The right box for Premiere Pro

[James McLellan]

I am moving everything from Final Cut to Premiere Pro in our lab. I used to purchase $1100 imacs that ran quite fine. The fact that imacs don't support GPU acceleration is making me consider switching to PC. I don't have a ton of background researching the millions of different pc companies. Can anyone recommend the cheapest pc box with gpu acceleration?

 

[Noel R.]

From what I've read a lot of people including myself are building their PC's. Using an intel i7 extreme 3960, 32Gigs of Ram, and GTX 580 graphics cards with 3gigs of memory. This website lists all compatible graphics cards: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/mercury-playback-engine.html . I would make sure you are using a motherboard which can do an SLI configuration with your graphics cards, this way if you ever want to plug in a second GTX 580 card you can and use the horsepower of both cards together.

Edit: Also make sure you get Windows proffesional and not the home edition, the home edition limits the amount of RAM you can use.

 

[Cory Petkovsek]

As a general recommendation, I'd start with Dell. For my own use, I'd build my own system; a clone. If you have a local computer shop, you can go talk with them about building you a clone. Otherwise, Dell will be fine as long as you spec the right system. Get a system that supports 8GB ram or preferably much more, has a decent size chassis so you can upgrade (tower or minitower), 7200rpm or ssd drives only, an Nvidia graphics card on the supported list, and windows 7 pro, 64-bit.
http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/deskt...l=en&s=soho&~ck=mn#!facets=51795~0~812538&p=1

You can also get higher end workstations, some specially designed. But these aren't going to be cheap.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?81124-HP-820-Tower-RED-EDITION&highlight=redcine-x+audio

Cheap and good, go with Dell or a clone.

 

[Elsie N]

I'm gradually putting together a system that I hope will handle 6k Dragon footage in Adobe apps in a serviceable way.

Asus Sabertooth 990FX mainboard
AMD FX 8150 8 core Processor
EVGA GTX 560 Graphics card (336 cuda cores, 256 bit)
32 GB G-Skil RAM
750 Watt Power Supply
OCZ REVO Hybrid Drive (PCIe 4 lane slot) as 1 TB system drive (known to work well as boot drive with ASUS Sabertooth board
2 WD Black 1.5 TB drives in RAID 0, used for primary storage of work footage
2 Seagate 1.5 TB LP drives (Low Power) for use as secondary storage
Single 3 or 4 TB drive for tertiary backup.
USB 3.0 Docking station for redundant storage

By watching for Newegg deals, I've so far gotten this system (haven't bought the tertiary drive yet) ready for assembly for about $1500.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I have downloaded a preview copy of Windows 8. That should work as an operating system until maybe the first of the year before I will have to purchase the release version from MicroSoft.

 

[Cory Petkovsek]

Elsie, Nice setup. Using windows 8 will be "cool", but will make troubleshooting compatibility or stability issues difficult. On your production workstation I'd recommend win7 as we know it's a stable platform. Issues will be your hardware or ppro; which is already two variables. Also I would keep at least your current active project on the ocz revo (with regular backup). That drive will be 3-4 times faster than even your raid.

 

[Tom Daigon]

If you get a Dell or HP, get their workstations. I suggest you call ADK and ask for Eric. He knows his stuff and will get you the best system at a reasonable price. He knows computesr AND Adobe software which makes him an invaluable resource.

http://www.adkvideoediting.com/ Eric Bowen.

 

[Elsie N]

Elsie, Nice setup. Using windows 8 will be "cool", but will make troubleshooting compatibility or stability issues difficult. On your production workstation I'd recommend win7 as we know it's a stable platform. Issues will be your hardware or ppro; which is already two variables. Also I would keep at least your current active project on the ocz revo (with regular backup). That drive will be 3-4 times faster than even your raid.

Hi Cory, Can't argue your points on Windows 8 but I have another workstation that can bail me out if things get buggie. My thinking is to allow feedback to both Adobe and Windows which I hope will make both companies work out any compatibility problems before I need the workstation for the larger files we'll have to deal with from the 6k Dragon sensor.

