[Mark Hollis]

OK, I’m working with Premiere on a PC not a
Mac (we’ll transition to FCS when we move to the Mac and that is what I use at home).

In Premiere Pro, look at your Preferences>Capture or Preferences>Device Control (I’m using Premiere Pro 1.5 on a pee cee, so that is as close as I can get to what you are using on the Mac) and that is where the settings changes ought to be. You might also look for Video Hardware as well (if there is such a selection, which may be placed in your Preferences by any PCI-X card you have installed in your Mac, like the BlackMagic or AJA cards).

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

You’re talking a lot of dependencies here.

I’m having no problems with Apple’s Motion and Final Cut Studio in 720P HD with five layers off a single 7200 RPM drive and lightly compressed video on a top-of-the-line dual quad core Mac Pro with 8GB of system RAM and nothing else running.

But I don’t expect 1 stream of uncompressed HD video without a decent SATA or SAS RAID array on the system because one 7200 RPM hard drive just doesn’t have the ability to saturate the SATA channel like an array does.

Premiere Pro will have the same limitations. If you are working in HDV (which is really compressed) and you’re doing several streams on a really new system, you should be fine. But there is a big difference between Core2Duo and Quad Core and dual quad. Also your GPU comes into play with the more modern editing software (though I don’t think Premiere Pro CS4 takes advantage of a GPU unless you have an I/O card with a hardware codec (which is, in itself a GPU) doing the heavy lifting.

If you are looking to purchase, buy as much processor as you can and put at least 8GB (in a 64-bit system) of RAM in it. Get a fast hardware RAID controller card and RAID 0 or 5 stripe your array (you don’t get speed out of RAID 5 until you have at least 4 drives in the array). Buy a very good GPU and understand it will come into its own when (if) Adobe releases CS5.

And remember: You’ll still have to render. It’s a fact of life.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

You need to go into your System Preferences and verify that you are using Firewire and not USB. Your iSight camera is a USB device.

I also wonder if Premiere Pro’s capture preferences are set up correctly as well.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

My next upgrade path will be a Macintosh. So I won’t be concerned with Microsoft’s codecs but I will be concerned about gamma curves and how Apple likes to go their own way.

I think that Microsoft’s Windows 7 introduces a whole new video player that is supposed to take advantage of new GPU hardware (this is a trend in general with computers). And I’ll bet that is your issue.

Again, I would be reluctant to upgrade. You’re getting a performance hit because you want to be the first kid on your block with the new OS and the old editor. If Adobe is saying that their editor will definitely work with Windows 7, then I’d try to open a support case with them and ask how to configure your system.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

OK, you are going from Premiere Pro to Final Cut Pro, so you need to find a way to transfer the Project into an XML file that the Apple application can read.

You can export your Premiere Pro sequence as an AAF (advanced authoring format) from the application. There are some things that won’t translate, but the link will detail those things.

Apple’s Final Cut Studio 7 will import AAF files (also exports them).

You are limited, in some cases, to a 2G AAF file if you are trying to include media in that file. But Final Cut should be able to batch-capture all of your media.

As to re-linking media, I cannot say that Final Cut will re-link. But an Apple Macintosh that runs OS X 10.5 or 10.6 can read all PC-formatted disk drives. Your Final Cut Pro editor should transfer all materials to his or her own drives (or array) on the Final Cut workstation and not work off a FAT 32 or NTFS drive, as FAT 32 limits file sizes to 2 Gigabytes and NTFS may not be supported in Final Cut Pro.

Do some tests first.

Also, do not anticipate that Adobe Premiere Pro will work under Windows 7. There are at least two people in this forum with bad Windows 7 experiences with Premiere Pro.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

I’m not sure I would have upgraded. Adobe has moved one application in its entire line of programs to 64-bit. Frankly, I don’t think I’d upgrade any production computer’s operating system (except as a test bed to see if it would work) until a version of that production software was released and verified by the company that makes it (as well as Microsoft) as ready for that new operating system.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

Version 1 probably won’t run on Vista. You might consider seeing if you can get a copy of Windows XP to run it.

Vista uses many 64-bit drivers for hardware and I’ll bet your problem is in those drivers as well as the (incompatible) 32-bit drivers that Premiere Pro used for VTR control in version 1.

I’m currently using Premiere Pro 1.5 on XP Pro and would not dream of upgrading my operating system for that computer.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

What is it that you cannot do in Premiere Pro? I’m assuming you are working with real audio and not foley and ADR and you don’t need to do sound design.

Sound designers I have worked with have always worked in Digidesign’s ProTools (part of Avid) and they have used hardware controls (that are real time, from what I have seen) But even they do keyframing.

Only reason why I would send just regular video to a sound designer would be to clean up audio that is unacceptable for broadcast. And I’m not running into too much of that.

But for music, you can add stereo tracks, you can do mono (or stereo) audio for primary content (voiceover and dialog) and add effects tracks as needed all within Premiere Pro.

I’ve not attempted a 5.1 audio mix but even the version of Premiere Pro that I’m using (1.5) has that capability.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

Closed Captioning in NTSC happens on Line 21. You can set a Betacam-SP player to not blank that line on playback. It’s in the menu settings on most SP decks.

Now, if you need to edit the material and you’re just inserting a few shots, you will destroy the captioning as you add video on top of (or substituted for) the video from your original captioned source.

So here’s what you do:

Make a two or three-line alpha mask using Adobe’s Photoshop.
Insert the original (captioned) material on your top video layer (you won’t need audio).
Use your Alpha Mask from Photoshop to just insert line 21 and maybe a couple of lines around it.
Verify your work on a monitor that reads captioning.

You should be good to go.

Make sure you save your “Line 21” alpha from Photoshop for the next time you have this problem.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

Don’t automate.

I have been editing on some nonlinear box or another for a good ten years. And I have never been pleased with anyone’s audio automation.

I set overall levels with a Volume adjustment. Then I will change audio in the timeline by expanding the audio channel and keyframing changes, then listening to the result.

Computers tend to suffer from lag when trying to record keyframed audio changes that are done by doing an auto keyframe animation. I want my changes to stick, so I simply don’t edit using automation.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?