Using Premiere Pro on OSX and Win7

[Votary105]

Ok so I have currently got a job as a video editor and am currently using FCP7. At the moment they are not using FCP X as it doesn't open older FCP files. I am a very efficient Windows use since I have been using a PC for 10yrs and have had to jump into the OSX world which I have not had an issue with (not an apple hater) but I find OSX feels like a toy to me and I can't work half as fast as I do on windows 7. I realise i will speed up over time but that is not what i'd like to discuss here please.

Since Premiere Pro is available on both OSX and Windows I have been in discussion with my employer about making the jump to Pp CS5.5 but he is very keen to continue using his iMac (which he spent some sum of money on) and is not so keen to learn windows all over again.

So my question is

Can I work on a project in Premiere Pro on my Windows 7 machine and then take it to my employer and open the same project in Premiere Pro on OSX and have it work?

Many thanks

[Colin_Brougham]

For the most part, yes. There are a few effects on Windows that aren't available on Mac (as far as I recall), but beyond that, the project files are 100% transferable from platform to platform.

Note that both platforms will open up FCP XML documents from FCP 7, too--another important selling point fro your employer, I'm sure

[Votary105]

Thats fantastic and thanks for the incredibly quick reply.

Is there somewhere here or on the web that talks about this as i would like to really research the issues and find out what limitations there are so i can give my employer as much info about the pros and cons as i can.

Again, thanks for the reply

[Colin_Brougham]

Are you talking about the effect limitations? Probably the best place to look for this information (as well as other differences between the platforms) is the help documentation: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 & CS5.5 * Using Adobe Premiere Pro

One other difference would be the import/export support of a few different formats and codecs. For example, you can import and edit ProRes QuickTime MOVs on Windows, but you can't render or export to ProRes--that's more of a limitation imposed by Apple than Adobe. These are good things to be aware of, but typically, there are considerations you can make to ease a cross-platform workflow.

What formats are you typically working with in FCP?

[Votary105]

At the moment we are using a DSLR to shoot H.264 footage. But at the moment we need to transocde all the footage to Apple pro res to work on which is a massive slow down when we have 3-4 hours of footage across on 4-5 cameras so it takes a large amount of time.

But we are looking at getting a RED through next year some time and that is something we need to look at with our editing software.

[Colin_Brougham]

In both cases, you'll have 100% format support parity between the two platforms. Both the Mac and PC versions natively support those camera/footage types--just import and edit.

Here's an article that covers this topic: Native Format Editing in Adobe Premiere Pro

[tallscot]

You should transcode h.264 no matter what you are using.

[lasvideo]

You should transcode h.264 no matter what you are using.

This is not necessarily true. On my system using the Adobe sequence, 5D files play back just fine. Maybe your system has issues that need to be addressed

Tom Daigon

Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor

www.hdshotsandcuts.com

Mac Pro 3,1

2 x 3.2 ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon

10.6.8

Nvidia Quadro 4000

24 gigs ram

Kona 3

Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid

[Colin_Brougham]

What Tom said. For the most part, transcoding H.264 is a waste of time, especially if you have a reasonably decent editing system. These days, 75% of my source material is H.264 of one sort or another, and I work with it right out of the box in Premiere Pro.

[tallscot]

H.264 is a long-gop 4:2:0 8 bit format. Why would you want to limit your FX and color grading to 8 bit? Also, it takes much longer to render out your project if you are using the h.264 footage from your camera.

The performance hit you get using the native iterframe codec is there no matter what your hardware is. Maybe you don't notice it with a few tracks, but at some point you will see a serious difference in responsiveness if your project gets large enough.

I too have a Mac Pro loaded up with RAM, etc., and I've tested both native h.264 and transcoded ProRes and the ProRes was much faster rendering, much more responsive as I edited, and the color had less banding after grading.

Just my opinion.

[ExactImage]

We are running both Mac OSX and Windows 7 with Premiere Pro and move projects back and forth as needed.

We stopped transcoding H264 a while back and now we edit EVERYTHING natively.  The thing that made the final difference was using a CUDA card in the Mac Pro.  We sold off the iMacs that could be upgraded. 

There are a couple of gotchas when moving projects back and forth, one of which is that while the Mac project will find all the files etc needed by a project created in windows, it does have a habbit of dumping lots of temp files on the Mac HD root as soon as it starts conforming and you have to go in to the projects and clean up paths etc. Probably no big deal, but something to be aware of.

[Guest]

Why would you want to limit your FX and color grading to 8 bit?

I'm afraid, regard to PrPro it's a delusion...

