[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Bob,

Good idea with the testing. Your Core i7-870 processor came out in 2009, so unfortunately in “computer years” that makes it pretty old. I believe that was considered “First Gen” for the Core i7 series, with my 2600 being just Second-gen.

From personal experience, I saw a big jump in performance with Premiere going from First to Second-Gen processors. Not so much with later processors, but that first jump was the big one (they build Premiere editing workstations where I work, so I get to try out the different models).

Also, Premiere CS6 does offer the “Mercury GPU Acceleration”, but not with the Firepro card. If you want to invest a small amount to help your editing and export performance, a compatible nVidia-based card would do wonders for you.

Consider adding a GTX 750 or 760 card for instance, little over $100 or so. Keep in mind these cards cover TWO slots, so you have to have an empty slot below the PCI-e slot where the GPU goes, and also need a decent power supply to feed it, maybe 400-500 watts min.

I can pretty much guarantee that a Mercury-compatible card will provide noticeable results for you. You want a card with at least 1GB of DDR5 RAM. You might think then that getting the latest 4GB card might then be better yet, but the system has to be balanced – you have an older motherboard and processor, so the full power of a higher-end card would never be realized. Thus I’m suggesting a lower end card more in line with the rest of the system.

The last thing is that Premiere CS6 has an “approved card list” and these GTX cards will not be on it and would not by default be utilized. However, you can modify “the list” to add your card so that Premiere will use it.

https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

One more issue I just realized – do you only have a single internal drive in the system? Adobe, or any NLE for that matter, always recommends a dedicated fast drive just for video – media should not be on the C: drive since that is being used by Windows and apps and they will slow down access to video clips.

You mentioned exporting to a USB 2.0 drive and that is definitely a bottleneck!! If you have space to plug in an internal SATA drive, that would be a good idea for under $100. Should be a high-performance drive like a WD Black (7200rpm, 6Gb SATA, 64mb cache).

Or….consider a new computer. A better-quality Core i7 system with nVidia graphics and such is going to run closer to $2k, however I do find sub-$1K systems online that would do the job and be light-years faster than what you have now.

For instance, Dell has this for $899 – Dell XPS 8700 Desktop Tower, Intel Core i7-4790, 16GB memory, 2TB Hard Drive, NV GTX 745, Windows 10

This would definitely work for Premiere, even has the GTX graphics. I’d connect an external USB 3.0 drive for video storage. I used to buy from “Dell Outlet” years ago and always saved a lot of money, maybe look at that as an option.

If you are a hobbyist and can’t justify a PC upgrade, then at least do the GTX card, you will be very glad you did, night and day difference in Premiere behavior when you enable Mercury GPU. And think about faster storage if possible.

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Samuele,

First off, get a can of compressed air and blow that computer out thoroughly. Nothing kills performance like a clogged up overheated system. I take mine outside, you don’t want it all blowing around in the house.

I believe you built the system yourself – after installing Windows, did you go back and install SPECIFIC drivers for motherboard, SATA, USB, etc.?

Windows puts in generic drivers, but if you go to the site of the motherboard maker, they will have specific drivers you can install. Download the latest versions and run them and that can help performance.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Bob,

My system is close to 5 years old, Intel Core i7-2600, 16GB RAM, GTX 470 graphics, external USB 3.0 G-Tech 4TB GRAID drive in RAID 0 mode for video.

I work with 1080i HDV, AVCHD and ProRes source files normally and export as AVI, MPEG-2 DVD, or H.264 for most workflows. Nothing really takes too much longer than realtime to export basically, if not faster than.

I’m not going to go into specifics on all my formats and settings because frankly it doesn’t matter – my system isn’t broke, we need to talk about your system and why it takes so long to export. I export a variety of sources to a variety of formats, so there is no magic formula.

If you are simply putting clips on the timeline, cutting them up, adding some transitions or titles, etc. and then exporting, 4 minutes ought to take just minutes to export. Not 20 minutes, not 4 hours. I will say that Video Denoiser plug-ins take a crazy long time to render on any system, but you didn’t say you are using that software.

I very seldom render anything on the timeline – I’ll leave it red or yellow, as long as the video plays for preview and I can see what I’m doing, I disregard the colors. The video must be rendered anyway during the final export to format of your choice, so pre-rendering in timeline just means you are doing it twice.

https://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2011/02/red-yellow-and-green-render-bars.html

Having GPU rendering enabled in Premiere (with appropriate graphics card) can speed up certain things. With CC, look under File > Project Settings > General and see if Mercury Playback is set to GPU or Software.

So let’s talk about your workflow – what are the specs of the source footage? Any special effects or filters added in sequence? What format are you exporting to? A screen shot of Export Settings can be very helpful in spotting potential issues.

Oh, someone asked about the AMD vs. Intel thing. There is an Instruction Set included in Intel chips that AMD lacks, which Adobe uses to speed things up, plus Intel chips are generally faster anyway from what I understand. But everyone recommends Core i7 for Premiere, that’s the norm for best performance.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

You can use capture hardware for PC or Mac that has analog inputs, such as units from AJA, Black Magic, or Matrox. These will record as 4:2:2 video in a proprietary .avi codec on PC, or for Mac likely just a .mov file.

Or, if the computer has a 1394 Firewire port, use an analog > 1394 converter box such as a Grass Valley ADVC-110 and then you are capturing as DV video files, which are quite standard. File size for DV is roughly 13GB per hour, or 25Mbps.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

The Boris FX Continuum Unit Pixel Fixer tool should do what you need, however as far as I can see it’s only available in Boris FX Continuum Image Restoration bundle at $299 (Boris used to sell individual apps for like $99).

Thanks

Jeff Pulera

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Bob,

I’ve been using Export for years (I never use Queue) and never have export issues, even with 3-hour movies using a lossless codec resulting in 200GB files. Never have crazy long render times as you did either. Just saying there is/was something wrong with your system to cause this, it is not the normal behavior of Premiere.

I often see posts similar to yours, and I guess the posters assumed that since something works a certain way on their machine, it must be the same for others, not realizing they have a unique problem.

To the OP, I will say it is unfortunate that you went with the AMD CPU, Premiere is much more efficient with Intel Core i7. Also, try turning off all overclocking. The very small real-world gain you might achieve in render speed may be getting negated by causing failure to render at all.

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Mike,

I’m not a hardware wizard by any means, but I can go by personal experience and all the posts I read on various forums on a daily basis. It’s interesting that your take away from reading PPBM was that dual XEONs are better, since guys involved with PPBM are the ones who have posted that Core i7 is better, reasonably certain of that. They take part a lot on the Adobe forums.

Keep in mind that much of the info on PPBM is 3-4 years old, and things change quickly in the computer world.

Just found that the “Monster System” referenced here – https://ppbm7.com/index.php/new-system-build on Nov. 2015 is a Core i7 machine

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Mike,

Would have been good to post this before building anything. For video editing, you want the Intel Core i7, as AMD performance just doesn’t compare with Adobe apps. I might say the same for XEONs – a good Core i7 system can be faster than dual XEONs in many cases.

It might seem that “two processors must be better than one”, but not necessarily.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Bryce,

If I read between the lines of David’s comments, I think he might be saying to transcode 😉

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Jonas,

It looks like Innobits has suspended sales and development of the software unfortunately from what I can tell

https://www.innobits.se/whats-going-on-21172276.html

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers