PRE 8, no more crashes
gtacyclist Jan 22, 2010 7:53 AMI thought I would just share some positive news regarding PRE 8. I finally completed a 10 minute 720p HD video for upload to the web (input files from 2 cameras totalling approximately 4 hours of footage) where everything went smoothly... no hangs, no crashes.
The editing was done on a new PC that I just assembled which was optimized for video editing. I took all the lessons I learned from perusing this forum as well as from other sites when I built the new PC. Here is what worked for me:
1. O/S: Windows 7 Ultimate.
2. Video Editing Software: PRE 8 plus Quicktime install.
3. Hardware: Intel i7 860 CPU, 8 GB DDR3 1333 RAM, 3 x Western Digital Black HDD (1 for O/S and Apps, 1 for Project Files, 1 for Scratch files and O/S pagefile), Sapphire Radeon 5850 video card (using the latest WHQL drivers on ATI/AMD website).
4. Disabled Auto-analyzer and Organizer.
5. Disabled background rendering.
Since Windows 7 has all the CODECs needed to playback video, there is no need to install any CODEC/CODEC pack downloaded from the web. Also installing Quicktime appear to have solved the problem I had before where I need to transcode the video from my camera first to be able to load it to PRE8.
There are still some quirks such as the project intermittently "losing pointers" to previously rendered files when the project is re-opened but there are no more crashes and hang ups (knock on wood).
In summary and looking back, I believemost of the issues I encounter were the result 1 or all of the following:
1. Buggy drivers from Nvidia (I was using a GTX 260 video card in my older machine).
2. CODEC packs installed interfering with PRE8. These CODEC packs were installed years ago in order to be able to playback video on the PC.
3. Not installing Quicktime.
4. Buggy Auto-analyzer/Organizer. Turning this feature off appeared to speed up PRE8.
Hopefully this will help others who are still having issues with PRE8.
One final thing about my setup, it appears PRE8 is not using the GPU to assist the CPU even if I have that option checked under preferrences when rendering videos... the reason I say this is because the GPU temps does not appear to increase when I render videos for smooth previewing. Not a big deal so long as everything is stable.





