[Neil Myers]

Okay, I tried both suggestions:

1. First, rolled the video driver back. That didn’t work as it gave me the GPUSniffer error and wouldn’t run Premiere.

2, So, I updated to the very latest driver (I have an ATI HD Radeon 4800 card). Now Premiere works again, but still laggy.

3. I turned off all the Windows display stuff.

It is still just as laggy. What is the best video card for Premiere?

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Ignore …

[Neil Myers]

I would suspect that is because the aspect ratio of your project is actually much closer to 4:3 than 16:9.

720 x 576 is 4:3.2 … put in terms of 16:9 it is 16:12.8. So YouTube is probably guessing that your project most closely resembles a 4:3 project.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

I would suggest using the “Fast Color Corrector” filter in Premiere under the Color Correction folder in the Video Effects bin.

Just drag the effect onto the clip and then use the selector tools to select something in the scene that is true white (or close to it) and (optionally) true black.

That usually gets it pretty close. I don’t always select the black point because if I cannot find a good black point (i.e., the point I choose is not dark enough) then the image looks funky. Finding a white point is much easier (teeth work well, for example, or a tee shirt or piece of paper … whatever is in the scene).

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Thank you to everyone’s responses. Jeff, based on your idea I purchased a WDTV Live. Wow! What a great solution:

1. Cheap (like $129).
2. Super simple. I just encoded in H.264 at very high settings and copied to a portable HD I had sitting around.
3. Unbelievably good quality. The video quality was superior to what I can see on my editing platform. I used a new Mitsubishi HD projector and the result was pristine.

Thanks to everyone for helping out at what was a very difficult time for me.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

I just went through a video card search. I was focused more on Premiere than After Effects, but in the end I decided that a simple ATI Radeon HD 4870 would work as well as any, and for $150 I couldn’t go wrong.

CS5 is supposed to make much better use of Open GL, but I decided I would rather spend $150 now and then wait and see. I’ll wait and see what happens with CS5 and upgrade to whatever get’s the best reviews later.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

I found the specs on my older desktop …

Dual-core Intel® Core™2 Duo with 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache, XD, VT, EIST
4GB RAM

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

My current desktop is very similar — i7 920 @ 2.67Mhz and 12GB of RAM. The desktop I used before was different (sorry, I wish I had the specs but I don’t). But it was an older CPU and 4GB of RAM and Windows XP 32 bit.

When I upgraded I went with the i7, 12GB and Windows Vista 64. What a difference!

No more crashing and I can run Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Bridge and Soundbooth simultaneously.

But, I am not sure how much of the improvement was due to each change. I suspect the 64 bit OS and the 12GB of RAM was the biggest thing.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Gary:

I just ordered almost precisely what you have described. I went with a Dell Studio XPS 9000. The specs are:

1 Intel Core i7-920 processor (4 cores)
12 GB RAM
One 1 TB OS drive (SATA) (WD Caviar Black variable speed)
One Project RAID 0 array with 3 drives of 2TB each (SATA) (WD Caviar Black variable speed)
Dual 30″ 2560 x 1600 monitors

As for the video cards … I spent all week trying to figure this one out. It is a very difficult decision. However, I found a site that benchmark’s Premiere Pro windows machines and the top machines all used the ATI Radeon HD 4870 cards. They are less expensive than nVidia Quadro cards, and are actually much faster in many ways. They don’t have the CUDA stuff, but I am not sure that matters very much for Premiere. Maybe more so for CS5, but the card is only $300 … I can always swap it out later if I want.

I have been editing for a while on the predecessor to this Dell (the original Dell StudioXPS 435) and it works like a champ.

By the way, we are planning on doing the RAID and video card ourselves … we ordered a base machine and will upgrade it when it gets here.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

LOL!

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS