CS5 - Could the mother board be incompatible?

[Michael C. Williams]

The problem: Video in Premiere stutters. It'll play for a second or two then pause for a couple seconds while the audio continues... then it'll catch up and play video for another second or two... and repeats this over and over.

The company that built the computer for me recently had to switch to a new (mine is the first of the new) mother board for their systems. Has anyone heard of problems with the Intel Workstation Board S5520SCR?

Other important facts:
Dual Xeon DP Quad-core E5520 2.26GHz Processor
16GB DDR3 SDRAM
QUADRO FX 3800
Matrox MXO2 LE Max

Thank ya much for any insights you may have.

Mike Williams

[Jay West]

Since nobody has responded, I'll jump in.

It is unlikely that the motherboard would be incompatible with Premiere but the symptoms suggest a whole raft of other possible hardware related problems. Unfortunately, I have an MXO2 mini rather than an LE, so I cannot offer any help with that specific hardware. I can offer lots of questions that may help you help narrow this down a bit.

Number 1: are you running Adobe as an administrator? If not (or if you do not know), and you are running Vista or Win 7, right click on the Premiere icon then click "run as administrator."

What kind of files are you working with: HDV, AVCHD, Cineform intermediates, or maybe VOB files? Are the files from a tape capture or from some kind of tapeless media? What kind of audio --- stereo or maybe ac-3 or possibly LPCM from an NX5u? Is this a new project or one you started on a previous system?

What version of Premiere? With your set-up, I'd suspect you have CS5 but maybe you are using CS4 or CS3?

Is your video stuttering when played from the source window or the timeline or both?

What playback devices have you enabled (under Preferences) for audio and video playback? You've got the MXO2 LE Max installed on your system but have you checked to be sure that it is selected in "Preferences"? Also, have you checked to see what is enabled under "Playback" in the drop down menu in the upper right corners of the "Source" and "Program" monitors. Do your sequence presets match your source material?

What is your operating system: Win 7, Vista? Or, maybe this is Hackintosh?

What is your hard drive set-up? From the partial description of your system, I'm assuming that your system drive is separate from your media drive, but how are things arranged? Have the drives been defragged recently? If you are using some variety of Windows, have you made sure that the media cache and scratch files are being placed somewhere other than in your user profile folder on your Windows System Drive? If this started after you had been working on a project for awhile, try clearing your media cache database (under Edit - Preferences -
Media) and if you have been doing some rendering, try deleting you render files (see the Sequence menu).

Is this a problem that started with the very first thing you did after installing Premiere on your new system?

It is possible that you have a corrupt project or there may be problems with memory utilization. If you re-boot and open the project, does the problem persist? With CS4 and CS5, I've found that projects sometimes get corrupt and develop odd glitches like the one you describe. Have you tried opening a new project? Have you tried using different source material?
Have you tried rebooting and opening a new project?

I'm using CS5 with an MXO2 Mini (rather than the LE), and just got some new drivers. That makes me wonder if maybe there might not be some new drivers for your MXO 2 LE, as well?

Can you determine whether the problem has anything to do with your MXO device? If you do not use a Matrox preset, does the problem persist? Does the problem persist when the device is uninstalled?

Also, if you put the video on the timeline and render it, does the problem persist?

Finally, there have been a couple of times over the years when I've had mysterious problems with Premiere and Encore. Adobe support personnel have always suggested that I try creating a new user account, It seems to work sometimes.

[Andrew Clark]

Maybe not much here, but from what I've been inquiring about is the *optimal* DDR3 memory configurations.

Optimal setup would be to have 6gb, 12gb, 24gb, etc.. Another words, try and populate 3 slots at a time per CPU

3x1gb per CPU for 6gb Total
3x2gb per CPU for 12gb Total
3x4gb per CPU for 24gb Total

This may or may not speed up your system...but it may be worth a try.

[Michael C. Williams]

Oops... should have added some of that other info.

As the title suggests... it's CS5 Production Premium.

Win 7... brand new fresh install. Latest drivers and updates for everything
Seagate 15k SCSI system drive
Western Digital Black (this company claims never to have an issue) 1TB x 5 Raid 5
Western Digital Black 1TB utility drive to use as scratch disk
the 16 GB of ram are in 4 GB Simms

It happens in brand new fresh projects with a variety of formats in both the source window and timeline. XDCAM EX, DVCPRO HD, Canon T2i and even plain old Windows DV avi files. The real kick is that the avi files play just fine in Windows Media Player and not in Premiere.

The problem was there before installing the MXO2. We've tried rendering it, and that plays back exactly the same.

[Harm Millaard]

Michael,

Check your raid on sustained transfer rates. The Caviar Blacks are great as individual disks, but the infamous WDTLER utility has caused many headaches when configured in a raid. Maybe that is what causes your problems, because that utility can slow down your raid to USB speeds.

[Bo Skelmose]

What kind of video are you trying to play ?
Cannot see anything in your computer specifications that should limit a simple playback of video.
Did you have CS 4 installed too ?
Do you have the latest MXO drivers for CS5 installed? - they just arrived a few days ago.
You should choose your raid setup as your scratch disk too and leave the extra disk for export.
Which sequence did you choose ???

[Michael C. Williams]

This is a BRAND NEW computer which was built just for Adobe CS5. It has never seen another version of the Adobe software.

When I was trying to play an XDCAM EX 720p60 file... that's the preset I used... as well as using the proper preset for any of the different file types, resolutions or frame rates. Basically, Adobe had problems playing back ANY video format I tried.

At this point, we've tried putting 24GB of ram in per Andrews suggestion, it did not help the situation. We've yet to test the sustained transfer rate of the raid, but I can say that the same stuttering problem was there when playing a clip off of the non-raid 1TB utility drive/scratch disk.

[David Chilson]

This board can be finicky with memory. If you reduce the quality for playback in Premiere does playback get better? You should really run a set of binned memory (guaranteed to run at a certain speed) when doing this and make sure you are populating the correct slots when installing the memory. This should work fine with a lot less memory than what you have installed. Here is a link to the memory for that board: Intel® Server Configurator Tool - Configure Memory

[Michael C. Williams]

Thanks David, and everyone that has taken time to reply to this thread.

The first go around with this system I did try reducing the quality for playback and it did nothing to stop the problem. We then wiped the computer clean and reinstalled everything only to have the problem still exist. The tech who built the machine has been in touch with Adobe and they're baffled by this situation and are looking into it.

I've forwarded this link onto the tech and hopefully it'll mean something to him.

Thanks again everyone for your help with this... I'll be sure to let you all know how it turns out.

Mike

[Michael C. Williams]

The new motherboard has arrived. Adobe support came to the conclusion that the original mb was indeed incompatible with CS5. As soon as I receive the new system in my hands and can confirm that it does indeed work I'll let everyone know which mb we switched to and how it works.