Merlin Vandenbossche
Forum Replies Created
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Hey,
If you are looking to upgrade your current laptop, I honestly would only recommend that 2019 macbook pro you mentioned. It’s the only machine in this list which will sufficiently up your CPU, RAM and GPU compared to what you have right now. You get better CPU, twice the memory and a better GPU. So it has the best chances at improving your experience.
I would strongly avoid the 2013 MacPro, since it is not only old, but also just plain worse than even your current setup. Premiere doesnt like Xeon CPU’s that much and the i7/i9 is highly likely to outperform it in any situation. Those machines are also notorious for overheating.
I would not yet recommend any of the M1 macs at the moment, since Adobe does not have a native ARM version of Premiere Pro yet. It is in beta, with a reduced set of features right now. I’m also not sure it would really outperform your current setup, since most benchmarks we know focus heavily on comparing it to the machines the M1 replace (and the numbers are very promising in those situations). But outperforming the original Mac Mini or 13 inch macbooks is not that difficult a feat to accomplish. The M1 is an insanely promising future to look out for, but I would wait for the higher end machines like a 16 inch of 27 inch iMac. Adobe will have caught up by then too and all will be well.
One extra route to look for is to augment your setup with external hardware to help you offload the task of the screen sharing to the external device. A combination of a dedicated hardware encoder like BMD’s web presenter (which converts Premiere Pro’s video output to a sort of webcam stream) and Loopback Audio (which allows you to route PPRO’s audio to a zoom call) might also reduce the strain on your CPU needing to encode the video for screen sharing, keeping more power for the NLE software. Found info on that here: https://sofimarshall.com/real-time-remote-editing/
Good luck to you!
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Transcoding will likely be your best option. And do so in an I-Frame only codec (ProRes, DNxHD, Cineform). Only that way you will have frame accurate scrubbing. H.265/HEVC is a tough and heavily compressed format which will pose plenty of challenge for most systems. It is GOP-based, meaning it doesn’t store all frames at full size and constantly needs to compute to calculate the remaining frames. Hence the poor scrubbing and occasional dip in real time playback.
It can run better on specific hardware configs: on windows decoding on Nvidia NVENC GPU, on mainstream intel CPU’s helped by QuickSync or apparently also quite well on the new M1 macs that have specific chipsets for this kind of compressed video. Alas, I am sad to inform that Xeon CPUs (Mac Pro, iMac Pro) have always been notoriously bad at H.264/H.265 compression. Here’s a video of a well known tech youtuber who experiences the iMac (which has mainstream i9 CPU) is just better at all this than his much more expensive Mac Pro. My experience at work is much of the same.
https://youtu.be/4MdMFfoQP14?t=314
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I have found Resolve to be fairly hardware intensive. Once you reach a certain threshold it’s often faster than competitors like Adobe’s software. But below it, it is struggling harder than what the competitors do. I remember a review/benchmark by Max Yuryev of the (old) low-end macbook pro’s for example and it would surprisingly hold up well for FCP X and Premiere but not at all on Resolve. I see students of mine struggle a lot as well with laptops that are <1000 EUR.
It is generally also very GPU-oriented, so having sufficient power there is always going to be important. Looking for a good experience you could go both PC or Mac:
Windows: check out some of the benchmarks by Puget Systems inside of their Resolve articles. You can compare what parts perform well compared to others.
If you are looking for reasonable enough prices, I’d look to have a system built (by a vendor) on Ryzen 5600X or Intel i7 10700k for CPU (both <400 EUR) combined with RTX 2060 or RTX 3060 (you will not yet find the 3060 at normal prices though as they are getting scalped now). Both CPU/GPU perform very well on par with their more expensive counterparts. The get 32 GB of RAM and SSD to load up your software/media.
Mac: The new M1 macs are actually doing very well. You can get a version of Resolve 17 in beta that works natively on the new architecture. So I would probably consider an M1 Mac Mini or Macbook Pro. The M1 iMacs are coming, but likely at the earliest 6 months away. Buying Intel Macs is bad value now unless you buy a little higher on the ladder like 27-inch iMacs.
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There is no general setup of RAW settings anywhere in Premiere Pro. The only route you can take is to change the Red Source Settings for one clip and save that setting as a preset (R-Click on ‘Red Source Settings’ – Save Preset). Then apply that preset from the presets menu in the Effects tab to the other RED clips (drag and drop the preset on the clips in the Project Window).
By default the new version of PPRO 14.8 should now BTW use Red Wide Gamut and Log 3G10 when importing new RED clips, no longer forcing any other color gamuts or gamma curves.
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Your options are by and large still the same: add a Lumetri Color on top using an adjustment layer or on a clip to clip basis. This gives you the most flexibility.
You could alternatively also create the look you want on an example clip in the timeline using Lumetri, save that as preset (R-Click on the Lumetri effect in Effect Controls), then apply (drag and drop) that preset on clips in the project window to apply it as a ‘master clip effect’. Now everytime you edit in clips they will carry the color with them. There are some caveats with this though: I find modifying or removing master clip effects a bit of a drag (doing it clip by clip). And you may encounter issues when sending out through interchange formats (XML) or when archiving/consolidating.
You can also apply this created preset to a newly created adjustment layer in the project window: just drag the preset on the adjustment layer in the project window. This way everytime you drag and drop that particular adjustment layer in the timeline it will carry the color information to underlying clips. I think this is a smarter idea if you are looking to apply a general look to everything. And modifying one adjustment layer later is easier than multiple clips.
