, etc), plus additional software (Lightroom, Edge), plus cloud storage, plus some additional services, plus tablet apps, plus training. Phew!

A suite to suite upgrade costs today $375 for Production Premium assuming you have the immediate previous version of CS5.5. If you have CS5, it is more. A year of Creative Cloud at $19.99 is about $360, but comes with much more. Also, your institution can contact Adobe to look into 3 year plans which we offer.

In the end, not everyone will like this, but I will say that the value proposition is very squarely in favor of Creative Cloud and a subscription based model. I hope this clears some misunderstanding.

Cheers,
Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

I think you might have enlightened me as to what part of the problem could be. Are you using the fractional resolution playback capabilities at all?

This video touches on it as part of a basic CS6 overview: Redesign Source and Program Monitors

If you stack a ton of ProRes and performance starts to sputter, you can down-res during playback so you get a real-time performance. At 1/2 res, you’ll be shocked at how good the video is at. Even 1/4 is usually usable given the source material.

Here’s where it gets interesting. HD codecs only go down to 1/4 because 1/4 of 1080 is 270 lines – nothing great, but not bad. With RED, we allow you to step down to 1/16! however, even 1/16 of 4096 is 256 which is about the same. However, if put a RED clip into a HD timeline, you can only step down the RED material to 1/4. My laptop doesn’t have a problem with RED at 1/4 but perhaps this is part of the problem. If nothing else, it’s good to know about this stuff.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Mike Jackson] “Thanks for the response Dennis! I don’t post often, but I’ve been really appreciating your involvement in the forums for a long time.”

Hey thanks. I really do believe in supporting the community and the Cow is a great place to help out. It’s nice to know I’m appreciated! 😉

[Mike Jackson] “I’m still on Snow Leopard”

Sure, I see where you’re coming from and appreciate that not everyone moves up to the latest/greatest right away. That said, most of the Mac users I’ve dealt with including large enterprises have moved or are moving to Mountain Lion successfully. Maybe the rest of the software you use daily has caught up.

As for BMD, I haven’t read the rest of the thread since your reply here but will do so. While not likely, if you have the ability to test out another machine that is Mountain Lion with RAM and BMD, it would be interesting to see if the experience is very different.

[Mike Jackson] “On a philisophical note though, I do have to say I worry about any software that has trouble playing back a single stream of video on a system with 8 gigs of RAM. Makes me think that either a) something’s gone VERY wrong with my system, or b) something’s very wrong with the code. I’d also humby request that Adobe revise the tech specs listed in all the documentation, since it sounds like the ACTUAL recommended RAM spec is 16 gigs or so, not the 8 currently listed.”

I used to play 4 streams of HD video back on my 8GB Mac laptop without difficulty, so I know that this is not the issue. Also, there is a big difference between minimum and recommended requirements. I like to be very real (and candid) and have found that RAM is good for computers all around and that 32 or even 64GB can be downright useful today in editing and content creation.

I think we have a confluence of events that may be contributing to your problem. If you want to hit me on twitter (@TheGenesisProj) or post a comment on my blog (https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/), I can try to get you some answers or on with a tech support person.

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

[Brian McClatchy] “I have 12 GB Ram, shouldn’t that be enough for these functions? I have over 10,000 clips in the project but in OS finder , i get results in just one or two seconds.”

Simply put, no, that’s not enough memory IMO. Each of those over 10,000 clips takes up a tiny bit of memory to know where it is on the hard drive and it adds up. On top of that, Adobe leaves 25% of your memory by default available to the OS and other applications, so you’re probably using only 8 or 9GB of RAM. You can find out by looking in Preferences>Memory.

You should at least double the RAM and consider going higher. It will give you much better performance.

Here’s an old link but it speaks to the problem and the solutions: Don’t Starve your CPU of RAM

At the end of the day, we are all going to have to continually reevaluate what we consider adequate RAM is. Besides the obvious Bill Gates quote about RAM (‘who will ever need 1MB of RAM?’), I know that I used to think 8GB of RAM was enormous. Now I have 64GB and I know that will become merely adequate before I know it. I imagine you have a similar experience as well…

Good luck,
Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

If I read your question right, you should take your replaced footage that is in the sequence setting and copy it to a new sequence with teh correct frame size (1920×1080)

[Dennis Radeke]

Hi Mike,

I think I see a couple of things that I would suggest as you make the switch. Bear in mind, that the switch does require some learning and finding out where that equilibrium is with the hardware and the software.

A couple of generic reminders just to clear them out of the way:
1 – make sure you’re updated to the lastest version of CS6, which should be 6.0.2.
2 – ditto on the blackmagic drivers

To diagnose the problem and to aim towards consistent performance, I see two potential problem areas. One is lack of RAM and another is the BMD. I would try the following in this order.

1 – Get a bunch more RAM. Even if it’s a complete failure, RAM is cheap and always provides a more consistent, stable editing experience for any 64-bit editing app on any platform. You have an 8 core machine. Generally speaking, I personally recommend having 3-4 gigs of RAM per CPU core. That would put you at 24-32. If that seems excessive it isn’t. However, even boosting to 16GB of RAM will make a tremendous difference. It’ll cost you a couple of hundred bucks at the most and it will make your whole system feel and perform better
2 – in order to get to the bottom of the problem, you might want to consider pulling the BMD card until you can get a consistent editing experience. 3rd party i/o cards can be a factor. If RAM doesn’t cure your problem, pull the card and try again.

Beyond that, I would think about disabling the GPU card as Kevin suggested temporarily until you get it sorted out (again, removing variables). If you’re still having problems, then we’ll have to put our heads together and figure out what’s plaguing you. At that point, maybe there’s bad RAM or something else going on.

Finally, two general tips and maintanence ideas: Two tips

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

A husband who buys his wife techie toys – now that guy’s a keeper! 😉

Glad your problems seem to be resolved. Good luck!

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

It is a known bug and we’re working on it.

Dennis

[Dennis Radeke]

Trash your preferences, clear your cache, run any updates necessary for all Adobe product and consider getting some more RAM if you can.

[Dennis Radeke]

Maximum Render Quality is used when exporting from one frame size to another:

Maximum Render Quality Maintains sharp detail when scaling from large formats to smaller formats, or from high-definition to standard-definition formats. Maximum Render Quality maximizes the quality of motion in rendered clips and sequences. Selecting this option often renders moving assets more sharply.
At maximum quality, rendering takes more time, and uses more RAM than at the default normal quality. Select this option only on systems with sufficient RAM. The Maximum Render Quality option is not recommended for systems with the minimum required RAM.

Maximum Render Quality often makes highly compressed image formats, or those containing compression artifacts, look worse because of sharpening.

Maximum Bit Depth is also not always to be used:

Maximum Bit Depth Maximizes the color bit depth, up to 32 bpc, to include in video played back in sequences. This setting is often not available if the selected compressor provides only one option for bit depth. You can also specify an 8-bit (256-color) palette when preparing a sequence for 8-bpc color playback, such as when using the Desktop editing mode for the web or for some presentation software. If your project contains high-bit-depth assets generated by programs such as Adobe Photoshop, or by high-definition camcorders, select Maximum Bit Depth. Premiere Pro then uses of all the color information in those assets when processing effects or generating preview files.

Link (long): Adobe Help on Sequence Settings