Premiere CC or Smoke 2013?

[Jeremy Wiles]

Over the past 10 months I have been editing a very large project using Premiere CS6. I've pushed Premiere CS6 as far as I could, but it just can't handle large projects. The project is over 15TB and Premiere has to load almost 4,000 files/clips when I open it. It actually opens quite fast, but editing is a nightmare. Thinking it was hardware problem, I built a brand new editing system and $15k server. I also now have a Red Rocket card, which I didn't have before. There has been little change. As the project has grown in size, I can barely operate and playback has become so slow I could take a jog around the block before it starts - literally!

A main issue I believe to be causing the problem is the multicam function within Premiere. I have 5 cameras at 5k resolution in the multicam. If I try to playback a timeline that has just a few minutes of multicam footage, it takes several minutes before playback. You just can't get into your "groove" when you have to wait this long. I have 6 timelines that are each about 1-hour long. To make a change on any of the timelines, I have to cut the footage and past it into an empty timeline, make the changes, cut the clips and paste them back into the original timeline. What a waste of time!

I'm at the point where I give up. I'm not a fan of switching to CC. Will the update to Premiere CC fix this problem or is it better to switch to Smoke? How does Premiere CC or Smoke handle really large projects and multicam footage?

Thanks for your time.

Jeremy

 

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Can you lay out your hardware setup/operating system and so on?

On my main box which is a modest Windows 8 system (i7 2600K, 32 gigs of RAM, Red Rocket) I can play a 5 camera 4K multicam sequence back in Premiere Pro CC off a single hard drive with little lag... not terribly surprising considering multicam is really only playing back one actual stream of video at any given time. The lag time is about 2-4 seconds but only because it's a test project and it was also generating audio peak files.

It may be an apples to oranges comparison since you're on OSX. You should at least check out the CC 30 day demo, and make sure you update it to 7.0.1 as that fixes an unrelated multicam issue (it would shift in points on edits) which you dodged by waiting.

Alternately, is this 5KHD footage? You may be falling into the trap of poor Adobe/RED performance on that particular size.

In terms of Smoke 2013, it doesn't do multicam so far as I know. Autodesk, as a company, seems to let software languish if it isn't Maya, 3DSM, or AutoCAD.

 

[Jeremy Wiles]

Can you lay out your hardware setup/operating system and so on?

Win 7
64 bit OS
SSD for OS
SSD for Cache files

2 Xeon ES-2630 2.3GHz processors
64GB Ram
Red Rocket
Nvidia 570HD

48TB server feeds data at 10GB sec via a 10GB ethernet card.

On my main box which is a modest Windows 8 system (i7 2600K, 32 gigs of RAM, Red Rocket) I can play a 5 camera 4K multicam sequence back in Premiere Pro CC off a single hard drive with little lag... not terribly surprising considering multicam is really only playing back one actual stream of video at any given time. The lag time is about 2-4 seconds but only because it's a test project and it was also generating audio peak files.

How many minutes of multicam footage do you have on the timeline? If I'm working with less than 4-5 minutes it's fine. But, try playing back 20-30 minutes of multicam footage.

It may be an apples to oranges comparison since you're on OSX. You should at least check out the CC 30 day demo, and make sure you update it to 7.0.1 as that fixes an unrelated multicam issue (it would shift in points on edits) which you dodged by waiting. Alternately, is this 5KHD footage? You may be falling into the trap of poor Adobe/RED performance on that particular size. In terms of Smoke 2013, it doesn't do multicam so far as I know. Autodesk, as a company, seems to let software languish if it isn't Maya, 3DSM, or AutoCAD.

I'm not working with 5kHD footage. If Smoke 2013 doesn't do multicam that would definitely be a deal killer for me.

Thanks for the help.

 

[jake blackstone]

Smoke in theory is great. When it works, it's great. Unfortunately Smoke has this nasty ability too stop working at most inopportune time. All I have to do is to change my network settings and it stops rendering, because Backburner Server stops functioning. Can you imagine not being able to render your work with PPro or FCP, because you simply changed your network settings? I was trying to import 4k Prores and Smoke would consistently crash. It should work with 4K, but I couldn't make it happen.
Smoke is not an editor in the traditional sense, like Avid or FCP. It's a finishing solution, just like Resolve 10 is hoping to be. So, no, Smoke is not an editor, that anyone should consider, as a replacement for a traditional editor.

