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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Rendering 2k previews from r3d's in Premiere

Brad Allen said:
Thus, as far as I can tell, a 2k timeline would introduce an extra element of scaling (and thus extra processing) that would not exist on a 4k timeline. I don't think it is the case that Premiere would extract 1/32nd of pixels when on a 2k timeline - though Dave can correct me if I am wrong :)

Would love to hear if I've got this correct Dave :)
Click to expand...

Hi Brad,

this is exactly what I thought but so far in my Epics HDRx and non HDRx tests it is not what happens (don't know why).

For instance: 5k HDRx epic foogate on a 5k timeline, debayer set to high, full quality on pause, and 1/2 quality on playback it start Real time but after a few frames it starts to go not in real time. CPU hits 100% within a few frames.

Now the same clips, same debayer settings, same everything except that it is on a 2k timeline and set to "scale to frame size", goes smooth all the time. Real time. CPU doesn't pass 40-50% (even with a few cuda accelerated effects applied without rendering).

So at least for me and my current system, I think that the best approach is to edit on a 2k timeline, get realtime playback and effects with no rendering, after every thing is done, throw in at a 5k timeline and do what you need to do (export or render) at the resolution you need.

So I don't know what is going on, but this is what I get, at least in this system.

My specs: i7 2600k @4.2ghz, 570 GTX, 16Gb, Win7, CS5.5.
 
Fabricio Morato said:
Hi Brad,

this is exactly what I thought but so far in my Epics HDRx and non HDRx tests it is not what happens (don't know why).

For instance: 5k HDRx epic foogate on a 5k timeline, debayer set to high, full quality on pause, and 1/2 quality on playback it start Real time but after a few frames it starts to go not in real time. CPU hits 100% within a few frames.

Now the same clips, same debayer settings, same everything except that it is on a 2k timeline and set to "scale to frame size", goes smooth all the time. Real time. CPU doesn't pass 40-50% (even with a few cuda accelerated effects applied without rendering).

So at least for me and my current system, I think that the best approach is to edit on a 2k timeline, get realtime playback and effects with no rendering, after every thing is done, throw in at a 5k timeline and do what you need to do (export or render) at the resolution you need.

So I don't know what is going on, but this is what I get, at least in this system.

My specs: i7 2600k @4.2ghz, 570 GTX, 16Gb, Win7, CS5.5.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like you just want to set your playback quality on your 5k sequence to 1/4 or 1/8th. That is what you are doing when you do 1/2 res on a 2k timeline...

Cheers

Dave
 
Ahhh, Okay got it.

So when doing a half res preview on a 4k R3D in a 2k timeline - Premiere is actually pulling 1/4 res from the R3D

This makes sense and seems to confirm that there is no point to having 2k timeline for 4k material. Instead just keep dropping your playback resolution down to levels where performance becomes acceptable.

Thanks for your input Fabraicio and Dave.

So Hans, for you this should just mean creating a 4k sequence and dropping your playback resolution down to a level where you have acceptable playback. I'm guessing this will be 1/8 or 1/16th.
 
Hmmm, this is indeed enlightening, but my main problem was that 4 layers of 4k r3d's just stops my computer from working, not so much at playback, but showing all layers composited; I instead get a green screen for instance, or I have to shut off my computer. Sooooooo, Dave, if i want to work with 4 layers, is a 2k timeline not better? my results for now seem to suggest it works better, though I haven't been able to do a lot yet of stacking layers in 2k yet. Maybe 1k is even better? and how would I at the end of the project bring it back to 4k?
 
Hi Hans,

The 4 layers being composited incorrectly doesn't sound like a performance issue but a bug of some sort. Dave seemed to suggest that it could possibly be caused by the Sheer QuickTime components. Did you try uninstalling these?

Regarding transferring a 1k edit into a 4k edit, this shouldn't be too hard. If you have selected "scale to frame size" for all your footage in the 1k timeline, you should be able to just copy and paste the contents of the whole 1k timeline into a new 4k timeline. It will then scale all the footage to the size if that 4k frame.
 
Hi all,

thanks for the clarification David. But when I'm using 5k at 1/4 res my computer (CPU) still strugles (it hits 100% very fast). And At 1/8 it goes real time but at my output monitor (using my second monitor from the gtx 570) it gets kind of pixelated. But using 2k at 1/2 res on this monitor the quality still is great (for previewing the edit). So I don't mind doing this workflow at 2k then at the end going for the full 5k. If I am missing something please correct me.

Hans I just did a 5 layers composite test (with a few H/W accelerated effects) using R3D Epic footage on a 2k sequence and I didn't had any problems. Playback didn't go realtime but I guess that is my Harddrive not being fast enough (I'm not using a Raid 0 or any other kind of raid in this system) since the CPU didn't went more than 80% on this...

hope this can help someone
 
Hi Fabricio,

I'm wondering whether the performance difference you're noticing could be explained by the different resolution those timelines are displaying at?

5k timeline at 1/4 res = 1.25k pixels

Where as a 2k timeline at 1/2 res = 1k pixels

Otherwise it seems like something funky is definitely going on.
 
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Fabricio Morato said:
Hi all,

thanks for the clarification David. But when I'm using 5k at 1/4 res my computer (CPU) still strugles (it hits 100% very fast). And At 1/8 it goes real time but at my output monitor (using my second monitor from the gtx 570) it gets kind of pixelated. But using 2k at 1/2 res on this monitor the quality still is great (for previewing the edit). So I don't mind doing this workflow at 2k then at the end going for the full 5k. If I am missing something please correct me.

Hans I just did a 5 layers composite test (with a few H/W accelerated effects) using R3D Epic footage on a 2k sequence and I didn't had any problems. Playback didn't go realtime but I guess that is my Harddrive not being fast enough (I'm not using a Raid 0 or any other kind of raid in this system) since the CPU didn't went more than 80% on this...

hope this can help someone
Click to expand...

That's what I thought Fabricio. And Brad thanks a lot about the transferring back to 4k from 1k, that's excellent!
I don't think Sheer can be messing up my layers because they're layers of r3d's and not sheer quicktimes. I assume sheer can only be messing with exporting to quicktime files. I'm sorry that I haven't been able to try all the advices yet, this is the weekend of my 6th wedding day and my wife doesn't allow me to sit behind the computer :)
(She's walking the dog now).
best regards, and thanks,
Hans
 
Hi Hans,

There's no rush, so take your time and enjoy the beginning of your marriage :)

I think you are correct about Sheer not messing up your layers when editing. That's what I would seem to think too. Nevertheless, there definitely is something that is not working as it should. Still would be great if we could work out whatever that is :)
 
Hi Hans,

I've just realized that I've spread some mis-information to you earlier in this thread. I recommended not using previews for doing exports and my reasoning was that your previews had been rendered at your playback size (and that was likely to be less than full resolution). Seems I got this wrong however. Premiere will do your rendered previews at the frame size of the timeline even if you have your playback resolution set lower.

My original suggestion of not using previews still stands, since you would usually want Premiere to go back to the originals for the best quality. I understand that you were just enabling it to check what difference it would make in your circumstance, but I thought I would clear this up for you :)
 
Is it possible that 3d party plugins quickly slow things down? I used magic bullet looks and mercalli in ppro, and both seemed to cause trouble. I used mercalli on one clip and after that tried to increase the scale of the clip; then I had to force stop ppro
 
Definitely possible that they could be causing some pretty big slow downs. Normally you would leave the colour grading until the edit is pretty much locked in. 3rd Party definitely won't be as well optimized as Adobe's own plugins.
 
No Prob Hans,

You could always grade as you are going but you would be forced to do pre-renders the whole time - which would slow you down. So for the sake of speed and efficiency, I always try and get through the edit and then go for the colour grade after I have that nailed down :)
 
Brad Allen said:
No Prob Hans,

You could always grade as you are going but you would be forced to do pre-renders the whole time - which would slow you down. So for the sake of speed and efficiency, I always try and get through the edit and then go for the colour grade after I have that nailed down :)
Click to expand...

If you really need to grade a bit during the edit just use the adobe colour correctors to do a rough grade. Once the edit's done, just take them off and use whatever 3rd party plugin you want. In theory, that shouldn't slow you down.
 
Aha, as to the slowing down, there seems to have been a bug after all. Someone on an Adobe forum said that you should delete a file on a mac: users>library>preferences>com.apple.audio.AggregateDevices.plist that you simply need to delete. Everything seems to be running smoothly now; although I must add that over the last few days I: moved each and every r3d to the raid 0 disk; don't use Sheer anymore; wait with magic bullet looks till the very end; had my fans run at 1000 rpm minimum;

I can now work with 4 layers of r3d's but render them, export them as prores hq at 4k and import that file to continue with
 
Hi Brad,
I'm trying to finish a scene that I can show to filmfunds. I'm always very busy stacking layers, sooo, when I've stacked 4 I don't want to push my luck in ppro; so I export it as a prores file, import that into a new project and the stacking begins again from there; this may very well not be the best procedure, but: I'm in a bit of a hurry, I'm new to ppro and ae, and I don't have the fastest of computers; and the scene is unlikely to be the final version of that scene. I'm improvising, not knowing if there's a better way, but it works so far :)
 
Hi Hans,

It does seem a bit cumbersome, but if it works then it works. It's definitely something you would want to work out a better way of working in the future though. As well as slowing you're workflow down, it seems that it's going to make it really hard to go back and do re-edits of scenes.

I understand if it's just a temporary fix to get you to a deadline, but something's definitely not right if you are feeling that you can't "push your luck in PPro". It should just work without you needing to worry :)
 
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