And as to your point on the Revo Drive, I agree that's where I'll need my active project. But I'm wondering if perhaps some of the Dragon projects might go over a TB in size? That's my thinking in having the two WD drive RAID 0. That is, place the files I'll be working off of onto that and pull them into the project located on the REVO. But then again, that still leaves the SATA III bottleneck.

Perhaps I can identify the files I'll need for a sequence, then as you suggest put a working copy of only those files onto the REVO for speed. As long as they will re-link from wherever permanently stored when I go back later to those files, all should work fine.

But as you can tell, I'm working through the process of how to proceed.

Thanks for your input.

 

[James McLellan]

Thanks Elsie,

your post is very specific which gives me a point to compare with. I will say this, with all the talk of 'I can build a pc with the same specs for half the price as a mac' going around I had thought I would find some better bargains. For me, the budget for the lab runs out at 1250 per machine which is close to the numbers you are talking about. I will continue to research things. Cheers.

Only thing is the GTX 560 does not seem to support GPU acceleration in PPro. Am I right?

 

[Elsie N]

Thanks Elsie, your post is very specific which gives me a point to compare with. I will say this, with all the talk of 'I can build a pc with the same specs for half the price as a mac' going around I had thought I would find some better bargains. For me, the budget for the lab runs out at 1250 per machine which is close to the numbers you are talking about. I will continue to research things. Cheers. Only thing is the GTX 560 does not seem to support GPU acceleration in PPro. Am I right?

James, I'm not sure about the GTX 560 being "officially" supported, but there's an easy fix for that that only takes a few seconds to download and a few seconds more to install into Premiere. (I think there is a separate one for AE but I'm not sure.) I'll edit this post when I find the link. In the meantime (I hope Cory doesn't mind my copying and pasting his post in another thread I just read) here's the post Cory made of his setup and how to separate different functions out. I found it useful and maybe you will too.

Cory's post:

Here is my setup: 4x256GB SSD RAID 5 - OS/Program files, Project files, media for smaller projects, and exports 500GB SATA - Temp files (%TEMP%, %TMP% are set here), Adobe Media Cache files 7.5TB SATA RAID 5 - RED Media Other drives for backup I separated it like this based on testing of optimal performance for my setup and workflows. You will need to do the same to get the optimal. A lot of media conformation works by reading from a media drive, writing a file to the temp folder, then moving it to the media cache. I would not bother with a dedicated drive for exports. Exporting is processor and disk-read bound, not write bound; its writing is the slowest process. I would do this: SSD - OS/Program files, TEMP and TMP environment variables (default) INT HDD1 (larger) Active projects and media INT HDD2 (smaller) Less active projects and media, and all adobe apps media cache. EXT HDD Inactive projects and media, backup You could experiment with moving TEMP/TMP and media cache all to the SSD or all to HDD2 by clearing the cache and temp files and observing the behavior and time of conforming the media for a large project. Exporting will probably be the same across the board. I arranged mine as such because conforming red footage caused such a high disk queue on my raid that it was giving my raid controller problems. Moving TEMP/TMP and media cache to its own drive alleviated this.

Cory

EDIT: Here's the link to the website that has written the script that updates PPro's card cache file to recognize cards not currently having gone through the recognition process. The download link is about 2/3 of the way down the page. http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5-2.htm

 

[Cory Petkovsek]

I hope Cory doesn't mind my copying and pasting his post in another thread I just read

Here's the direct link with formatting that's easier to read:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...-performance&p=1047646&viewfull=1#post1047646

 

[Elsie N]

I'm gradually putting together a system that I hope will handle 6k Dragon footage in Adobe apps in a serviceable way.

Asus Sabertooth 990FX mainboard
AMD FX 8150 8 core Processor
EVGA GTX 560 Graphics card (336 cuda cores, 256 bit)
32 GB G-Skil RAM
750 Watt Power Supply
OCZ REVO Hybrid Drive (PCIe 4 lane slot) as 1 TB system drive (known to work well as boot drive with ASUS Sabertooth board
2 WD Black 1.5 TB drives in RAID 0, used for primary storage of work footage
2 Seagate 1.5 TB LP drives (Low Power) for use as secondary storage
Single 3 or 4 TB drive for tertiary backup.
USB 3.0 Docking station for redundant storage

By watching for Newegg deals, I've so far gotten this system (haven't bought the tertiary drive yet) ready for assembly for about $1500.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I have downloaded a preview copy of Windows 8. That should work as an operating system until maybe the first of the year before I will have to purchase the release version from MicroSoft.

