[James Iles]

Thank you Abraham, it feels so good to be able to set this up again! I forgot to mention I was in Windows.

As a reference to anyone else, if you’re in Vista you’ll have to open Notepad with administrator privileges to save the changes to the hosts file.

Find Notepad on your start menu and right click it, on the menu that appears choose “Run as administrator”. Then open the file through the file menu and open file dialog box.

[James Iles]

Can anyone confirm that the eSata cards that come with the Matrox MX02 work okay? (Am hoping to purchase an MX02 soon). Thanks.

[James Iles]

Thank you all for your answers. I’m now feeling excited about the idea of the switch. And more excited about playing with a brand new Mac Pro!

I see that Snow Leopard is coming very soon and there’s news of Final Cut Studio 3 about. So a lot to look forward too.

James

[James Iles]

Thanks Tom. Can I assume correctly that setting up the machine is relatively straight forward? Does Apple provide a list somewhere of what settings to make to the machine like Avid does? I plan on getting one of the new Mac Pros.

[James Iles]

Hi David. Sure would:-) Dealing with vastness of the PC world was something I could spend a lot of time with when I was younger. Now I’d hope to simplify things. That’s why I like it when Avid actually list specific systems they recommend for their editing apps. FCP is lucky to have the advantage to focus on a tight selection of machines.

My original objective with this thread was to establish if Premiere in particular for CS4.1 was stable on other hardware to my own. Seems to be that the answer is YES.

Since After Effects works all right on my current machine I am considering getting FCP and a Mac Pro and then have two production machines. I will lose part of the advantage of the dynamic linking but at least Premiere is considerably more stable with small projects (maybe using completed edits exported as complete video files from another edit app) so it may work. Perhaps when CS 5 comes out I’ll migrate to the Mac version in the upgrade.

[James Iles]

Thank you for your responses. Very useful.

It seems to be that if using the right combination of hardware and software (including OS and service packs) then CS 4.1 and Premiere in particular, becomes productive.

The bad egg in my opinion is Premiere, not its features, simply that it has been unpredictable in its stability (on my machine, which is an ATI chipset and AMD X2 4800 cpu with Vista Home Premium 32bit; CS2 worked fine on XP on this machine). So if changing the machine will make Premiere better then I will do that. Otherwise though I have to consider the use of an alternative editing app and then use the rest of the Production Suite with that editing app.

I am leaning towards the idea of a Mac Pro and FCP, then I’ll have to get my version of Production Suite switched to Mac. One of the reasons for thinking of switching to Apple is that I’m unsure of where Vista will go.

[James Iles]

Thanks for that link Peter. It was useful reading. The issue about large projects is another one I’ve experienced when using CS2. I never did anything giant in CS3 but CS3 did perform better in my experience than CS2 and I had high hopes that CS4 was an improvement on CS3.

The CS4.1 update has made project load times faster but I notice at the bottom of the screen the media is loading in the background and in some ways it works best to let it load before working. The update has improved stability for the edit machine but hasn’t made it stable enough to make editing comfortable.

The theoretical workflow of the dynamic linking between After Effects, Soundbooth, Photoshop and Encore (I haven’t touched Illustrator much), is great. However, in practice I’ve had mixed results. When it works, it is simply fantastic but more often that is tolerable it doesn’t work or works at first and then like with bloated project files starts to deteriorate.

I worry that investing in a Mac Pro will just be an expensive way to encounter the same instability on large projects. Anyone who has experience on Mac please educate me if its better. I’m already convinced that I prefer OSX to Vista64. So it’s not an issue about the Mac Pro it’s an issue about Premiere.

One think I am thinking about though is that I’ve noticed that Premiere CS4.1 has the feature to open Avid project files. I haven’t tried it. I left off Avid at Xpress Pro 5.8; it wasn’t as flexible as Premiere CS2 was to my needs to edit high graphical content and Thai subtitles but it was certainly more stable. So I have thought about editing in Avid and then finishing in Production Premium Suite by importing it into Premiere. I could also try FCP to do the same thing.

However, it would be far more satisfactory to be able to just edit in Premiere and have the luxury of those features that link up with After Effects, Encore etc.

Sadly, I feel that right now I have to know if there is any way to get the Production Premium suite working satisfactorily or should I take the move right now to use FCP or Avid as my main editing work horse and do the round trip to After Effects etc.

I’m leaning towards FCP actually.

[James Iles]

I forgot to mention I’m on PC. But what about people using a Mac Pro with the Mac version of the software? How stable is it with large projects and working in HD with formats like XDCAM EX?

I am thinking of switching to a Mac Pro. Alternatively I am considering something like the HP xw8600 or xw8400 or xw8200.

In case you are thinking that this has been covered to death, I am asking this with regards to CS 4.1 because in the past I’ve had good experiences with CS 2 and 3 on my PC computers. But since 4.0 it’s been awful, so I’m focusing specifically on this version.

Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[James Iles]

Thank you Brian Louis. I am certainly thinking of a second hand CRT.

My second idea is the Matrox MX02 Mini and am wondering if I could really use what Matrox are saying that this has the tools to calibrate a consumer LCD or TV to be usable for color correction. The key issue is that it would be the user who calibrates the display with the Matrox settings and since I know of no one who has done this and can say it works well, I’m not entirely sure if that is the route to go.

If the MX02 Mini really is going to give me confident color correction monitoring for both HD and SD (I already have a Sony Full HD consumer LCD which at 42″ looks good for clients) then it would almost seem that this is the way to go. Anyone have any experience or thoughts on the MXO2 Mini for this purpose?

[James Iles]

Thank you for your responses.

Final distribution is for broadcast in PAL and also DVD at Standard Definition. The tape format in use by the TV station is BetaSP.

So far it would seem that the response generally deviates to having a professional monitor and a card that can output to the monitor. And being able to properly calibrate that monitor, correct?