Oh the ongoing list of PPro3 issues just gets bigger:
1) A playback head the freezes when using dual monitors.
2) A title tool that forgets it's settings and position each time it's opened.
3) Large jpeg and tiff images that refuse to preview or render, and require reboot and/or relinking.
4) Images that flip upside down on their own.
5) The horrible audio drift that occurs when dropping a video frame, requiring recapture with a third party tool.
6) The wonderful apology of were sorry, a serious error had occurred and the application has to be closed.
7) The constant error of system running low of memory, save your work...

Just when I thought all of this was getting boring, I've discovered a new one! Having to tell the bin to properly interpret a 1440x1080i frame grab/still as HDV 1.333 aspect while in an 1440 HDV project. Hmmmm.

I've tried posting on the adobe forums, and for the last two days (after they've rebuilt the site), is having serious issues connecting...

This time, I don't want a fix. My banker and I know of a better solution:

FCP6 on quad mac G5. Buy, install, get work done on time. Get my weekends back. Fix the real problem.

(rant off).

Pete

Man, if I were having all of those issues I would be doing the same thing. I have only personally had problems with the Title tool not holding its settings. I am on Vista Premium. Good luck with your new Mac! I hope you have many happy editing days a head of you.

I think my foot would have meet the mother board a few times! Computers ay? Who would have em.

G5 sounds like a good plan. We use them at college and there a great piece of kit!

Bottom line, and from a business perspective, it's just a piece of software. My clients, whom know little about editing, agree.

The only common issue with going to the Mac route is that it's "pricey". I've heard some issues with compressor. But I'm only interested in editing.

My only advice or reason posting here is that PPro is very picky about the hardware/setup/workflow. If it's not working (as in my case), then its a hopeless situation -and a gamble (unless I purchase the exact same hardware that was used at Adobe to program and test it). In that respect, FCP6 is designed specifically for the Mac platform, and appears to be working well. Makes sense to me.

I'm cutting my very last job tommorrow, after which I'll uninstall it. Fortunately cineform was most charitable in releasing a mac version of their codec for existing prospect owners. That's half the battle already won.

Could always try premiere for the mac :)

If you got intel...

Yeah, going with a G5 of any spec seems like a step backwards. Granted there's a finite lifespan to this being a usable system, but I'm sure more and more programmers are going to get tired of making 'older' software work and will focus solely on Intel architecture.

To avoid any more headaches, I'd say get an Intel based Mac.. Or can you run PPro 2 for now? I don't know if the resolution stuff would be a problem, since I shoot SD :)

Then you have to adjust to a new OS, get all new versions of the stuff you're currently running, etc. It's a big a jump to simply 'switch'.

I had a trial of PPro 3 running here and then changed video card drivers after about a week and it expired. I couldn't get it to reinstall, so I eventually put another hard drive I had kicking around into my laptop, clean installed XP, installed the PPro 3 trial, and it failed, saying it needed to be repaired, then the key was missing, etc, etc. There are definitely a lot of problems with it, and while it did run, it was awesome and so much faster. I'm sure it will be fixed at some point in the next several months (it shouldn't be on the market with all these problems but that's another story)..

But getting back to the point, if you're set on switching platforms, at least go with current hardware. Older technology is nearly always a bad idea (unless it's audio gear ;)

Eric

Oh yeah, I'm going intel mac. I have to purchase the studio in order to get FCP6, and I'll need the recommended quad intel G5. Also, cineform only supports the intel mac.

I also understand that there are similiar issues with PPro3 on the Mac's.

I'm going to gamble on Apple having a better solution.

There's no Intel G5. It's one or the other. Either Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and then I think Xeon versions of each of those.. OR, G5 (older chips)..

Yup, the Mac versions of the CS3 apps all have licensing problems too. The whole thing is a huge mess. On Sept 1 Adobe changed the licensing and invalidated a bunch of already installed and working legal copies of the software through an update that didn't mention it was going to change the licensing. There's a lot of people on adobeforums.com who are very irate over this whole thing. Companies losing full work-weeks and beyond because their apps suddenly stopped working..

And here I thought having the trial stop functioning after 10 days instead of 30 was annoying :(

Your right, I'll stick with intel Mac, "Mac Pro" as the description. Sorry for the confusion.

