[Ryan Holmes]

I’ve always felt this as well. I’ve just chalked it up to the IP based nature of the panel, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s how Resolve is interacting with the panel?

That said, I still love the Artist Color as a panel.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

[Charles Cunliffe] “Whose operating system is 10.8.2? Can you be just a tich more specific for a newby?”

Not sure I understand this question. 10.8.X is Apple’s most current operating system called Mountain Lion. The .X is whatever patch of the system one is running – 10.8.1, 10.8.2, etc.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

For future reference, this would be easily answered by reading the manual!

Fix your layout by going to Window–>Arrange–>Standard. Or use the shortcut keys control+U

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Also, if you have any plugins — Red Giant, Noise Industries, etc. — have been known to generate problems within Premiere. You may need to uninstall them to see if they’re the culprit.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

These are pretty vague terms. You’ll need to be more specific if anybody is going to help you.

Are you using Windows or Mac?
What version of Adobe are you running?
What’s the codec of the file you’re working with?
Are you rendering or exporting?
If exporting what codec are you exporting to (ProRes, DNxHD, h.264, etc.)?
Are you trying to export a mov, avi, etc?
Are you exporting to an internal or external drive? How is it connected (USB, firewire, eSata, fibre)?
How long is Premiere estimating the rendering or exporting to take?

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

You won’t be able to add your existing HDD to the RAID most likely – though with a Drobo you might be able to. Most RAID setups want matching disks – size, speed, etc. So your HDD probably won’t work for that.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep using that HDD as an internal drive . It can still be a good drive to hold stills, export footage to, etc.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

You are correct. A RAID is a set of at least 2 hard drives (can be many, many more) that act in a simple sense as one hard drive. Depending on how the RAID is setup you can go for speed, redundancy, mirroring, etc. As for what type of RAID you want to setup I would implore you to read through a simple primer on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Brand wise, I believe many here on the COW use G-Tech. They seem to be cost-effective and reliable – https://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid.cfm

Some use Lacie – https://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10061

I’ve even heard of people using Drobo to edit from (though I wouldn’t recommend it as Drobo seems to be more for a backup type solution than for fast video editing) – https://drobo.com

If you want more options just do a Google search for external RAID enclosures, or external RAID. You’ll have more options than you’ll know what to do with!

Hope that helps!

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Sounds like it’s time to start considering a new machine. CS5.5 and CS6 are very robust pieces of software. It may be time to look for an upgrade.

As far as hard drives for video editing you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever want to work off of your system drive. Primarily because that drive is feeding your system – apps, cache, temporary disk space for apps that need to write information, etc.. So if you’re trying to feed video files to Premiere from a hard drive that is already spinning to maintain your operating system it stands to reason it will have poor performance for video. In terms of other hard drives, it’s best if you can work from a RAID. If you’re going to work from a single drive (which is possible now-a-days with several formats) you want to maintain some drive space. Once you get over 50% full you’ll start to notice a performance hit where the drive can’t access the information quick enough to get it to Premiere. Once you close in on 75% full then it’s time to buy another hard drive.

You’d have to do some research regarding which video card would fit in your configuration. To take advantage of the CUDA engine inside of Adobe you have to buy a Nvidia graphics card. If you upgrade to a new machine and get CS6, then you could still use ATI as Adobe rewrote some code to take advantage of ATI cards (using openCL). I think on the whole Nvidia cards are still faster in CS6 than ATI, but there’s much more parity across the board in the newer version of Adobe.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

[Mike Squires] “I would consider adding a Blackmagic ATEM TVS in the mix. It’s a nice HD switcher, and you can stream live out of it.”

I second the ATEM TVS switcher ($995). I use one for a weekly podcast program. It takes in 4 HD-SDI signals and audio and pushes out a 1080i signal via HD-SDI or HDMI and a h.264 feed that you can record to a disk as a backup. For the price it’s an amazing little switcher and it’s performed rock solid in my application.
https://blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemtelevisionstudio/

If you like the ATEM I would also recommend looking at a Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 ($330, SSD not included in price) as an inexpensive way to record the HD signal.
https://blackmagicdesign.com/products/hyperdeckshuttle/

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

You have a lot challenging you here Jonathan. Off a quick read of the specs of your computer I would say these are your main struggles:

(1) ATI video card – CS4 was the beginnnign of CUDA engine I believe (maybe it was CS5). However, CUDA technology is an Nvidia language only. ATI cards don’t work on it.
(2) CS4 was not 64 bit (I believe CS5 is the first 64 bit offering from Adobe)
(3) Low RAM – more RAM would help Premiere (however, you’d need to move to a 64bit Premiere to really enjoy a noticeable difference)
(4) What type of hard drive are you running the footage from – internal RAID, external RAID and how is that connected – eSata, Firewire, USB? If you’re editing of your system drive then you’ll probably always see sluggish performance regardless of computer type, Adobe version, or computer specs. Video demands a lot of resources and fast drives.
(5) Also how full is the hard drive you’re grabbing media from – anything more than half full and you’ll likely notice slower performance. As a drive fills up it’s more challenging for the disk to read all the different blocks of data required for 24fps or 30fps video.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes