10 Replies Latest reply: Nov 22, 2014 3:44 PM by R Neil Haugen RSS

    Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!

    K12Realty.com

      I have post production video projects that I would I would like to work on, however, before I go forward, I need to know whether my Macbook can handle the load.  I have a 2012 Macbook Pro Core i7, 16gb ram, 750gb SSD, 1gb vram and I need to work on editing video from 4 cameras and 8 channels of audio.  The length of the final video will approx. 35 minutes and the source files from 4 cameras include 40gb of video files.  I plan to use Premiere Pro, Audition, Speedgrade, Encore, and maybe After Effects.

       

      I have plenty of disk space on my Macbook, but don't know if it has the processing power to handle a load like this. I would appreciate any direction that you could give me.  I will also do my best to answer any questions about this project if it helps you to understand the project better.

       

      This is for my daughters school plays and I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

       

      In your response, if you think I need some additional or other equipment, please be as specific as possible, I would greatly appreciate that also.

       

      Thank you..Michael

        • 1. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
          cc_merchant Community Member

          This is for my daughters school plays and I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

           

          That depends a bit on when she graduates. If you have the time, then no problem. But all laptops (PC and Mac) are significantly slower than desktops. Luckily it is only a small project with only 40 GB of source material, so you should be OK, although not very fast. My last project was over 300 GB source material and that I would never do on a laptop.

           

          I suggest you try it out, and when you really think the waiting and responsiveness of the system is becoming unbearable, then report back.

          • 2. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
            Bill Gehrke Community Member

            I have a PC laptop vintage late 2013 that I have upgraded immensely: 24 GB of RAM and two very fast SSD's and it is nVidia CUDA equipped.  I have just recently edited a three camera Wedding with 4 audio channels on it with no problems.  Now remember this laptop equipped with a much newer and maybe more powerful CPU, it is an i7-4700HQ quad-core hyperthreaded 2.4 GHz/Turbo 3.2 GHz.  My three camera shoot is right at 40 GB also.

             

            I believe you have a USB3 interface on the Macbook Pro.  This would take some testing on your part but since this laptop is USB3 equipped I found that by using one of the newer very high speed USB3 flash memory drives I have all my media files and project files on the USB drive and since those files in editing are all read operations that it works perfectly.  The  now $35 128 GB PNY Turbo Flash Memory drive is very fast, faster than hard drives.

            PNY-128-GB-Read.png

            • 3. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
              R Neil Haugen Community Member

              CC_merchant's response is quite accurate ... and the first clause of his response is very well stated! (Besides being a bit humoruos ... )

               

              Can you do this on your equipment? Yes ... mostly. A multi-cam sequence with 4 cameras and 8 audio tracks is going to be a drain. Keep effects like transitions simple and fairly short. I'd HIGHLY recommend that anything you're going to do in Ae like titles or such be done there and completely "exported" to the same frame-size/rate of the rest of your project, and brought in as just another "clip". Having that computer trying to blend the "live" data of an Ae "comp" into footage with a lot of cuts & transitions and such ... it's gonna be slower than molasses in Siberia.

               

              I would further recommend breaking up the project into sections of several minutes each by using sequences ... "opening", "act 1 scenes 1 & 2", and so on. Take them over to Sg via Direct to SpeedGrade "Direct Link" one at a time, do your corrections/styling, and then return them into PrPro. When everything is done, THEN put them all on one timeline and out-put the entire program.

               

              And ...before even getting started on the "real" project ... learn how to do razor, ripple, & rolling cuts, 3-point edits, "master" clip for corrections, and nesting sequences. Besides playing with a multi-cam sequence to see how you need to stack, align, and adjust opacity & such for the various tracks.

               

              Best wishes ... it's gonna be a fantastic learning experience! And though the "old Chinese curse" about living in interesting times may become familiar at various times, in all, it's a very do-able thing. And there's a lot of us here to help ...

               

              Neil

              • 4. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
                K12Realty.com Community Member

                Thank you for your helpful replies.  I understand the shortcomings of my macbook and time isn't really an issue, of course unless it doesn't complete and locks up, however, I have a few weeks to edit and produce the final dvd and blu-ray discs, so I am not concerned with time, I was more concerned with whether or not I could do it at all, so thanks.  This is my first project of this size and I know I need better equipment to do this kind of project or larger.

                • 5. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
                  K12Realty.com Community Member

                  Thanks R. Neil.  I know it may sound ridiculous, but I have been spending the past few weeks learning and practicing using the Lynda.com and Creative Cow (You Tube) lessons related to these products.  I've been watching them over and over again, to try to find tips, tricks, and shortcuts, in addition to the standard practices. 

                   

                  The former photographer that I am taking over for, since his children have graduated, is somewhat mentoring me and actually sat in on the shoot Thursday night.  He mentioned putting a sequence inside a sequence, which is what I believe I learned and you are referring to as nesting sequences.  He also gave me the last project he did last year using the same setup and software, so I am reviewing that to try to see what he did, even if I cannot see how he actually did it during the post. 

                   

                  Thanks for the advice about separating into acts, the music teacher gave me the production guide, so I was going to separate it by musical sequences (acts). With reference to AE, I mentioned it, but I was going to try to stay away from AE if possible. 

                   

                  I like the suggestion made by Bill G. and will give it a try since I really have nothing to lose and everything to learn.

                  • 6. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
                    K12Realty.com Community Member

                    Bill, thank you for your reply.  I was thinking of getting a PNY as you suggested, then I looked down at my Lacie 1TB External USB 3.0/Thunderbolt drive and was wondering if it was good enough for this purpose.  I have the source files on that drive as a backup to my Synology Diskstation and Macbook, but as I am thinking about it, it is not SSD and I believe it is only 5400rpm, so I'm thinking that the PNY is going to be faster even if just a bit faster.  If you have any thoughts on that, please let me know.  Thanks again.

                    • 7. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
                      Bill Gehrke Community Member

                      The only way to find out is to test it.  USB implementations are not all the same, they vary all over the place, even for instance early laptop implementations vary.  That is why I said to test.

                      • 9. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
                        Peferling Community Member

                        A few years ago when I was on the road, I used an eSATA PCMCIA card attached to an Lacia ICY eSATA box, using a full size eSATA HD with a Dell M90.  Worked pretty well for short form projects. 

                        • 10. Re: Hardware required for Premiere Pro Project, Please Help!
                          R Neil Haugen Community Member

                          There's NOTHING ridiculous about spending the odd hour with "lynda" and that creative cow. How the heck else ... unless you can spend a few months staring over a pro editor's shoulder and then get to play some with his goodies when he's not in the seat ... are any of us going to learn these capable but complex programs? You sound like you've got someone with some experience to give you "live" lessons. I've been through books, spent a LOT of hours with Lynda (skirting the edge of making the wife jealous of all the time I spend with that Other Lady ... ) and some on Creative Cow ... and a LOT looking through page after page and searching topics and such on these and other forums.

                           

                          And ... even with a pair of 250Gb SSD's RAIDed for system/programs, another one for all cache/preview purposes, two other internal 1Tb discs and a couple external SATA (eSATA) discs, after considering Bill's suggestion I popped over to Newegg via his link and ordered one myself. I can put the original files for several of my projects at one time on that (don't tend to be over 2Gb total, though a few have gotten to 5Gb) and it should work great. USB3 for any read-write is just not quite up to snuff, but this one-way bit (except for the what are they called, "parity" queries) should from all I've heard & read work fine.

                           

                          Neil