Premiere Pro CS 6 Poor Playback

thefilmaddict

thefilmaddict

Veteran
I have Premiere Pro CS 6 on my iMac (it's about 6 months old). It has 20mb of RAM. I use my 1tb thunderbolt Lacie drive for all of my media. I am using a second monitor as my program monitor (full screen 1920x1080). I shot with my Sony EX1 30 p footage. I linked to the footage on the lacie drive. It looks good on static shots, but when the camera starts panning (even slowly), the program monitor plays back choppy. I am not sure why. I can run the same footage in Final Cut Pro and it plays fine on the second monitor. Do I need to change settings in Premiere? I've tried all type of sequence settings (including matching the footage to the timeline) and nothing seems to help. It's frustrating. Thanks for the help.
 
Also a couple of things. What is your playback resolution set at? You can change it to suit your computer needs. In addition, running a second monitor full screen in concert with your program monitor means your computer is rendering the video twice. You can try dragging your program monitor over to the second monitor and see if that helps. It won't be "true" full screen as you will still have the playback controls visible but it may be a solution.
 
Thanks for the tips. I called adobe support. The tech support guy sounded like he was from India (no judging, just something I noticed). He remotely accessed my computer. He changed the resolution to 1/2, rendered my sequence and closed my second monitor. Playback motion was fixed, but video quality was lower. He basically said Premiere is working fine, but can't handle full quality 1920x1080 xdcam video going to the second monitor. How do I fix this? Do I need an external device from AJA or Kona? I would imagine an external thunderbolt connected device would work best with my iMac. My 2nd external monitor is also an HDTV with HDMI in. What capture/playback device do you guys recommend? I just ordered the new black magic camera, so hopeful the video device could handle 2k playback from premiere too (or be able to down convert it to 1080). Am I asking for too much from Premiere?
 
thefilmaddict said:
I also found this:

http://scruffythinking.com/notes/mercury-playback-and-the-27-imac.html
Click to expand...


I would definitely try that OpenCL hack first!

I don't know what the OpenCL requirements are. For CUDA, it requires a card with a minimum of 768MB of RAM (or whatever is halway between 512MB & 1GB.)

You might just try the OpenCL thogh, no harm. Just create a backup of the .txt file before you edit it.


I didn't think through the iMac limitations. The folks in one link were on a Mac Pro, and were able to install a GTX 570 to use for CUDA only. I just bought a GTX 560 card with 2GB of DDRM5 RAM for my PC for $183, so these are pretty reasonably priced solutions.

Is there any way to run a Nvidia card through Thunderbolt or similar connection that doesn't cost a fortune? Or a better OpenCL card, either in the box or external?


I don't know how much the Black Magic boxes would help. Or transcoding to another format internally using the CPU before editing.. It partly depends on your workflow requirements - time pressures, codec expecattions for output, etc. You would have to look at some good benchmarks on differnt codecs, etc.


I think the best way to solve it would be to get a box with a good OpenCL or CUDA card, and invest the money there. As always, it is a cost/benefit balance. Whjat can you live with, and what are you willing to spend to get better performance.

Let us know what you see on your OpenCL tests. I am on a PC, so I can't test or compare. Others are probably are directly familiar with the iMac. But the GPU's are very imporatant to CS6 performance. They speed up many functions by a minimum of 12x, or 1/10 of the time.

This chart shows the comparitive render times (on a PC) for a number of cards, versus software only Mercury Acceleration:

http://ppbm5.com/MPE Charts.php


That site also has a lot of comparison benchmarks of over 900 real user machines and all of their specs - RAM, CPU, drives, etc - running the same benchmark suite on CS5. A newer site for CS6 is up, but no data yet. It is fun to look at the performance vs. architecture of each machine though.


Basically, in importanvce: 1) CPU, 2) RAM, 3) GPU, 4) HDD's

Good luck!

Michael
 
So as a test, I opened the footage in Final Cut Pro 6 and it played back perfectly. Of course I used xdcam transfer to make the xdcam files work in FCP. I did a ton of sync (2 cameras and music) in Premiere, so I hate to start over. I read about using xml export. I tried it and everything is majorly out of sync in FCP. I am not sure what to do. Playback looking like crap in Premiere is driving me nuts, but going to FCP means starting over because the XML export is messed up. Shoot me!

I did the Open CL hack. It worked, but playback does not seem improved. Perhaps Premiere just hates XDCAM linked footage?
 
I just bought the Blackmagic Ultra Studio 3D. It's made a huge difference. I can play and edit native xdcam linked files with ease. $900 was a big investment for my home edit suite, but this thing rocks. No more transcoding! I love Premiere again.

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