Adobe Premiere & Premiere Pro discussions from 2004

[Rob Easler]

One way woud be to make a matt in Vegas of what you want then drop it in Premiere.

[Glenn Chan]

2. If in the case of using ATA, should i consider RAID to boost performance?

If you are going to RAID, I assume you will use two drives that are of the same model and capacity. Mismatched drives means you lose capacity and lose performance (which really defeats the point of a RAID, although in some cases it could theoretically be useful). I also assume you are talking about RAID 0, and not the other RAID levels (most of which offer protection against hard drive failure).

What RAID 0 does:
It alternates/stripes data onto both hard drives. This is so that data can be read off both hard drives simultaneously. You can theoretically double the rate at which data is transferred off your hard drive. Please note that this does not double hard drive performance.

Performance of RAID 0 vs just one hard drive varies a lot and depends highly on what you want out of your hard drive. The RAID controller you are using also makes a big difference. For desktop/home user/workstation use, typically your main problem is program loading times. RAID 0 offers little performance gains (and is many cases *decreases* performance) at a high cost. Generally speaking it is never worth it for that usage.

File/web/database servers are different.

For some programs, your hard drive is used as a scratch disk when you run out of RAM. RAID 0 would help here, but it makes sense to get more RAM in the first place.

If one drive in the RAID fails, all your data is lost. Some data recovery may be possible, but it may be much more expensive than usual. Also, the RAID controller you use can also give you problems- quite a few of the on-board RAID controllers on motherboards have problems (i.e. data corruption).

DV:
Performance-wise, RAID makes very little difference. Any somewhat modern 7200rpm hard drive will have more than enough speed for DV editing. In a few special cases, RAID does give improved performance:

A- File copies. In some situations you will run into this. However, file copies are generally fast. You'd also get better performance by copying from one hard drive to another, instead of copying a file on a RAID to itself.

B- Very simple renders. This is just like A to a lesser extent. In Vegas, RAID might make a few percent difference when you are just rendering the color corrector filter. That's not much!

C- Your system can get so many streams of real-time that your hard drives can't catch up. DV needs roughly 3.6MB/s of sustained transfer. Your hard drive/RAID's sustained transfer rate should be roughly three times that, since your hard drives waste a lot of time moving the heads back and forth (no data is transferred when that happens).

Splitting your video files onto 2 seperate hard drives will give better performance for this scenario, but it gets harder to manage footage that way.

Other formats:
You may need some sort of RAID to get the sustained transfer rates needed to edit the format in question (uncompressed, HD, etc. etc.).

2-

what would be my ideal set up?

My previous answer is inappropriate as I do not know how fast your combination of adapter card + SCSI drive should be. It depends a lot on how good the SCSI drive is.

[Loren White]

Out of no where I suddenly cant edit clips in the cropping moniter.. Its just a white screen whenever I try to view clips in that moniter. I tried reinstalling... Any other ideas?

[Rob Lohman]

Which version of Pro are you running? Did you install/upgrade to
the latest version of Pro? I assume you also rebooted your
computer at least once?

[Saturnin Kondratiew]

p4 3.1ghz
1 gig ram
120gig
40gig
win xp
premiere pro
cd burner
ati 9800pro

works like a charm

[Ed Smith]

Hi Kent,

PP has a strobe light effect in the stylize video effects folder. You can then adjust the parameters in the effects control window where needed.

Is this what you are after?

Thanks,

[Kent Metschan]

I've tried that but unless I'm not setting the parameters correctly I don't think that's what I want. I swear the effect is called strobe. It's where you see every 5th frame or so and seems to be used on every city access channel show. The strobe "light" effect has that flashing light like a club.

[Glenn Gipson]

Can I just walk in to any computer store and blindly buy a PC for Premier without having to worry about hardware conflict issues with the software??

[Steven Gotz]

Pretty much any PC that you can buy new today will have Windows XP and enough power to run Premiere Pro. Just make sure you get one that has a video card with the capability of supporting GPU effects, and make sure it comes with a 1394 firewire connector.

[Glenn Gipson]

Oh good, so I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not this motherboard, or that motherboard works with Premiere?

[Steven Gotz]

Only if you are going to buy a fancy capture card. Then you need to check to see what is compatible with Canopus or Matrox.

But not with Premiere Pro as long as you go Intel, or an AMD with SSE instruction set, which they all have now, I believe.

[Glenn Chan]

You might need a minimum of 512MB RAM. I don't use Premiere Pro often but your system will probably run smoother with a minimum 512MB of RAM. The Adobe site recommends 1GB?

2- I'd probably get a PC off monarchcomputers.com if living in the States. They charge you street prices for parts plus a $50 build fee, and have an excellent resellerratings.com rating. I have no experience buying from them however.