 

[Michael Romano]

5x 5K R3D in the multicam window. That's the problem.

 

[Mike Garrick]

On a similar thread the point has been made with large projects to break the sequences down into many shorter duration sequences .

Also are you nesting clips within a sequence as this can also be problematic with larger projects.

 

[Björn Benckert]

The timeline durations and the amount of timelines and the amount of multcam tracks is your problem. To be honest... I do not think any editing software can really take it. You probably ran out of ram and your computer starts to swap memory. In theory it works to have huge timelines and such in practice it just does not the r3d's are big files and the file structure of your disk gets quite large when you have a lot of source, so basically it takes to much time for your computer to call the right files. I know smoke would not manage, and flame does not do it with "external r3d's, and I doubt that FCPX does it.

When I work with such projects like yours (Im in flame normally but it's basically the same for all platforms) sooner or later you run into the same kind of problems if your project is large enough.

My solution is to work like the old filmcutters did. I keep features in acts. An act is about 20 minutes. That's length works well normally even for super complex timelines. Then I usually even make one project per act and make sure to divide up the source accordingly.

I do not know my ways around premiere to well. XML's work a bit odd in premiere as they pretty much bring the whole project in when reimport. But there should be an easy way to export at least each hour of edit and divide your project in hours. If that does not help.. maybe it's the 5k HD Premiere bug thing that people talk about.

Important questions though would be, how much RAM do you have on your system? What kind of storage do you use? If you look down in your file sturcture for your source files with the finder is it really lagging or no problem?

 

[Gabe Conroy]

I do not know my ways around premiere to well. XML's work a bit odd as they pretty much bring the whole project. But there should be an easy way to export at least each hour of edit and divide your project in hours. If that does not help.. maybe it's the 5k HD Premiere bug thing that people talk about.

You can export the whole project by having the project panel selected before exporting, or export only a single sequence by selecting the sequence panel before exporting.

 

[Björn Benckert]

You can export the whole project by having the project panel selected before exporting, or export only a single sequence by selecting the sequence panel before exporting.

Yes that explains a lot, I think my editor guy at the office knows that because when he does it it gets right... when I do it I get the whole dam thing, never figured out why, instead I just delete the not needed when import.

So thanks will do that next time

 

[Björn Benckert]

Question is there a way to "consolidate edit" in in premiere. Basically make it into a one or two layer timeline and ditch the rest. It's not really nonlinear way of working but when one timeline starts to lag then it's a good way to make a clone and remove not needed stuff and name it "timeline02" or such and continue from there. Basically remove information to get around lag.

 

[Bob Gundu]

yeah 5K multicam is going to kill it. Proxies would be the way to go here.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Bob when you say kill it is that a 2 minute, 5 minute, 15 minute timeline ?

I know multicam with large files is "asking for it" but just on wondering if there is some maximum sequence time with multi-cam to get everything playing nice.

 

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Tried with a 30 minute track, but not every track is full to the brim. Extended that out to 3 hours. Same result, started playing after a ~5 second delay.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Bob when you say kill it is that a 2 minute, 5 minute, 15 minute timeline ?

I know multicam with large files is "asking for it" but just on wondering if there is some maximum sequence time with multi-cam to get everything playing nice.

When you start swapping for memory the "waiting times" get exponentially longer. So it's difficult to say, it depends how many cuts you got in the edit, how many clips you got in your source folder etc... So basically when things start to move slow then it will go far slower quite soon.

 

[Mark Toia]

5x 5K R3D in the multicam window. That's the problem.

Yep.. RAM is the problem. Just tried it... maxed our real quick.
Best to edit with proxies till completion, then hit full RES during mastering.
I don't think there is any program out there than can handle 5k multi cam.

Good try though

 

[Björn Benckert]

Does it lag heavily even if you work in 1:10 resolution or such ?