[Jeff Meyer]

I’m primarily using Premiere CC (prerelease) but I find a quick trim on a ProRes clip FCP is convenient. No need for a project file to make a few quick edits. Just thinking out loud and wondering if this is going to be the breaking point.

[Jeff Meyer]

Before putting cash out on a new video board, Premiere CC comes out very soon and will offer similar acceleration with ATI video boards. It’s not going to make a low end board sing like a high end Quadro, but if you have a nicer ATI board and plan on upgrading to CC, OpenCL will speed things up very soon.

[Jeff Meyer]

I’ll bet my right pinky finger ray tracing with a FirePro is a painful experience. But with Element 3D for fast work and Cineware where quality is paramount, I’m not sure why anyone with AFX CC would be using the ray traced renderer.

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In my own experiences running Premiere CC on a laptop with a 6750M things certainly are faster than they were in CS6. I have a similarly speced tower with a Q4000. While the 6750M seems to go a little bit further with E3D, the Q4000 seems to get a fair bit more done in Premiere. To be fair, I haven’t tried CC on the Q4000.

I think when CC gets out in the wild we’ll see CUDA continues to offer the most bang-for-buck in hardware acceleration. But I’m certainly open to being proven wrong.

[Jeff Meyer]

In Premiere it helps, but I doubt the FirePro accelerates Ray Traced rendering as much as CUDA.

[Jeff Meyer]

For backup you either need another RAID of similar capacity, an army of little drives (be sure to double up to protect against drive failure — new drives are as dangerous as two year old drives), or LTO tapes. Be aware that RAID-5 is not a backup solution. It’s redundancy that protects against a drive failure, but it does not protect against a volume failure. It sounds like your drive could be headed down the volume failure route if not sooner then later. Mac OS volumes don’t like hard dismounts.

I would suggest calling the original RAID vendor about your issues. It could be a firmware incompatibility with a Mac OS update, for example. Having your backup in place when you call would be a good practice, as the vendor most certainly won’t guarantee the safety of your data.

As for storage, I would suggest getting ahold of a company with this kind of specialization. Small Tree Communications is a Creative Cow sponsor who installs storage for video editing. Our shop is working with a company called Cutting Edge right now to install a new fiber SAN and Cat DV media management in place of Final Cut Server. We’ll have about 50TB of online storage, 30TB of tier 2 storage, and LTO tapes for deep archive. Deploying a full on SAN is in capital expenditure kind of purchase, but in a sit-down chat one of these firms might be able to assess your workflow and find a cost-effective solution to give you more space and protect your data.

[Jeff Meyer]

SpeedGrade CC will have this functionality, and it looks incredibly easy to use. Beyond matching to your timeline you can attempt to match to any image you like, something you treated in LR, PS, Aperture, or found on the internet. Shot matchers aren’t substitutes for careful color work, proper lighting or proper exposure, but they are handy for quick-and-dirty work.

Also, the Lumetri rendering engine is coming to Premiere, so you could make a look in SpeedGrade and export it, then you can apply it to an adjustment layer or to individual clips.

Check the Shot Match video on the bottom of this page for more:
https://success.adobe.com/en/na/programs/events/1303_30759_nab.html

[Jeff Meyer]

1) I would pick File -> Export -> Media in PR, pick BluRay, Best quality (your frame size/rate) then press Queue

After you press Queue, Media Encoder will open. Pick the line with BluRay/Output setting and press CMD/CTRL+D to duplicate the output. Change the duplicate output to a DVD output. Now when you press PLAY you can have Media Encoder create DVD and BluRay files in a single step. Just bring those files into Encore.

Tip: Export them to separate folders. I think each output will create 4 files, 1 video, 1 audio, and 2 metadata. It’ll be easiest to bring files into Encore if all the DVD files are in one folder and BluRay in another.

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2) If you Dynamic Link into Media Encoder you don’t need to worry about this. If a web/mobile output will also be a thing add an H.264 output in Media Encoder.

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3) I’m quite certain the BluRay player and TV will make a handshake at a given frame size/resolution when you start playing a clip. If you go to a clip with a different size or rate it will break that connection and establish a new one at the required rate. It’s like when the extra features on a BluRay are in SD. Build a test disc, and if it proves a problem in more than one player just export your 24p at 29.97. Media Encoder is smart enough to add a proper pull down along the way.

[Jeff Meyer]

The two options I’d consider:

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• 1x SSD Boot/Apps/Projects
• 4x spinning disc in RAID-5 Media/Cache/Export
• RAID controller may be required for RAID-5, check out your mobo

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• 1x SSD Boot/Apps/Projects
• 2x spinning disc in RAID-0 Media/Cache/Export
• 1x spinning disc to match RAID-0 capacity for backup (also consider using this to back up the SSD?)

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Both of the options you proposed have no redundancy or backup involved. A RAID-5 isn’t a backup solution, but it’s better than nothing. An internal backup drive isn’t a solution either, but again, it’s better than nothing. RAID-0 and no backup is a dangerous game that’s likely to sting you.
Also note that projects on SSD will be a lot of read/write cycles. If you’re concerned about wearing your SSD out you might put them on the RAID. I wouldn’t be.

[Jeff Meyer]

I haven’t come across this info. Worst case scenario there’s EDL/XML.

[Jeff Meyer]

Log and Transfer rewraps the XDCAM data into a Quicktime container with Apple’s proprietary XDCAM implementation. The remaining options (ranked best to worst) are:

• If you kept the original media (a good practice) Premiere should be able to relink to that media.
• Installing Final Cut Studio on the Premiere machine will install the Quicktime Codecs onto that machine and allow use of QT XDCAM media. I believe a $50 purchase of Compressor 4 off of the App Store would unlock these codecs, but I haven’t made the purchase myself, so I can’t confirm the validity of this statement.
• Transcode to a format Premiere will read. Media Manager would be your friend.