[Keith Moreau]

I immediately turned it off as soon as I realized what it was doing when I was searching for media based on creation / modification date. I don’t want to alter the original files in any way. Having Premiere Pro write to the files is a really bad idea and in my opinion and I think it should have been set to ‘off’ by default. For an app that touts itself as working with native files I really don’t understand why they set this.

I would understand maybe if the Premiere Pro media management was stellar and it needed to track the files by adding metadata to them, but it is really better to track it all in companion files. Really though Premiere Pro’s media management is actually quite terrible even with their metadata system so it’s not helping.

There are other utilities for FCP’s horrid media management (though still better than Premiere Pro’s), such as those by Intelligent Assistant, which I believe does something similar and it can help you recover from a media management mess but really, NLE’s should just track the files using some other method that makes them unique, such as original creation date and time, and some type of checksum on the file size and content to make sure they match your database.

It did affect things for me negatively before I turned it off. Whenever I use PPro on a new machine I immediately turn it off before it messes with the original media.

I have not seen any adverse effects from turning it off though I suppose if you move the original media around a lot having it all in one place *might* help. Though I have no evidence of that.

My 2 cents.

-Keith

[Keith Moreau]

I have used this in the past with ok results, they have a trial

https://www.pavtube.com/blu-ray-video-converter-ultimate/

If it were me I would use a somewhat convoluted way of ripping using makemkv then extracting the H.265 MTS files to edit in premiere pro but not as simple as the pavtube stuff.

[Keith Moreau]

You test this out before upgrading to 10.7 a couple of ways:

1) by making your screen resolution artificially very low using the displays control panel, it will be blurry and ugly but it mimics a smaller display

2) or if you have a very large monitor, like a 30″, make the timeline 2/3 the size of the whole screen (at normal high resolution)

The quirk is if the monitor is really small the lag is less. If the timeline is really big, something clicks in and less detail of the clip you’re trying to move is drawn on the screen and this makes dragging faster.

However, it seems Premiere Pro 5.5 works ok in 10.7, though there were reports of the eyedropper not working at some point, though this hasn’t been a problem for me.

[Keith Moreau]

For some people, like you and Tom Daigon, it works ok. For many people they experience what Yannik is experiencing. Let’s see what OS he is using.

It has to do with your monitor setup and other factors. Bigger monitor, more lag.

[Keith Moreau]

If you are on 10.6.8 it is a problem. Upgrading your OS to 10.7 fixes this. This was a huge issue for me on 10.6.8 and larger monitors. There were many threads here and on the Adobe Premiere Pro forums about this prior to 10.7.

[Keith Moreau]

Tom

It’s good to know there will still be some ‘Macness’ in your life. For me, it is hard for me to separate the editorial work from all the other media, sound, music composition, visual, writing, organization, database, email, web, podcasting, etc that I do, because a lot of that Mac stuff will need to integrate into my edits. I don’t go into an ‘office’ and sit down to work at my edit station, Premiere Pro is one of a dozen apps I have open and running at once in order to do what I do. I foresee it will be difficult to integrate the PC for just edit work, at least for me.

A while back I was a software developer among other things, and I developed for both Mac and Windows. I used Windows judiciously and where I needed to. When the Intel Mac’s came out, and even before, most of my Windows boxes were relegated to the dust bin, as virtualization on the Mac, such as with Parallels or more recently VMWare Fusion, there was really no need to have a a hardware PC anymore. The performance of Windows in virtualization was more than enough. I still use VMWare, as there are number of media utilities I need that are either not available or better on Windows. However it’s just a like an app within my Mac.

Back when I was developing software using PC hardware, I invested in a very high end “KVM” box that supported 4 PCs or Macs or Sun workstations with one Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse. It worked, but it was a pain. In my recent foray into PC land I also got a KVM and it’s a pain. Maybe because it doesn’t work that well, or maybe the cables they supply are low quality – it’s going back like the PC… but anyway it’s a big imposition, maybe one I’ll have to take as these days I’m editing a lot, but still, a major pain.

I am even considering getting a Mac Pro 12 core even though I know it is probably 1/2 the machine you just got from HP (if that – you really went to town on that one – congrats) just to get some usable performance for a year or 2 more until the ‘new’ Mac Pro or Mac Mini with extra Thunderbolts or whatever Apple comes up with appears.

Anyway, thanks for you input, all the information and research you have shared, your insights into the support issue, which I think is very, very wise. One of my first PCs was a server-class HP, and that HP in-home / office service came in handy multiple times!

-Keith

[Keith Moreau]

Yeah, this post quickly turned into a “What PC should I buy” which is somewhat of a testament to the scarcity or possibly shyness of Mac users in this forum. The switch from Mac to PC, if I do undertake it, will be major for me and debilitating in a lot of ways, just because I’m really in the Apple/Mac universe and I’m very proficient in it.

My limited experience with the ‘creative pro’ aspects of Windows (and I’m going to keep trying, I haven’t yet given up) leads me to the belief that it may be an ‘all or nothing’ switch. I don’t really see the practicality of just using the PC for Premiere Pro and keeping the rest of my creative life on Mac, the short amount of time I tried was quite inefficient.

However, it does seem that Premiere may work better on a PC, and PC hardware, at the current time, seems to be faster, possibly because Premiere just works better on PCs, or maybe because the latest Mac Pros are not that ‘cutting edge.’

Jim, I am particularly intrigued by your response that a 6 Core Mac is doing well for you. I have an 8 Core non-hyperthreaded Mac, and I find that most AVCHD, particularly AVCHD from my Sony FS100, is very sluggish and laggy. Even though I do have 24GB of RAM, an SSD Boot/Application drive, and an NVidia Quadro 4000 already, and very fast RAIDed internal and external eSATA drives. It really points to the fact that I have an ancient Mac. However for most other things, other than editing AVCHD, it’s plenty fast.

So can you tell me if you use AVCHD and how well it works with Premiere on your Mac Pro 6 Core? And if there are any others out there that have the 12-core models, please chime in!

Thanks much!

[Keith Moreau]

Tom, what was the exact model you got, speed, config etc, and if I may ask, how much was it? I went to the HP Site and found it really quite confusing and it also seemed the 16 core models were also lower speed CPUs. Do they offer a i7 model for those that might not need all those cores?

Did you also get the NVidia cards through them or do you plan to install things separately?

[Keith Moreau]

I guess I’m going to try to bring this thread back to my original question, which may have been buried in my own verbosity in the original post. Perhaps I’ll do this more directly, please respond if you are:

1) Editors that have both Mac Pro 2010 / 2012 and 3930K i7 6 core PC’s
2) Editors that have the newest Mac Pro, either 12 Core 2.93ghz or 3.09 ghz, or 6 core 3.33ghz AND a 3930 i7 6 core at 3.3ghz or higher Windows PC

Now that the parameters have been set:

Is either Mac Pro slower or faster than your Windows i7 when playing AVCHD footage in single or multiple layers? Please try to quantify it. I’m not necessarily looking for the ultimate speed demon, I’m must seeing if replacing my aging Mac Pro 2008 with a 2010/2012 model is even worth considering.

Thanks so much!

[Keith Moreau]

Yes, that seems like one of the top choices for switchers, but, what if I don’t want to switch but ‘upgrade’ my aging 2008 to a 2010? Will I get something that I can scrub a few layers of AVCHD acceptably well or will it be the sluggish, somewhat frustrating experience I now have with my 2008 Mac Pro 8 Core?

That’s really my question. I do realize that without any other factors, PC is THE WAY to go for price /vs performance. But what about just performance and accepting that the Mac Pro isn’t a very good deal. Will I be happy with a “new” Mac Pro?