editing long features at DVinfo.net

Chris Yi · October 29th, 2003, 01:30 AM

I was completing a project for my English Honors class last night with Premiere Pro. The movie was only about 15 minutes long, yet my computer could barely handle it. How do you guys go about editing long features? If I tried to edit a feature length project, my processor would probably slow to a crawl and nothing could be done. For this project, I used different "sequences" for some of the big scenes, then made a final sequence where I put them all together. However, this still caused immense slowdown. I was thinking that it would be probably best to split a movie into multiple projects, and then string them together for a final output. What do you guys do?

Alex Taylor · October 29th, 2003, 01:37 AM

For big features the raw footage is usually digitized in low-quality, then once the editing is complete an EDL is made of the shot order, duration etc and sent to the negative cutter who makes the film from the original negative.. or in the case of digital, hi-res footage is brought in but only the parts you need.

Glenn Chan · October 29th, 2003, 08:12 PM

What's your system specs?

2- What is the format you are working with? I believe Alex is talking about 35mm film, which is probably not the format you were shooting on.

3- In Final Cut Pro you can make it go faster by working on sections of the movie and then assembling them at the end. This should work with PP.

Bruce A. Christenson · October 30th, 2003, 10:37 AM

I don't understand why you are seeing slowdown with larger projects. I don't see any difference in system performance if I'm working on a 30 second clip or a 20 minute short. I'm using Vegas 4, but I would expect other apps to be similar. Rendering time is dependent on length, of course.

Are you saying your system is always slow, or is it only slow for this 15 minute project, but smaller projects are OK? If it's always slow, maybe your system needs more memory.

Chris Yi · October 30th, 2003, 09:04 PM

I have an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor (1.67 ghz), Geforce Ti-4400, and 768 MB of DDR ram. Smaller projects definitely seem to work more efficiently for me then bigger ones. It makes sense to me though. I would think that the more video you lay down onto your timeline, the more your computer has to keep track of, and the more processing power is taken up. Is my computer just too slow to keep up?

Glenn Chan · October 30th, 2003, 09:07 PM

You could try some of the tweaks at http://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Tips/...g__v_1_0_.html

Unfortunately I have little experience with Premiere Pro so I can't help you out too much there other than suggesting that you break up your project into chunks.

Chris Obonsawin · October 30th, 2003, 10:27 PM

I don't see a slowdown at all when I do long or short pieces using Premiere on my system. I do however, get occasional exporting problems with Premiere.

Mike Rehmus · October 31st, 2003, 01:54 PM

I regularly do 120 to 180 minute pieces. I break the project down into sections, not because my system is slow when everything is loaded but it does take longer to load and if I have a problem, I'd rather screw up a smaller portion of the whole.

My system runs real time so I don't see slowups unless I do some fairly serious bit-twiddling.

Even if my projects were in fact feature films, I'd still break them at an appropriate point and work over several scenes, breaking at boundaries.

In most of my long projects, exhibitions, I shoot fairly close to a 1:1 ratio so I bring in all the video and then order the clips. Then I bring in an appropriate number of clips to work over.

I rarely have to log footage and build a capture list.

Bruce A. Christenson · October 31st, 2003, 02:53 PM

Sounds like your CPU, memory, etc. are in good shape. Make sure your hard drives are in DMA mode rather than PIO mode (there's a thread somewhere on this site for how to do this) - that's the only obvious thing I can think of that would cause a slowdown.

Ronnie Grahn · October 31st, 2003, 05:04 PM

You should definitley have hard-drives that run in U-DMA mode. This one makes a big difference!

October 29th, 2003, 01:30 AM	#1
Chris Yi Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Walnut Creek (USA) Posts: 32	editing long features I was completing a project for my English Honors class last night with Premiere Pro. The movie was only about 15 minutes long, yet my computer could barely handle it. How do you guys go about editing long features? If I tried to edit a feature length project, my processor would probably slow to a crawl and nothing could be done. For this project, I used different "sequences" for some of the big scenes, then made a final sequence where I put them all together. However, this still caused immense slowdown. I was thinking that it would be probably best to split a movie into multiple projects, and then string them together for a final output. What do you guys do?

October 29th, 2003, 01:37 AM	#2
Alex Taylor Major Player Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Vancouver, BC Posts: 390	For big features the raw footage is usually digitized in low-quality, then once the editing is complete an EDL is made of the shot order, duration etc and sent to the negative cutter who makes the film from the original negative.. or in the case of digital, hi-res footage is brought in but only the parts you need. __________________ alextaylor.org

October 30th, 2003, 10:27 PM	#7
Chris Obonsawin Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 27	I don't see a slowdown at all when I do long or short pieces using Premiere on my system. I do however, get occasional exporting problems with Premiere. __________________ Chris Obonsawin

October 31st, 2003, 01:54 PM	#8
Mike Rehmus Wrangler Join Date: May 2002 Location: Vallejo, California Posts: 4,049	I regularly do 120 to 180 minute pieces. I break the project down into sections, not because my system is slow when everything is loaded but it does take longer to load and if I have a problem, I'd rather screw up a smaller portion of the whole. My system runs real time so I don't see slowups unless I do some fairly serious bit-twiddling. Even if my projects were in fact feature films, I'd still break them at an appropriate point and work over several scenes, breaking at boundaries. In most of my long projects, exhibitions, I shoot fairly close to a 1:1 ratio so I bring in all the video and then order the clips. Then I bring in an appropriate number of clips to work over. I rarely have to log footage and build a capture list. __________________ Mike Rehmus Hey, I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel!

October 31st, 2003, 05:04 PM	#10
Ronnie Grahn Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Helsingborg, Sweden Posts: 77	You should definitley have hard-drives that run in U-DMA mode. This one makes a big difference! __________________ www.ninjafury.com \| www.ronniegrahn.com

October 29th, 2003, 08:12 PM	#3
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	What's your system specs? 2- What is the format you are working with? I believe Alex is talking about 35mm film, which is probably not the format you were shooting on. 3- In Final Cut Pro you can make it go faster by working on sections of the movie and then assembling them at the end. This should work with PP.

October 30th, 2003, 10:37 AM	#4
Bruce A. Christenson Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Forest Grove, OR Posts: 122	I don't understand why you are seeing slowdown with larger projects. I don't see any difference in system performance if I'm working on a 30 second clip or a 20 minute short. I'm using Vegas 4, but I would expect other apps to be similar. Rendering time is dependent on length, of course. Are you saying your system is always slow, or is it only slow for this 15 minute project, but smaller projects are OK? If it's always slow, maybe your system needs more memory.

October 30th, 2003, 09:04 PM	#5
Chris Yi Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Walnut Creek (USA) Posts: 32	I have an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor (1.67 ghz), Geforce Ti-4400, and 768 MB of DDR ram. Smaller projects definitely seem to work more efficiently for me then bigger ones. It makes sense to me though. I would think that the more video you lay down onto your timeline, the more your computer has to keep track of, and the more processing power is taken up. Is my computer just too slow to keep up?

October 30th, 2003, 09:07 PM	#6
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	You could try some of the tweaks at http://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Tips/...g__v_1_0_.html Unfortunately I have little experience with Premiere Pro so I can't help you out too much there other than suggesting that you break up your project into chunks.

October 31st, 2003, 02:53 PM	#9
Bruce A. Christenson Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Forest Grove, OR Posts: 122	Sounds like your CPU, memory, etc. are in good shape. Make sure your hard drives are in DMA mode rather than PIO mode (there's a thread somewhere on this site for how to do this) - that's the only obvious thing I can think of that would cause a slowdown.