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Premier Pro workflow with a single harddrive

cheeseandachallenge

cheeseandachallenge

So I know it's not the most ideal situation, but I only have a (relatively poweful, but nothing amazing) laptop at the moment. I am looking at building a desktop in the next year, but don't have the money right now.

When I'm editing i experience a lot of lag, and I assume this was because my processor, graphics card or RAM wasn't up to scratch. But after doing some tests, those are all coping fine, and my harddrive is topping out at 99%. I have a 750gb 7200RPM harddrive. Are there any improvements I can make to reduce my lag? I have an external 1TB 7200RPM HDD as well, but I assume that's going to be too slow through USB3 to be of much help?

Cheers
 
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Yeah, reading multiple streams of video data is hard on any drive. Can you work with lower rez proxies? Also, are you using footage right from a dslr? The h264 codex is highly compressed and hence takes processing time to decompress to display.. try something like 5d2rgb or cineform to create a larger, and less compressed file.
 
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Yeah, I have tried proxies. I don't know I compressed them enough on my latest project..

And yeah, I'm using a GH3. I'll give 5d2rgb a go next time, though I might not have a large enough HDD to deal with the larger files..
 
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cheeseandachallenge said:
Sure.

8GB 1600Mhz RAM
GeForce GT 640M 1gb
i7-3612QM

As I said nothing amazing, but it seems to be my HDD that is causing the bottleneck
Click to expand...

More specs please. HDD type/size/space free. Operating system. If the Codec you're working with is h.264, then that's more CPU than HDD intensive for PP.

Your CPU is fine. Better than what I have slightly. Your video card is rather ordinary, but better than what a lot of people use to edit. It'll also depend if you're doing a lot of effects to whether your video card is having a hard time or not.

8GB ram could be where you're falling down somewhat. If the ram is full, it writes to the cache. I have 16gig and it's still hitting the cache, depending on the project that I'm working on.

By the basic sound of it (assuming you're on a PC, I have no clue when it comes to Mac) your hard drive may be more full than it is comfortable, or you're trying to get more out of your system than it allows. When I edit, I use multiple drives. You could use a raid system (not you, since you're using a laptop) where the load is spread over multiple drives. What I do which seems to help reduce the hdd pressure is to have everything on different drives. The software on the SSD drive for me, the source on another SATA3 drive, the cache and the output on another SATA3 drive. Now I'd prefer to have the cache on a SSD, but I don't have the space for it so I make do.

Where I suspect you're having troubles is with the HDD seeking. You tell it to read a file, it reads some of the file, then the memory fills, it has to write the part of the memory to the cache, which causes it to seek again and write, then seek back to it's reading again, and so forth. Having everything on the same drive could be the cause of what you're suggesting.

The fix would be to move it to a desktop machine with multiple drives or replacing your hdd with a large SSD drive. The SSD drives don't suffer the seek time lag, and also read and write much faster, though the large SSD drives come with a hefty price tag.

Questions?
 
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Hey the i7 will do well for you in most cases.
Look into doing some minor overclocking to make sure you are optimizing it well.

A SSD so you can install the software and video files on as well.
So install adobe on it. Upload your video files. Put a copy on an external drive, and copy them onto the SSD for temporary editing.

MORE RAM
I say 16gb minimum these days.

PS/BTW
Working with premiere on a single hard drive is a no go imo. YOU NEED TO BACK UP YOUR FILES. Workflow on a fast HDD, and saved files and backups on another harddrive.

Taylor Pludow

Lunarpages ® Internet Solutions
1360 N. Hancock Street
Anaheim, CA 92807
1-877-586-2772 ext. 2804
Taylor.Pludow@lunarpages.com
 
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Sweetie said:
More specs please. HDD type/size/space free. Operating system. If the Codec you're working with is h.264, then that's more CPU than HDD intensive for PP.
Click to expand...
This is my HDD. 750GB. Only have about 150gb-200gb free when I'm editing a project (yes I know..) - I've uninstalled all my games, and moved my movies to my external HDD, but I'd rather not take all my music off..
Windows 8 Pro 64bit.
And yeah, h.264 - my testing wasnt that extensive - all I did was playback my timeline and watch task manager (which showed CPU at about 30-50% usage, Ram about 50-60% and the HDD sometimes hitting nearly 100% - which were the times it started lagging the playback).

Your CPU is fine. Better than what I have slightly. Your video card is rather ordinary, but better than what a lot of people use to edit. It'll also depend if you're doing a lot of effects to whether your video card is having a hard time or not.
Click to expand...
I don't really use effects beyond transitions, sharpening and colour correction. Occasionally I jump into after effects, but I don't really do much heavy (though I'm aware the GPU could be better).