Yow! I didn't know about the license thing. That's gotta hurt.

I never really understood the trial. I beta tested CS3, but only because I could manually install the cineform codecs and get around the HDV limitation. Even so, the beta worked much better than the release. So I and others were somewhat taken. The beta was a sure replacement for CS2 crash, crash, crash.

CS2 crashed on you? It's been pretty much rock solid for me. CS3 rendered at 100% on my P4 with HyperThreading, which was nice. CS2 is around 60-70% most of the time. But I couldn't even do pre-renders on CS3 without it being sorry for the inconvenience of its own existence and shutting down on me. ;)

Oh the ongoing list of PPro3 issues just gets bigger:
1) A playback head the freezes when using dual monitors.
2) A title tool that forgets it's settings and position each time it's opened.
3) Large jpeg and tiff images that refuse to preview or render, and require reboot and/or relinking.
4) Images that flip upside down on their own.
5) The horrible audio drift that occurs when dropping a video frame, requiring recapture with a third party tool.
6) The wonderful apology of were sorry, a serious error had occurred and the application has to be closed.
7) The constant error of system running low of memory, save your work...

Just when I thought all of this was getting boring, I've discovered a new one! Having to tell the bin to properly interpret a 1440x1080i frame grab/still as HDV 1.333 aspect while in an 1440 HDV project. Hmmmm.

I've tried posting on the adobe forums, and for the last two days (after they've rebuilt the site), is having serious issues connecting...

This time, I don't want a fix. My banker and I know of a better solution:

FCP6 on quad mac G5. Buy, install, get work done on time. Get my weekends back. Fix the real problem.

(rant off).

Pete

I understand exactly how you feel, mine has all of the same problems plus it always crashes in multi cam and It will not export out to encore in the high quality 2 pass codec, goes for first 10 minutes and then crashes.


It is currently with the company I bought it from to see if they cam fix it as I am getting nothing done with it the way it is at the moment. A real bad upgrade from PP2

Listening to this I'm glad I stayed with P v6.5 and the Storm2 card. These two sing together, and as my output is only SD DVD there's little reason to upgrade.

tom.

I never used 6.5. 7 has been really good to me, and they replaced and added a lot of things from 6.5 that made it a good upgrade from what I understand.. But with CS3, man, they've caused some big problems for a lot of people.. :(

Yes, I only do SD as well. The things added to 7 aren't just HD. :)

The new stuff in CS3 was awesome when I tried it, but I'm not going to risk corrupt projects and all the other things I ran into when running the demo, just to get some new features.

On Sept 1 Adobe changed the licensing and invalidated a bunch of already installed and working legal copies of the software through an update that didn't mention it was going to change the licensing. There's a lot of people on adobeforums.com who are very irate over this whole thing.Eric, could you elaborate? Although the Adobe forums seem to me to be quite a mess during their upgrade process, I did look there and scanned the license agreement and activation pages and couldn't find any indication of a recent change in policy or users complaining of this.

Here's a new one:

Power point slides saved as tiffs, import as 1 frame video clips. I had to batch covert to high quality jpegs to be recognized as images.

Importing a powerpoint TIF into a CS3 HD project works fine here.

In the past month, since installing CS3, I can't say I've experienced any of your other problems either (although I havent done titling so can't comment on that one).

But good luck with Mac/FCP anyway.

Importing a powerpoint TIF into a CS3 HD project works fine here.

In the past month, since installing CS3, I can't say I've experienced any of your other problems either (although I havent done titling so can't comment on that one).

But good luck with Mac/FCP anyway.

That's whats frustrating. It's hit or miss with some folks. Not sure why for my situation, as my hardware/software/settings are in spec with adobe's requirements. It could be using a certain kind of mobo, chipset, whatever, (i.e. If I purchased that HP workstation they recommend). Not going there. If I'm going to spend, I might as well chase the combination that is working.

I do plan on paying a visit to the local store in philly, and schedule an appt at their genius bar. I'll see this for myself before purchase.

Well, midnight again, and I've finally managed to start rendering. The project is due at 9am, and I have 5 hours on the progress bar. I spent way too much time manually fixing audio sync issues.

