Nathan Tinsley
Forum Replies Created
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I have had similar stability frustrations with CS4 but I but I think I may be on to why it is occurring. First of all the system that I’m using is roughly as follows.
Dell Vostro 410 Workstation
3 gigs ram
Quad Core Processor
Sata Raid 5 array
NVIDIA GTX250 graphics card
Premiere Pro CS4
Windows XP
Cutting Exclusively HDV sequences.Again that is a very rough description of the system. This system does NOT belong to me, nor is it set up the way I would prefer meaning it’s connected to the net, it’s got Norton Anti-Virus software and it’s running XP instead of Vista. So it can’t make use of all the ram and it’s hampered by the 32 bit architecture instead of 64 bits which, I’ve read, is really where Premiere Pro would like to be. That’s strike one.
Strike two is that I’m working in HDV NATIVE! Which is a HUGE tax on system resources. Even though I have a quad core cpu and a relatively good graphics card I find the system boggy from time to time on playback. There just doesn’t seem to be enough clock cycles to go around. I have also had horrible luck rendering large sections of the timeline. I can almost count on a crash 100% of the time. I have to move the work area and render in chunks. Again if you work in HDV natively you really are working with a format that was NEVER meant to be edited. I really think a better idea would be to try an intermediate codec like cineform to “get out of the GOP” as they say or get out of that heavily compressed long GOP(group of pictures) format that HDV is! The thing is if you do that then you pretty much have to upgrade your storage to a raid array that can increase your video bandwidth. I know it’s cheaper to work with HDV on the front end of shooting and capturing but we really pay for it on the editing end of things in time, frustration and missed deadlines.
If it were my machine I would trick it out with brand new processors, maybe even 8 cores, tons of ram, like 8-16 gigs if possible and Windows Vista 64bit. Then I’d like to see how it handles an HDV workflow. I’m pretty sure it would be more stable. Baring that a perhaps cheaper alternative would be to upgrade your storage to a faster raid array and covert your HDV footage to an intermediate codec and try editing again. Basically that would take the load off your processor and make your edit experience smoother. I really don’t think that going back to CS3 would help you here but it might. I too lost hours of work on a project that corrupted. That’s infuriating. I dialed up the autosave to every 5 minutes and 30 versions to combat that. I don’t know what else to do regarding that one. I’m always gun shy that I will loose a project.
Well that’s my two cents. I don’t know if it helped or not. Good luck.
Nate
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Did you try changing the options for your device control in the capture tool?
Go to the CAPTURE. Select the SETTINGS TAB. In the DEVICE CONTROL area make sure that DV/HDV device is selected. Click the OPTIONS button next to that and experiment with the choices there:
Brand : Select your camcorder’s brand
Type: Standard, alternate1, or HDV
Timecode format: Auto, Drop Frame, Non-Drop.If that doesn’t help I would personally uninstall the card and reinstall it in another slot if possible.
Good luck,
Nate
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Thanks Gary. I understand the point. I’d had to have dropped frames!
Nate
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Gary thanks for that critical info. H.264 is out. I will conduct tests with Photo Jpeg.
Walter thanks for your tip. Could you elaborate just a bit on your choice? =)
How do either of you feel about selecting the external firewire drive as the capture scratch location?
Nate
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I think that may be a key that premiere won’t let you re-asign. I know! Maddening! I mean if it’s a customizable keyboard then it should be ummm… CUSTOMIZABLE! To whatever you want! But I digress. The short answer is try another key combination. How about shift+c or ctrl+c?
Nate
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Yes you can! Just be prepared for a looooooong render time as the time line gets ready to go back to your Z1U! This process is the big GOTCHA when it comes to editing with this type of heavily compressed footage. Beware if you ever use this with some kind of deadline coming up. Also make sure you have the timeline actually selected before you export to tape. Just scrub it a bit or something. If your source viewer is selected it will export the clip in the source viewer and NOT your time line!
Nate
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It used to be control+K but they removed that as a keystroke after ver 6.5. It’s actually referred to as “Razor at Current Time Indicator” or something very close to that and this command is in the SEQUENCE menu at the top of the application. In your customize keyboard settings look for the SEQUENCE section and drill down through it to find that command. Then click to the right of that command and hit your OWN keystroke! It will fill in for you and may tell you that it was in use by some other command but don’t worry, it will take whatever you give it.
Nate
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Your bigger issue right now is how was that DVD made for you?
If it is a data DVD with video clips burned onto them as data you may be alright and don’t have to use Premiere at all. I assumed you wanted to use premiere to capture your footage. The other issue you may face in this direction is that you may not have the codec required to view and edit those clips in AE. But if the planets align and both those things go in your favor then you would copy the files to your hard drive first and then import them into AE.
If this DVD is what I’ll refer to as a “Set Top Playable” DVD meaning that it is formated for a set top DVD player then you really are in a bind. This is because at that point it becomes very time consuming and problematic to get the footage off the DVD. You have only two choices at that point. One is to try and use a DVD ripping program to selectively remove sections of the videos you see playing and save them as individual video clips. I’ve never been able to get this to work well and anyone else that know’s of a good program for doing this please speak up. The second option involves hooking up your DVD player’s video outputs to a capture card in your computer and capturing the footage directly into AE. I’ve never captured directly to AE but I know that AE added that feature in version 7.0. The only problem with that is that HD capture boards are expensive. Which brings up another question. Is this a standard definition DVD or a high definition DVD?
Please respond.
Nate
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FIXED IT!
Before the reinstallation of the NLE I had saved my prefs in a secure location. I copied and replaced the entire folder named “3.0” which was here:
C:\documents&settings\user\application data\adobe\premiere pro\3.0
…where “user” is whatever logon your user account is. Once I over wrote the new “3.0” folder with the old one everything went fine! Within the 3.0 folder is another folder called “Media I/O” and perhaps this is what really did the trick. I don’t know but it’s done! And I am happy! Make sure that you’ve allowed your windows browser window to see hidden files or you’ll never see the folder called “Application Data”.
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One other thing of importance is that I am using a serial wacom tablet in conjunction with a USB to SERIAL converter. I just realized that Beta capture was working just after the NLE rebuild. The tablet installation took place a few days later. I think this may be the source of my issue but all my attempts to uninstall both the tablet and the USB to SERIAL converter device have failed to fix the issue. Luckily I do have an image of the drive just after the rebuild so if I have to I will re-image the drive. Ugh.
Nate