8GB ram could be where you're falling down somewhat. If the ram is full, it writes to the cache. I have 16gig and it's still hitting the cache, depending on the project that I'm working on
Click to expand...
Yeah I was going to upgrade my ram, but as I said, from my rather unscientific test, it seemed that the HDD was bottlenecking the most. If you think it'll help though, i may do as it's not too expensive.

By the basic sound of it (assuming you're on a PC, I have no clue when it comes to Mac) your hard drive may be more full than it is comfortable, or you're trying to get more out of your system than it allows. When I edit, I use multiple drives. You could use a raid system (not you, since you're using a laptop) where the load is spread over multiple drives. What I do which seems to help reduce the hdd pressure is to have everything on different drives. The software on the SSD drive for me, the source on another SATA3 drive, the cache and the output on another SATA3 drive. Now I'd prefer to have the cache on a SSD, but I don't have the space for it so I make do.

Where I suspect you're having troubles is with the HDD seeking. You tell it to read a file, it reads some of the file, then the memory fills, it has to write the part of the memory to the cache, which causes it to seek again and write, then seek back to it's reading again, and so forth. Having everything on the same drive could be the cause of what you're suggesting.

The fix would be to move it to a desktop machine with multiple drives or replacing your hdd with a large SSD drive. The SSD drives don't suffer the seek time lag, and also read and write much faster, though the large SSD drives come with a hefty price tag.

Questions?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think your diagnosis is right. I was hoping there might've been some sort of fix that didn't require an SSD (which I can't really afford - I'd rather save spending that kind of money until I can upgrade to a desktop).

taylp said:
Hey the i7 will do well for you in most cases.
Look into doing some minor overclocking to make sure you are optimizing it well.

A SSD so you can install the software and video files on as well.
So install adobe on it. Upload your video files. Put a copy on an external drive, and copy them onto the SSD for temporary editing.

MORE RAM
I say 16gb minimum these days.

PS/BTW
Working with premiere on a single hard drive is a no go imo. YOU NEED TO BACK UP YOUR FILES. Workflow on a fast HDD, and saved files and backups on another harddrive.
Click to expand...
My laptop only has a single HDD slot. I could remove the optical disk drive (though I do use it so i'd need to buy an external drive, which would be frutrating and a bit more pricey).






If I replaced the optical disk drive with an ~100gb SSD for all my programs, how much would that speed up the system?
 
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cheeseandachallenge said:
Only have about 150gb-200gb free when I'm editing a project
Windows 8 Pro 64bit.
Click to expand...

150-200gig from a 750gig hdd is ok.

cheeseandachallenge said:
If I replaced the optical disk drive with an ~100gb SSD for all my programs, how much would that speed up the system?
Click to expand...

I couldn't find the specs for your HDD so I'm going to assume that it's similar to most usual HDD's. When running under optimal circumstances, a traditional SATA HDD can read in the range of 50 to 80MB/sec. Writing is a bit slower. When you put more seeking in there, that number comes right down.

With SSD HDD's, typical specs are in the range of 400-500MB/sec read with in the range of 250MB/s writing with little to no seek issues. The better drives can go faster, especially on the write speeds. That all being said, some SSD HDD's are ordinary performers, so just be careful with what you buy.

Now while it will increase the speed for the programs, the SSD really shines when you can also put your footage on it too. Since you're running on a laptop, if you're considering replacing the internal HDD with a 100gig SSD and moving your editing footage to an external, you're likely to slow down your performance, instead of getting the performance boost you're looking for.
 
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Sweetie said:
I couldn't find the specs for your HDD so I'm going to assume that it's similar to most usual HDD's. When running under optimal circumstances, a traditional SATA HDD can read in the range of 50 to 80MB/sec. Writing is a bit slower. When you put more seeking in there, that number comes right down.

With SSD HDD's, typical specs are in the range of 400-500MB/sec read with in the range of 250MB/s writing with little to no seek issues. The better drives can go faster, especially on the write speeds. That all being said, some SSD HDD's are ordinary performers, so just be careful with what you buy.

Now while it will increase the speed for the programs, the SSD really shines when you can also put your footage on it too. Since you're running on a laptop, if you're considering replacing the internal HDD with a 100gig SSD and moving your editing footage to an external, you're likely to slow down your performance, instead of getting the performance boost you're looking for.
Click to expand...

I think you misread, though - I'd replace the optical disk drive, not the HDD. Hmmkay, so would a more ideal system be to get an SSD for just premiere pro as a program and all footage - or would it all being on the same drive not help much?
 
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