[lasvideo]

Hey Fuzzy, isnt it a little strange that Jason never ONCE played back the timeline with all the various formats on it 

[Guest]

Since I was talking about colour depth - no.

[lasvideo]

Language can sure make communication a challenge sometimes.

I was humorously referring to the fact that Jason is saying how cool PrP is to be able to play all those different clips, but never actually played the timeline for us to see the clips actually playback. Do you understand the humor in this irony?

[tallscot]

I just did a quick test. I took 6 clips from a 5D Mark II totally 3:30 and put them in CS5.5.2, applied a color effect (green tint), rendered it out at match sequence settings. Took 6 minutes to render and CPU was at 650% (I have an 8 core Mac Pro).

I took the same original clips, transcoded into ProRes 422 HQ using Compressor, brought those in, copied and pasted the same color effect onto those clips, exported out using same settings. It took 4 minutes 10 seconds to render, 550% CPU.

It took 4 minutes for Compressor to transcode the footage to ProRes. Because of the hit you take every time you export native h.264, I don't think working with native is a time saver, overall. I guess it depends on how often you export. I'd like to do a test for 'real time' playback speed later today.

Attached are images from the resulting movies. The top is ProRes 422 HQ the bottom is native h.264.

[lasvideo]

According to Adobe technicians, when you have any clip on the timeline and apply an effect (like 3 Way Color Corrector) to it, you are operating in 32 bit float space. So the extra step of transcoding is an unnecessary waste of time. If you use the 3 Way CC it will also play (on most clips and systems) in real time time and render 60% faster then if you used a non accelerated effects like Colorista 2. You also get a certain amount of generation loss when transcoding clips. Why not use PrP in the manner it was designed to be used?

[tallscot]

lasvideo wrote:

According to Adobe technicians, when you have any clip on the timeline and apply an effect (like 3 Way Color Corrector) to it, you are operating in 32 bit float space. So the extra step of transcoding is an unnecessary waste of time. If you use the 3 Way CC it will also play (on most clips and systems) in real time time and render 60% faster then if you used a non accelerated effects like Colorista 2. You also get a certain amount of generation loss when transcoding clips. Why not use PrP in the manner it was designed to be used?

Did you read my post?

[lasvideo]

Rhetorical question I guess. If I hadnt read it, would I have responded?  

Talsicott "H.264 is a long-gop 4:2:0 8 bit format.Why would you want to limit your FX and color grading to 8 bit?............" I don't think working with native is a time saver" 

Are these not your comments?

[tallscot]

Are these not your comments?

Not the most recent comment, no. It appears you haven't read that one.

[Guest]

Do you understand the humor in this irony?

Jason often... um-m-m... exaggerate some things. Especially when he is talking about performance. I just don't care, 'cos I was talking about alleged '8-bit limits', but not about performance.

...Took 6 minutes to render...

...took 4 minutes 10 seconds to render... took 4 minutes for Compressor to transcode...

Not sure I understand your math... As for me 8+ minutes is 150% of 6 minutes...

Anyway, as I already mentioned twice I was not talking about performance, I was talking about nonexistent '8-bit limit' for editing compressed footages natively...

[tallscot]

Not sure I understand your math... As for me 8+ minutes is 150% of 6 minutes...

Anyway, as I mentioned twice already I was not talking about performance, I was talking about nonexistent '8-bit limit' for editing compressed footages natively...

Your math is correct if you only render your project one time ever. But over the duration of a project, I happen to render many times. Every time you render native h.264, it takes longer.

And I realize you were referring to the color.

[Harm_Millaard]

I don't know if I am simply retarded or you have flunked your math exams, but

Not sure I understand your math... As for me 8+ minutes is 150% of 6 minutes...

8 divided by 6 is around 1.33, or around 133%, so please explain where I went wrong? Did I misunderstand you or did you make a mistake?

[tallscot]

The exact % isn't really the main point here. The point is every time you render out native h.264 from Premiere Pro CS5.5.2, it will take significantly longer than if you are using an intra-frame codec, like ProRes. That time adds up to being a lot more than the one time it takes to transcode at the beginning of a project.

So the sarcastic video made by Adobe pointing out that transcoding is such a time killer is false. And we haven't even examined the responsiveness of the application itself when using inter-frame codecs versus intra-frame.

Lasvideo, transcoding into a 'lossless' codec, like ProRes, does not give you a generational loss.

[lasvideo]

Taliscot, your knowledge of math is only rivaled by your knowledge of Prores

"ProRes is technically a lossy codec that discards information during the conversion process, just like Motion-JPEG and MPEG-2. But with all lossy codecs, the amount of information discarded determines the amount of quality loss—the more you compress, the more you lose."