[Oliver Peters]

The best way to use Audition with Premiere (other than occasional specialized clean up of a clip) is to utilize it as an audio post tool. Just like Pro Tools. Send the sequence to Audition. Mix there. Export a final mix (stereo, 5.1, stems, etc) and re-import those files back into Premiere and attach it to your final master sequence for delivery.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Andrew Kimery] “One project I worked on got completely brought to it’s knees by the iZotope filters I was using (just basic denoisers) and when I contacted iZotope they basically said, “Yeah… we really, really, *really* recommend you export those clips and bring them back in.”
“

I’ve had good luck with audio plug-ins. A few caveats, though. I limit audio plug-ins to track effects and rarely use them on individual clips. Premiere has export problems with some plug-ins, especially when grouped with others. For example, noise reduction plug-ins seem to conflict on export. Typically this class of clean-up/processing plug-ins is best used when bounced out to Audition using render and replace. Any complex audio mixes that involve a lot of plug-ins should be done in Audition anyway. Or ProTools.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

I believe TB3 optical cables are coming. Some interim approaches until then. You can use TB2 opticals with Apple TB2/3 adapters at both ends. Or you can use a Sonnet TB3/10GigE adapter at one of the ends (or both).

I would not assume that the 2019 MP will be too loud or too hot to put into the room. There are enclosures designed for recording studios, of course. However, most modern PC workstation cases have been designed to be cool and quiet, so I can’t imagine anything less from Apple. However, that may not be the case with peripheral gear. For example, I’ve found the BMD UltraStudio 4K products to be too loud for in the suite. Better in a rack.

But, I would recommend putting as much as possible into the server room and then extending displays, keyboards, monitoring, etc into the room.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Bryan Roberts] “I wonder if it’s a smarter move to go Vega 64 since that card is stock in the iMac Pro and I’m guessing Apple will have spent more time optimizing its drivers vs Radeon 7 which they currently don’t offer in any configuration sold by them.”

That’s a good question, but I don’t know. I personally own a mid-2009, which currently has a Radeon 7950 (replaced a Quadro 4000). That’s been the home machine, but it’s largely off these days. I don’t edit at home as much, so my main machine is a mid-2014 MBP, including for editing. It performs as well with HD. Long, hard renders are easier on the Mac Pro, though. I don’t feel like I’m torturing the machine ☺ Also I do some FCPX work and the MBP does way better with FCPX, especially 4K, than the tower.

But back to your tower. I think it’s a bit of an unknown how your machine will do. You’ve modded it from its original 2009 version, so technically it’s not meant to run Mojave, nor be optimized for Metal. I suspect you are moving into trial-and-error land. ☺

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

PS: One thing to remember is that Premiere likes fast single core speeds. With CPUs, the more cores, the slower the speed on each core. So depending on the app, fewer, but faster cores may give you better performance than having a lot of cores in the CPU.

Also, Apple has deprecated support for Nvidia cards, specifically CUDA acceleration. So while an Nvidia card is great in a PC, it’s a detriment now in a Mac running a current OS version.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Bryan Roberts] “Barefeats seems to generally disagree (other than imac pros) which is why I held onto the hope that my 3.46 12 core could hold me off “

Everyone will get different results depending on workflow, media, etc. So I don’t put a lot of stock in benchmark tests. I’m just going from my own experiences with similar types of material. One thing to factor in is that Adobe is dialing in performance improvements with each update. With macOS, that specifically means optimizing for newer hardware, OS versions, and things like Metal. Obviously some of that is a factor.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Bryan Roberts] “it’s faster than all but two trash can Mac Pros in every way (save for Thunderbolt) that Apple still sells as new today (which is highway robbery”

Well, FYI, I work at a shop with 1 2013 Mac Pro, 3 Retina iMacs and 5 iMac Pros. We cut a lot of 4K source, various codecs, shared storage, all Premiere. Side-by-side the newer machines (top end iMacs and iMac Pros) do outperform with trash can Mac in direct comparison. And all outperform the 12-core MP towers that we used to have.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Bryan Roberts] “Yes, I’m very well versed in the Proxy workflow and my proxies are turned on…”

It pretty much sounds like you are doing all the usual things, so I’m at a loss. If Premiere had been handling it fine up to the point of adding the additional files, then I’m not sure what is wrong. Possibly some sort of hardware issue. Is there any way to try this on a different machine?

I do know that Premiere (in my experience) has a tough time with 4K media in a 4K timeline, but there’s not much predictability to it. I presume you are running macOS 10.13.6 and the latest Premiere Pro CC version.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

It may be too late now, but given that old of a machine, a couple of suggestions going forward.

1. Transcode all oddball media to ProRes or DNxHD. This would be RED, A7S, DJI, etc.
2. Use the Adobe proxy workflow.
3. Work in a 1080 timeline and then send to Resolve for relinking, color correction, 4K mastering.
4. Upgrade your hardware.

Premiere doesn’t do particularly well above 1080 with mixed codecs and frame rates on these old machines. Newer Premiere versions are improving in that area, but some codecs, like the DJI and A7S are a disaster to work with.

What sort of storage? Your profile says LaCie RAID. Have you run any speed tests? How full? Are you using effects? If so, which ones? Have you tried rendering timeline sections as you go?

Edit: I reread you post and I see you’ve tried some of this. I would not upgrade this old machine to Mojave. I’m not even sure you can without a terminal hack. Sometimes Premiere projects get corrupt. Try copy and pasting your current timeline clips into a new sequence in a fresh, blank project and see if this improves anything. You mentioned proxies. Have you toggled proxies “on” so that you are actually linking to the proxy files and not the originals?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Not sure if you read the rest of my post”

I did. I was mainly talking about the old towers. The Promise products say more capacities to be announced. So we’ll see.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com