Advantantages
Good price. The DIY route is cheaper (you can get better street prices off newegg.com and save on the build fee- not worth it IMO). Some of the OEM computers can also be cheaper, but only on the low to midrange end.

The main advantage of getting a custom-built computer is that you get to choose whatever quality parts you want in your computer. If you ask on forums like this one you can get a lot of information on what parts to get (remember to post your needs, like whether you need DVD burning and what your budget is and how much storage you need and what you're trying to do).

After that, you get a few advantages from not having to deal with the BS that comes with OEM computers:
1- poor technical support. see dell's resellerratings.com rating
2- proprietary parts. Proprietary motherboards limit your upgrades, and proprietary power supplies makes fixing failing power supplies a PITA (power supplies fail occaisionally, but not very often).
3- OEM computers come bundled with lots of unnecessary software. Norton AV can slow your computer dramatically. Use alternatives.
4- Limited expansion. Some like the Dell 2400 and 4600 limit you to two hard drive bays (you can jury rig more). The 2400 line doesn't have an AGP slot, has 3 PCI slots, and only 2 RAM slots

My general recommendation for a DIY/custom computer would be:
Good case with quality power supply- Antec 3700AMB is great (comes with honestly rated 350W PSU), followed by 3700BQE (quieter, more expensive)
Pentium 3.0"C" 512kb cache (don't get the prescott, which has 1MB cache and may be labelled 3.0E) 2.8, 3.2, 3.4ghz models also good.
1GB RAM- You are fine with the cheapest stuff. Brand name RAM like Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, and Kingston are also good (better warranty and support, less likely to be bad). Do not pay the premium for crazy enhanced latency or overclocking RAM (waste of money).
DVD burner- Nec 2510a, sony, Pioneer, Plextor make good models.
dual monitor video card (I prefer Nvidia) + dual monitors (flat CRT or thin bezel LCDs- ask for recommendations)
Large hard drive(s)- I like the Hitachi 250GB 7k250 (just need one)
mouse + keyboard - whatever works, but MS mouse + keyboard OEM seem fine.
Sound card: M-Audio Revolution 7.1 if you want a decent card for mixing; avoid Creative! *most computer builders may not give you this option of going with the m-audio.
Speakers: most of the consumer stuff is not accurate and inappropriate for mixing. Get Jay Rose's book on audio postproduction and you'll have a good idea of what you'll need. If you have good sound going in and want good sound going out, then go ask the audio forum. Check the audio forum here.

software- winXP Home/Pro, Ultramon for dual monitors (I find this necessary with Premiere Pro- try the trial), maybe antivirus + firewall depending on your needs.

[Matthew de Jongh]

i keep wishing there was a better way to jump between the fixed camera and the handheld camera tracks.

how does everyone else do it?

assuming you have two angles that were filmed as one uncut shot each and you put them on two timelines above/below each other...

does everyone else just do a cut and flip/flop back and forth between which one you want to use for the active video track?

it just always seems that there must be a better way.

i guess if there was a way to make the video tracks active/inactive on a cut by cut basis you could make your cuts but still be able to change back later vs. making the entire video track inactive.

i mean sure you could take the video track you aren't currently using and put it into a track that is just for inactive...i guess i don't do enough multi-camera stuff to feel comfortable enough doing it this way.

matthew

[Loren White]

Thanks for the help..
however i'm an idiot at times.
I had the moniter on Alpha..

hah.

[Debbie Gillespie]

Greetings all.... first post...

I've been lurking around for a bit now trying to find my answers w/o pestering you guys (you're doing far more advanced things than I am!) but I'm getting frustrated now so figured I'd just post :)

I just received a GL2 as a b-day gift -- WOW! As well as Adobe Premiere Pro...

I love taking videos... home movies/nature movies...

I've ordered some books to assist me with PPRO but it'll be another week before they arrive.

I made a short video of the sky above our home on the 4th of July that includes a full double rainbow, with sheet lightning, and fireworks (the yard was amazing that night!) and I of course want to share it on the web...

My AVI video is perfect.... good color great quality etc. (we wont discuss the camera holder or the fact that the cam was in easy mode lol) but it's 835MB...

My web version is terrible. It's small enough but the quality leaves a LOT to be desired. I've saved this thing so many times now (which takes forever) and nothing is quite working out.

Can anyone offer me a recommended preset (or custom) to save this video in? I'd prefer something that would play in windows media viewer but if it comes down to it..I can also go with RealMedia...

There's soooo many options and so far my clicking around isn't getting me results... I just want something 30MB or less with the best quality it can muster up (realizing it wont be perfect).

Here is the poor quality version of the video...
http://www.picolio.com/Video/Natures...elebration.wmv


Thoughts? Help?

Thanks in advance!

Deb

(p.s. I've really enjoyed reading these forums..you guys/gals are fantastic!)