That's whats frustrating. It's hit or miss with some folks. Not sure why for my situation, as my hardware/software/settings are in spec with adobe's requirements. It could be using a certain kind of mobo, chipset, whatever, (i.e. If I purchased that HP workstation they recommend). Not going there. If I'm going to spend, I might as well chase the combination that is working.

I do plan on paying a visit to the local store in philly, and schedule an appt at their genius bar. I'll see this for myself before purchase.

Well, midnight again, and I've finally managed to start rendering. The project is due at 9am, and I have 5 hours on the progress bar. I spent way too much time manually fixing audio sync issues.

Peter, are you using cineform?

Yes, I'm using 10bit prospect with AJA Xena. Most issues are nags. The audio issue is a project killer and reason enough to uninstall and move on.

I've captured both via the PPro and HDlink capture tools. The issue happens on the timeline (the videos play fine outside the editor). I can watch a single frame of video drop, and the audio continues unphased. I have to unlink and cut the audio track and drag it two frames forward to resync.

Even if I wanted to, I cannot use PPro3. I've already stepped back a few versions in cineform (I keep the installation files just in case). Same issue. I have two workstations with completely different specs and hardware. Same issue.

The latest prospect 2k plugin fixed both the playback head freezing and audio sync issues. May have been a cineform issue all along (or fixed adobes issues). No matter, it's working at the present.

Still serious about Mac hardware though, and pressing forward with the switch.

Oh the ongoing list of PPro3 issues just gets bigger:
1) A playback head the freezes when using dual monitors.
2) A title tool that forgets it's settings and position each time it's opened.
3) Large jpeg and tiff images that refuse to preview or render, and require reboot and/or relinking.
4) Images that flip upside down on their own.
5) The horrible audio drift that occurs when dropping a video frame, requiring recapture with a third party tool.
6) The wonderful apology of were sorry, a serious error had occurred and the application has to be closed.
7) The constant error of system running low of memory, save your work...

Just when I thought all of this was getting boring, I've discovered a new one! Having to tell the bin to properly interpret a 1440x1080i frame grab/still as HDV 1.333 aspect while in an 1440 HDV project. Hmmmm.

I've tried posting on the adobe forums, and for the last two days (after they've rebuilt the site), is having serious issues connecting...

This time, I don't want a fix. My banker and I know of a better solution:

FCP6 on quad mac G5. Buy, install, get work done on time. Get my weekends back. Fix the real problem.

(rant off).

Pete

Pete, wondering if you ever made your switch to FCP 6.0 and the Mac Pro.

I completely and utterly agree Premiere is completely unstable. Problems 1, 2, 5, 6, & 7 are experienced on a daily basis for me. And it kills me!

The thing is that I also have a Mac Pro and FCP 6 which I do about half my editing on and while the problems may be in different areas, there are still things about the suite that perturb me nonetheless. Just interested in someone else's thoughts that have gone back and forth between the systems.

Still serious about Mac hardware though, and pressing forward with the switch.
Was wondering also... have you switched?

Here's a *free* alternative: download the Edius trial version - I did and will probably say adios to Premiere, while keeping the rest of the bundle for Audio, still, and DVD work. It is rock solid, not one crash even on mixed sources, pretty much any format you can think of... all the way to DVCPRO-HD captured on a MAC, just finished a project. All of this on a modest setup, to say the least.

Give it a try, you might just fall in love...

Ervin, which Edius product is it that you tried & liked so much? I see 4 versions. I have heard good things about it, but never tried any of them. Thanks.

Those do sound like some extremely frustrating problems... Interestingly enough though, I've only run into very few unexpected crashes. Every single one of those crashes happened on a small AMD based HP desktop. I also occasionally see those "low system resource" warnings, but only on the machine I mentioned. I'm thinking it's because the machine in question wasn't really intended to be used as a video editing machine. Anyway, I hope you're liking FCP.

As far as dealing with PowerPoint slides, I always found it worked best to convert each slide to a PSD file in Photoshop, and then import those PSDs right into Premiere. It works like a charm every time!

I would not say I am all that much frustrated with Premiere, in fact Premiere always worked fine for me. The few times I managed to crash it, it was pretty much my fault, I was working with formats Premiere is not "authorized" to work with, like AVC and mpeg variations. I learned, in the process, that I'm better off converting those formats outside of Premier to something that Premiere is made for.

