Hard Drive Help Please

M

mhood

Veteran
I'm trying to build a setup for editing my new 7D stuff. I've upgraded Premiere Pro to CS4.1 and optimized my Lenovo T61p (64 bit Vista) Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 @ 2.40GHz. I can't smoothly play the few native 7D clips I've downloaded and I'm hoping that's due to the fact that I'm running CS4.1 *and* the clip off the same c:\ drive.

I'm now shopping portable drives for something that will be fast enough via the T61p's built in Firewire 800 port and small enough to be considered portable. I've also discovered eSATA PCMCIA adapters and might could go that route. I've read that 7200 rpm is a must have. In something I saw on Mr. Bloom's blog, I *think* I spotted this LaCie 320GB 7200rpm portable drive:


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=481918051&pf_rd_i=507846

I've also found this 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" drive on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110403883278&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I would really like to find a 1TB 7200 2.5" drive that would do but most of all I want a drive that will play back the native 7D footage and make editing in Premiere as much fun as it ought to be.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Perhaps I should have posted to the Premiere forum? I have so many workflow questions...my D90 was simple AVI and once I installed the right codec, it worked easily on a very old machine with Premiere Pro 1.0. I can't even play back the 7D native 640x480 AVCHD MOVs I've downloaded smoothly, not to mention the 720 and 1080 stuff...it's a herky jerky nightmare.

Any suggestions where to turn for 7D workflow information?
 
Sorry, I have very little information about Premiere. Simply haven't spent any time with it.

The h.264 codec is really rough on computers and difficult to play back properly. For editing in FCP, it is essential to transcode to some other codec (most recommend ProRes LT or another version of ProRes). Is there any way you could transcode your footage into an intermediary codec for editing, before reconverting for the print?

Before you start buying HDDs to increase performance, I would look into the codec, first.
 
As I understand it (and I could always be totally wrong in my understanding), Premiere CS4.1 is capable of working with native AVCHD files. I understand it requires a "Cuda enabled" GPU. I have a NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M in my T61p Lenovo and a check on the NVIDIA website ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html ) verifies that my GPU is Cuda enabled.

But, it doesn't act Cuda enabled. 7D native footage files all play back jerky. I'm not geek enough to know how to make sure the "Cuda switch" is turned on properly. And yes, I have considered Neoscene transcription of everything but went with a Premiere upgrade to get native AVCHD editing. Hope I didn't screw up...
 
I doubt that the problem is due to running Premiere and playing clips from the same hard drive at the same time.

When an application is launched, the necessary program files are loaded into RAM. RAM is many, many times faster than a hard drive is. If you don't have enough RAM for all of your running applications, then lower-priority files are stored in "virtual memory," which is a file (called "page file") that acts as a more or less seamless extension of RAM but is stored on the hard drive. When the operating system, or an application, has to use virtual memory a lot, then performance on your computer will be brought to a crawl. Other things that similarly impact performance are the speed of your CPU, the speed of your hard drive, and how fragmented your hard drive is. Regular hard drive defragmentation is important for maintaining system performance, especially since the page file's enormous size makes it highly susceptible to extreme fragmentation.

To my understanding, all modern operating systems use virtual memory to some extent. This is because there are many program files (such as operating system files) that are best left in virtual memory to maximize the available RAM for applications.

The real-world bandwidth of SATA hard drives (which are now standard in all computers) is around 100 MB/s. 7D footage has maximum observed bit rate of 5.5 MB/s. I am positive that the computer spends far more time decoding the footage than it does reading it from the hard drive.

You can pretty much eliminate your internal hard drive as the bottleneck by doing this simple test: Close as many open applications as possible, especially ones running in your system tray. Then run Premiere alone and see how well it plays 7D clips from your hard drive. You should also open Task Manager to monitor your RAM usage. If your RAM usage is peaked, and your clips still play jerkily, then you might want to try installing more RAM. (Note: 2GB is more than enough to run Premiere and play H.264 simultaneously.) Otherwise, your CPU is not up to scratch. Keep in mind that mobile CPUs have markedly lower performance than desktop CPUs do.

But then it could be Cuda all along.
 
also, a lot of users are not editing the raw files from camera. i plan to transcode to another, more edit friendly codec. h264 is more of a delivery codec, not an editing codec.
 
The T61P has 4GB of ram. I did try to play it with QT and CPU usage was a bit over 50%. I also reduced the display size down from 1920x1080 to 1440x1050 and reduced the color quality down to 16bit from 32bit and that seemed to help playback a little bit...but still not totally smooth.

Strangest thing: I moved my 7D native file (the 1080p 24 of the dog catching the frizbee) over to a much lesser machine (Lenovo t60p core2 at 2.16GHz with 2GB of ram) and it played back smoothly in both QT and VLC!

Could this be a(nother) Vista 64bit issue? The machine I loaded CS4.1 onto is Vista 64 and the older machine is XP Sp2.

I really hoped to be able to edit AVCHD MOVs natively but if Neoscene is the solution so be it. At least most any hard drive will probably do at that point. ;-(

I do feel a little ripped off by Adobe though. They claim that CS4.1 works with AVCHD MOVs natively...that's the whole reason I upgraded. My old 1.5 PP would have edited the Neoscene files just fine. :-(
 
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