[Mark Buchanan]

Hi again Tom

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to walk me through this. It makes such a difference to know you are not on your own.

So, since your last post, I have bought a sonnet tempo eSATA controller card and installed it. I am now getting massive throughput speeds on my G_raid drive – 254.5MB/s Reading and 219.7MB/s Writing.

It made no difference to the problem – AAAAAAggggghhh!

So, I went back and had a long look at my files and the keynote output file was 2.5Gigs. I went into QT7 Pro and trimmed the file to about a third of its length and re-saved it under a new filename.

I then deleted the old file in my project and used the new, shorter file instead.

Hey presto! problem solved.

So, I am not sure if it was purely the file’s size or whether there was some sort of problem in the first part of the file but either way I am getting instant playback even when I switch in and out of the Premiere pro window.

I am not sure if I needed to buy the raid and eSATA card but I guess I have a more powerful system now which may serve me in the future.

Thanks again for your help and support.

All the best

Mark

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

I’m connecting the RAID with firewire 800 not USB. Apple says that should give me up to 800Mbps. The G-drive does have an eSata connection but I am a bit wary of spending another £170 without being sure it will definitely solve my problem.

By “Switching out of P Pro” I mean, if I switch from P pro to a finder window and then back again, the problem kicks in. So, for example, if I am working in P Pro and then I “Alt-Tab” until I get the Mac OSX double face icon and then Alt-Tab again to get back to P Pro, There will be a long pause after I press play before P Pro responds.

The thing that is puzzling me is that once playback does start, it will play flawlessly from then on as long as I stay in the P Pro window – even with the 3 tracks of HD. Do you think P pro might be caching the video tracks somehow rather than playing them straight from the RAID?

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

Hello again.

Well I went out and bought a G-Tech G-Raid 2TB and have transferred all my footage for this project to it. I have caches and previews assigned to other internal drives so the raid should only be streaming the actual footage files. They are about 25 minutes long so file sizes are around 1.5Gigs each (1280 by 720 HDV @25fps)

I have it connected via Firewire 800 at the moment with no other firewire devices connected.

Basically I cannot see any appreciable difference in the time P Pro takes to respond to the play command.

My project comprises two camera angles plus a video track which is the export of my keynote presentation exported as HDV 1280 by 720 @ 25fps.

If i disable the keynote track and one of the camera angles then i get almost instant response after pressing play. But if I enable either of the other two tracks, the problem kicks in again. Sometimes I get audio but the video does not move and sometimes i get neither for up to 20-30 seconds after which it all plays fine.

Once it starts to play, I can jump around the timeline as much as I want and response is instant.

However, once I switch out of the P Pro window – for any reason – the problem kicks in again.

I have tried with no other applications running but even then, switching to the finder and back will trigger the problem.

What to do?

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

OK. Thanks for the advice. I will sort out a raid and see what happens… I’ll let you know…

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

hi Again Tom

I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 but i have had to dial back some of the quicktime updates as they stopped my system being able to read the files from my firestore FS5 DTE.

I have checked the things you mentioned and they all seem fine.

I am not using a raid. I am using one of the internal drives on my MacPro. I downloaded the AJA system tester and it is giving me read and write times of about 90Mb/sec.

These seem a long way from the figure you quoted for your system. Do you think this could be the problem?

Cheers

Mark

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

Hi again.

My processors are 2.8 GHz and I am editing h.264 footage at 1280 by 720.

When I first open P Pro CS5.5 and then every time I switch windows (say to answer an email) and then back to P Pro, There is a lag of anywhere between 2 and 20 seconds between me pressing the play button or spacebar and the clip actually starting to play.

I have experimented with allocating more ram to other applications (currently I have 7Gig for P Pro and 7Gig for everything else) but that has made no difference.

Strangely, if I click on the monitors icon in the apple menu bar at the top of my screen, that will often trigger the clip to start playing – no idea why.

I have recently made the switch from FCP7 and I am having quite a hard time learning to like P Pro but this issue is making it really hard to stick with P Pro.

It is encouraging to hear that you have such a similar system but without this issue. I wonder what the difference is that is making the issue happen on my system but not yours?

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

That’s interesting Tom

What speed are your processors and how much of your ram have you got allocated to other applications?

I notice you are using a raid wheras I have my file sitting on one of the four internal drives do you think that would make a difference?

Cheers

Mark

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

Todd, I can categorically assure you that this problem has not been fixed in CS5.5 – not on the Mac at least.

I am running P Pro CS5.5 on a macpro 3, 1 with a quadro 4000 card and 14gigs of RAM under Mac OSx 10.6.8 and am having this problem all the time.

Its driving me crazy. I am in the middle of experimenting with hw much RAM is allocated to other applications but it has not worked out yet.

All the best

Mark

MAcPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gig RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac

[Mark Buchanan]

Hi Yes I am having the same problem too – very frustrating indeed. I too have had to move away from FCP7 and am having to grit my teeth as I learn to live with Premiere Pro CS5.5 and its clunky ways.

MacPro 3,1 2 x 2.8Ghz, 14Gb RAM Nvidia Quadro 4000