Haven't gotten around to finishing my build yet and happened across a pretty good deal on Amazon for a 240 GB all-flash Revo Drive. I'm now going to use this for my system drive and load active projects onto the 1 TB Revo Hybrid Drive.

The link is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0058RECUE/ref=pe_175190_21431760_M3T1_ST1_dp_1

Be sure to look for the $30 off coupon down in the details, if still available.

 

[Elsie N]

In re: the great bargain on Amazon, I waited 9 days from the day I ordered until my delivery date via Amazon's super saver shipping. I watched with anticipation as the mail carrier pulled up to my mailbox expecting the Revo Drive to be delivered. But, no package. And a few minutes later I received an email from Amazon that the package was undeliverable and I could either ask for the order to be filled again or they might choose to refund my payment.

But here's the deal: I checked the price and it was increased substantially. I now think Amazon put the wrong price on my original order. I think they posted the price for the REVO 128 GB drive for the 256 GB drive. No wonder it seemed like a good deal to me. But because they wasted approx. 10 days of my time waiting on a component to finish my build, I was upset with Amazon. And when I, according to their stated policy, asked the same order be placed again I received no response. And today I received an email saying my cc would be credited back with the amount of the order.

This time I was not so upset with Amazon because I think they did me a great service. That is, if you don't really NEED it, no matter how low the price, it's not a bargain. And while I could easily justify the expenditure to make my build a little better, the extra tech is not really necessary. And I realized that allowing Amazon to bombard my inbox with emails of products is akin to 24/7 exposure to shopping, so I am starting a policy of deleting or blocking those emails so I don't mindlessly order something just because it seems like a bargain. Paying something other than bargain price for an item when I deem I need it will be much less expensive in the long run.

Today I have a nice feeling and I owe it in part to Amazon's sneaky approach to getting out of a bad bargain. And now I can put those dollars to better purpose by using them to upgrade to the Dragon sensor when the time comes. '-)

 

[Ryan Darmon]

I bought a tablet off Amazon a couple years ago. It was a ridiculous deal I think it was 90 bucks selling everywhere else for over 600. I knew it was too good to be true, but it took over a month for them to tell me they couldn't send it out for that price and then another month to get the 90 bucks back.

 

[Elsie N]

I bought a tablet off Amazon a couple years ago. It was a ridiculous deal I think it was 90 bucks selling everywhere else for over 600. I knew it was too good to be true, but it took over a month for them to tell me they couldn't send it out for that price and then another month to get the 90 bucks back.

Heh, heh... maybe Amazon customers need an Amazon Bill of Rights, sorta like the airline industry.

 

[Elsie N]

Need to follow up on the Amazon post I made above... Went to Amazon to purchase a health-food item (was only upset with them over tech stuff) and out of curiosity I checked the Revo Drive that was deemed undeliverable. Was surprised to find it was listed among my previously viewed items at the price I saw when I first ordered it. Went through the entire cart process to see if everything would be the same. Sure enough, it was!

My mind swiftly went into "justification mode" and before I knew what I was doing, I ordered it again, only this time I chose regular shipping in order to avoid extra handoffs (fedex to post office to mail carrier.) I'm starting to think my original problem was with my mail carrier rather than Amazon, and I feel I probably needed to do this re-order as a sort of peace offering for over-criticizing them initially.

However, Amazon could have avoided this if they had not immediately sent me the email saying the order was undeliverable and the charges would be removed from my cc. I suspect if this had not been done, the mail carrier would have probably delivered my package on Monday. I think mail carriers try to hustle through Saturday deliveries with a minimum of extra duties, and this may have been the case with my order.

Not accusin'... just hypothesizing.