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Premiere Pro generally uses GPU’s for a (limited) number of things:
– Real-time playback of GPU accelerated effects (all effects with the play arrow symbol)
– Acceleration of Lumetri Color adjustments (which is a GPU accelerated effect)
– Acceleration of resizes (motion tab)
– Debayering R3D source footage / better playback for RAW video formats
– (New) Decoding and encoding H.264/HEVC (smoother playback / faster export)
– Video output through Mercury Transmit to a full screen monitor
Getting a newer GPU will improve smoothness with any of the above things. So you might be able to bump up the playback resolution when playing your R3D footage. You can add more effects without breaking real time playback, lumetri wheels and such will respond smoother and you will export H.264 faster. If you are noticing any trouble with any of these tasks now, it could be worth updating. One way to test is to look at your GPU usage while working (in windows task manager). See if it fills up or bogs you down in any way.
I’ve always found the GTX 1060 to be sort of the old ‘baseline’ GPU for Premiere. It is what enables the first sort of smooth experience without breaking the bank. Today I would consider the RTX 2060 the new baseline (soon to be replaced by RTX 3060 if they are available). It means that buying anything more expensive is more of a luxury thing or to fill specific needs (like for those doing many effects or RED footage or those using other apps like Resolve). Usually the much more expensive RTX 2080 ti or RTX 3090 are overkill though for PPRO and the law of diminishing returns really kicks in. The marginal increase in performance really is not worth the extra cost for those, compared to the ‘regular’ RTX 2080 / RTX 3080.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=64708
https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=64709
https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=64710
The guys over at Puget Systems have great benchmarks for all PC components in different creative apps. The older 1060 is not on this list anymore, but let’s say it scores around 20 percent or so lower than the 1080 Ti. As you can see, an update to RTX 2060 could already yield great result, perhaps even no need to go beyond that.
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Choosing/building a new system can be a pretty daunting task. So much depends on your needs and even more on your budget. In the best case scenario you future proof yourself as best you can. So that means you might wish to buy into new tech as much as you can. That could mean a number of things today:
– You might want the latest gen of CPU chips (Intel 10th gen or AMD Ryzen 5000 series)
– You might want the latest gen of GPU chips (Nvidia RTX 3000 series or AMD 6000 series)
– You might want fast up to date storage (NVMe SSD)
– You want enough memory (32 GB+, potentially even 64 GB+)
– You might want latest gen of connectivity tech (Wifi-6, 2.5+ Gbe ethernet)
Last year was a good year for tech, we had plenty of leaps from some companies in their generation of products: Nvidia launched a strong leap in performance for their GPU line-up, AMD renewed both their GPU and CPU line-up and ofcourse Apple took to its own path with the M1 chips. All of those increase performance for us editors by a good amount. But the giant problem you will face today is that a lot of that tech is being sold at too high a price or won’t be available at all due to stock issues and extreme high demand. Good luck finding a RTX 3000 series GPU today. The Ryzen 5000 might also prove difficult. Yet despite this I do feel you can still get on board with at least a number of these techs if you buy carefully.
Now if you look at one of the links you provided:
There’s a clear number of issues there: it’s 9th gen Intel CPU (9700K), previous gen RTX 2060 GPU, Wifi-5,… In other words, you are buying slightly older tech that has been on the market for 1,5-2 years already. And you are missing out on some advantages.
The problem with commercial marketplaces like best-buy is they are often selling old stock. If you would build a PC yourself or let a specialty store build it for you, you can make the right choices about what gen hardware you are buying. Those 1500 dollars might not get you those RTX 3000 today (still too high in demand), but it can get you 10th gen intel (10700k) and a board with wifi 6 and maybe even 32 GB of memory around the budget range. The Puget systems someone adviced about, while arguably expensive, are great: they offer latest gen on everything so you are not buying yesterday’s tech.
If you are looking to really buy today I would look specifically for some parts that are current gen: like for instance a combination of 10th gen intel, wifi-6, RTX 2000 series GPU. You can add RAM yourself later or swap out GPU’s when 3000 series become available. (BTW: never buy AMD GPU’s for Premiere Pro, Nvidia is better on windows on all accounts due to the more optimal integration because of CUDA). Or do as I would do today: let all the early adopters have at it with the inflated prices on the new tech and buy that generation when it becomes more readily available later in 2021.
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You have probably already done this, but a good place to start is to dump the cache files manually (delete the cache folders from the user/library/application support/adobe/common) and reset preferences (hold alt + shift when starting the app) to get a “clean start”. Are you having issues after directly linking/importing the proxies instead of linking through the proxy workflow? Your system should have no issues with cineform at lower res. It may also indicate a storage issue, what drives are you using? Can you verify those work at full and reasonable speed? Perhaps try to link to files on another drive as a test measure.
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I was immediately thinking of cinedeck (https://cinedeck.com/cinedeck-ingest/), which can insert edit into files based exports without re-exporting. Maybe it can also add metadata? I am also thinking of kyno right now, which can also add metadata to files. Not sure though if it can only do that in its own library or as a sidecar.
But tbh, maybe even prelude/premiere pro works? I remember a workflow once where we added markers to .mov files on the server and those would be “saved” onto the quicktime files themselves (no xmp) for use by others. Some metadata can be added to files instead of on a project basis (check the metadata panel) and .mov can store metadata without sidecars. Maybe you are in luck.
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First suggestion: clean preferences and media cache. Hold down shift + option when launching the app and say yes to cleaning the preferences. Make sure to reset your prefs as desired afterwards. Clean out the media cache folders by deleting them manually. Always do both of these on any upgrade to the software.
Second thing to consider: I see you are using a mac on an nvidia gpu, so its best to check drivers. Check nvidia website for latest version of their drivers or try switching to apples drivers. Try to find what works best. (You can usually switch the drivers at the top right of the mac os interface, or check in system preferences)