It's just that Edius is better at a few things I need, has support for a wide array of formats for example, all handled without any conversion, just throw them on the timeline and work like it was all the same. The other thing is the lack of the annoying "conforming" step where Premiere creates the waveform for the audio (as far as I understand, someone please correct me if I'm wrong). If you need to see the audio waveform later, it will take some time to produce the graphics, but it's not done automatically at import. Think about this: I am editing a weekly TV talkshow - recently my producer asked me to compile a 3 minute video out of 20+ finished shows... now think about how long it would have taken for Premiere just to import and conform all that footage!!!

Additionally, there are other things that Edius does better or easier, for example starting multicam editing is as simple as hitting one F key, not the whole game of click here, rithgt click there... some eight (?) clicks I counted in Premiere.

On the weak side, audio manipulation is quasi non existing in Edius, so I go back to Audition for that.

The learning curve is... what learning curve? I edited my first video complete with transitions and some effects in minutes after first installing Edius.

I am not here to bash Premiere or advocate for Grass Valley though, this is simply my opinion.

Bill, I am working with the "pro" version - actually they only have three versions, not four... Neo, Pro, and Broadcast. Neo is a stripped down entry level product, sort of like Elements for Premiere, Pro and Broadcast is the same except Broadcast handles in addition a few broadcast formats. You can start with Neo and upgrade later if you like.

how about switching over to vegas? Does that perform better? That way you could keep to pcs, which are cheaper and flexible (and you can build them yourself).

Conforming is not just generating the peak file. It is conforming audio to 16-bit 48kHz PCM, which allows you to work on sample-level, not just on the frame level plus it allows you to import mp3 and other audio format files. This is annoying for long files, however it speeds up the editing in the end.

This is something that for example FCP could really learn from - to import mp3 to FCP you need to convert it to aiff or wav first. Annoying, if you ask me, and takes more time than automatic conversion done by premiere.

how about switching over to vegas? Does that perform better? That way you could keep to pcs, which are cheaper and flexible (and you can build them yourself).

Let's try to stay away from the PC vs Mac argument. The idea that PCs are cheaper than macs has been debunked many times as being bogus.

Bart, absolutely correct. BTW, the audio conversion is done in the background so you can continue importing clips and working on your project. BTW, I tried yesterday to compare FCP and Premiere handling of SD clips in a different than default situation. I create, on both programs, a project with a sequence set for 48Khz audio, 16:9 frame. Premiere showed the red line but could play back the video, with black sidebars, almost in realtime. Perfectly usable for editing. FCP on the other hand had two red bars, indicating that both audio and video needed to be rendered and the video didn't play and the audio beeped. So, on the same exact footage, SD mind you, FCP would force you to render while Premiere can get to work immediately.

However, once you start adding effects, Premiere will quickly clog up. Even simple fast color corrector makes the performance go down considerably. And once you've worked in Color, you will absolutely abhor the way that color correction is done in Premiere. Or FCP, for that matter, even if it has some nice buttons like apply to the next shot, that Premiere could use as well.

I think the looniest thing in FCP is that it will not play unrendered text and each small change will make you loose render files. Premiere is so much better at managing rendered files than FCP.

And once you've worked in Color, you will absolutely abhor the way that color correction is done in Premiere. Or FCP, for that matter
After having spent much time with the Color Corrector 3 way in FCP I would suggest to anyone interested in color correction to stay away from that. As a matter of fact stay away from CC in the NLE and do it in After Effects. Magic Bullet Colorista on the other hand has given me excellent results and is so easy to use that I was doing secondary and tertiary CC minutes after installing it and, unlike Color, I can do that directly inside the host application.
You start by applying Colorista in Premiere for a quick "eyeballing" of the scene, move to After Effects and your Colorista settings are carried over. At that point you can use all the masking tools of AE to go selective. BTW, AE's Levels and Curves CC tools are fully 32-bit enabled so you can do a lot there without going out, render, re-import etc. In fact this workflow is what motivated my move from FCP to Premiere.

Let's try to stay away from the PC vs Mac argument. The idea that PCs are cheaper than macs has been debunked many times as being bogus.

I have nothing against macs. Both pcs and macs have their advantages and disadvantages. It depends on what you want - and everyone knows pcs are cheaper, if that is important to you.

