Editing video using hard drives?

[joeycamoriano]

I am about to edit a huge project and want to know if others have allotted separate hard drives for their editing workflow. I am using a 6TB Lacie Thunderbolt d2 to store all of my media. Should I use my other 4TB hard drive to edit with as well? So for instance, the 6TB for reading and the 4TB for writing? How do others divide their media cache files? Most of my media are .mov files from a 5D3 with a few mixed formats, such as EX1 footage and iPhone and GoPro. Currently, I have my 6TB Thunderbolt attached to my MacBook Pro and rendering times are obnoxiously long - every time I make a change to a single clip on the timeline, long rendering times start all over and I can't get any work done. I want to be able to see my effects that I apply without having to render selection or in and out each time.

[Moderator note: moved to best forum]

[RoninEdits]

you could use the 4tb for cache/previews to help spread out the workload across multiple drives. if your computer has an ssd inside, it would be better to place the cache on the ssd.

long render times often isn't the storage, like a slow hdd, but rather usually the cpu being a bottleneck. its also possible of a software bottleneck, some of the fx in premiere are terribly coded and do not perform well. you should check cpu usage during the preview render, or any time its slow, and see if the usage is near 100% or not. if its less than 50-70% usage, its probably not the cpu causing the slow down. if the bad performance only happens after applying fx, it might be those fx and you could try using alternatives. if the fx are gpu accelerated then the gpu in the macbook might not being fast enough. also media like h264 doesn't perform very well for editing and could be contributing to the poor performance. so you might want to transcode or use proxies, using prores or dnxhd/r codecs.

[Bill_Gehrke]

Test that hard drive to see the real performance

How full is it?

[joeycamoriano]

RoninEdits,

Spreading my media cache across drives was incredibly useful. I moved my media preview renders and media cache to the 4TB and now instead of 367 hours, my time dropped to two and I had no hiccups. Thanks! And yes, I am using a plethora of effects, but my MacBook Pro is not fast enough so I will have to figure out my next course of action. I am coming to the end of my two-hour render so it will be interesting to see once my drives shut down, if they come back with it still rendered. My previous attempt did not. Thanks again, for the advice.

[RoninEdits]

i wasn't expecting that much of an impact, perhaps the 6tb lacie is a slow 5400rpm hdd and its being overworked. also, newer versions of premiere now have a built-in proxy system. not only will the prores or dnxhd/r codecs be easier on the system, but you could also choose lower resolution like 720p to help with performance even further and possibly avoid preview rendering.

[Warren Heaton]

What Sequence Settings are you using?  Have you considered using custom Apple ProRes?

What settings are you conforming all of your source footage to?  Have you considered Apple ProRes?

If you transcode all of your footage to ProRes 422 (LT) or better and editing  in ProRes 422 Sequences to match, you'll very likely notice a significant improvement in performance that whatever you're doing right now.

Of course, this may also require that you add another Thunderbolt hard drive to the mix (1920x1080 ProRes 422 is about 1GB per minute).

-Warren

[joeycamoriano]

Warren, this may seem like a basic question but I have never finished a project this large and have never made proxies. That said, my question is in regard to WHEN proxies should be made. The order of events goes like this:  I uploaded my 5D3 footage to my Thunderbolt hard drive as .mov files. Then I opened Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 and imported those .mov files and dropped a few of them straight to my timeline, and then applied a multitude of color effects onto the clips. The clips have the red line on them so when I "Render Selection," it takes a long time. Should I open Media Encoder now and make a proxy with ProRes or DNX? Will that put the same files in the Thunderbolt hard drive next to the .mov clips? Then do I import the proxy clips into my project and then dump to the timeline and apply affects? When I export, will the proxy files be my final output and won't that be less quality? I guess I need to figure out the correct steps in order so that I am not filling my hard drive up with unnecessary duplicates. Also, I see that there is a "Render and Replace" option, but am nervous to do that, thinking that if I replace a higher quality clip with a lower quality one, I won't be able to get it back at final render and export time. Clearly, I have some learning to do, but I am getting closer. Thank you.

[Warren Heaton]

If enabled in the Project Settings, you'll create Proxy files when you import your video files.

If already imported, control-click or right-click (if enabled in your Mac OS system settings) the files and choose Proxy > Create Proxies....

Use "1280x720 Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy)" for your Proxy files.

In your PR project, only import the high resolution video.  There is no need to import the Proxy files into the project.

The project file handles linking to the Proxy files.  You just toggle them on and off.

You can set a custom location for your Proxy files or choose "Same as Project".

Read/Watch the following:

Work offline using proxy media |

Basic Premiere Pro editing workflow

Adobe Premiere Pro Help | Ingest and Proxy Workflow in Premiere Pro CC 2015.3