If it wasn't for the more expensive hardware, and the fact that you can't build your own, I would have gone for Final Cut Pro. I've tried premiere pro - since there are many people here not happy with PP, I was wondering if Vegas might be better (although I doubt it).

Normaly I never complained about software (also not about Microsoft), but CS3 is the most unstable what I ever have seen.

Especially that "low memory" problem kills me, because I can render only a 10 minute HD project. Then Premiere tells me that my Watercooled Octocore machine has not enough resources to render it! :-( In there specs is not writen that you need a NASA computer for this. So why doesn't it work? I sitched the settings allready to "memory" and not "performance". Also I removed one CPU in the hope that with a Quadcore it'll maybe work better. Nothing!

Furthermore pictures cause trouble, Titel Designer doesn't work well ect .... When I bought CS3 I thought "Ok, every software can have bugs when it's new", but after all these month Adobe isn't able to fix the problems. This really makes me angry. Why is such a big company not able to fix the problems now? There are not only a few people complaining in the www about this.

When the problems will not be fixed for IBC in Septermber you can film "Rambo 5" when I'll visit the Adobe stand!

Maybe I should try Edius or Vegas, but I worked for years with Premiere and my main problem is that I started editing some very big project in CS3 allready. I don't like the idea that this work was nearly useless now.

It sounds like you have overclocked your PC. Turn off any enhancements that you have done. It is probably creating some unstability. I recently editing down 8 hours of XDCam footage on my 3 year old HP Workstation. It runs just fine.

Yes, this should become a Sticky on this forum:

DON`T overclock a Premiere workstation. DON`T tweak your system. Premiere runs fine on stable system. I have been on both sides.

I have not overclocked the PC! The reason for that water cooling, was just because that machine was as loud as a car. Now it's quiet.

Is it possible that maybe too much cores can cause a problem? I just tried CS3 on my Dual Core notebook and there it runs without the crashs. Windows accept only 3GB Ram, and when you have 8 Cores every core has only a small memory size to do the job. So maybe therefore my notebook (2GB Ram) works better.

Is it possible that maybe too much cores can cause a problem? I just tried CS3 on my Dual Core notebook and there it runs without the crashs. Windows accept only 3GB Ram, and when you have 8 Cores every core has only a small memory size to do the job. So maybe therefore my notebook (2GB Ram) works better.

I'm running PPro CS3 on a dual quad core and it runs great. I think something else must be going on.

Hey Peter,
If you need a rock solid NLE go with Vegas and Sound forge 9.
It's so easy and quick to edit, can handel SD,HD AND OTHERS allthough with color correction the preview slows down (this will be fixed soon ) It has the pro Tiler which i like and a host of other FX. Rendering in easy and clean, key frames stay in place and the app can be used on most PC machines. Sony sound forge is great for all your audio needs and works well within Vegas.

Simon

I have not overclocked the PC! The reason for that water cooling, was just because that machine was as loud as a car. Now it's quiet.

Is it possible that maybe too much cores can cause a problem? I just tried CS3 on my Dual Core notebook and there it runs without the crashs. Windows accept only 3GB Ram, and when you have 8 Cores every core has only a small memory size to do the job. So maybe therefore my notebook (2GB Ram) works better.

When having persistent problems of this sort, I tend to suspect memory problems.
I obviously don't know what testing you may have already done, Swen.
I would suggest downloading a memory test utility such as memtest86, found here:

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

It doesn't cost anything. And you don't install anything. You download a CD ISO file, burn a CD, and reboot using that now bootable CD.

It comes up running automatically. Let it run...after I've built a new machine, I typically let it run overnight.
If you have memory failures, the problem is most likely memory.
If it was a motherboard problem, everything would be behaving erratically.

You are probably finding the memory problem with Premier Pro simply because it makes your system work like *nothing* else. Both in speed and quantity. And another video editor is likely to do the same.

Give it a try. You have nothing to lose, except some time.

Bill,

thank you for your idea. Yes, I'll try the memory test form the boot CD. But I don't think that there is a memory damaged, because when I just Run for example the ProCoder3 (not form CS3 timeline) to make a wmv or mpeg video it works without any crash! CS3 crashes allways after a few minutes....

Swen