Fantastic article. Currently I’m considering moving from an iMac to Mac Pro, and wondered your opinion on my speed performance. Here are my specs:
iMac
Intel Core i7 3.4Ghz Quad-Core
12 GB (2x2GB,2x4GB 1333 MHz DDR3)
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024MB

While playback is great on this machine, my exporting seems to be taking longer and longer as my 20+ minute DSLR footage is encoded. I’m wondering what I can do to improve this? Currently my thought is to switch to a Mac Pro with 12-core processor (2×6 core xeon), and pack out the ram. I’m wondering if spending that kind of money (+$4k) is wise or there are minimal upgrades that’d get me where I need to go, which is a 30-50% speed increase in export times. Obviously a concern is the lack of NVIDIA/CUDA support on the Mac Pro, which is why a third option is build a PC for myself to would have an NVIDA. What are your thoughts?

[DR - Hi David. The best thing that you could do for exporting is probably add more RAM. It will make the system perform better overall. The advantage of a MacPro is the idea that you can move to a higher end graphics card where you can tap into the hardware GPU acceleration of the Mercury Playback Engine. If you're doing a lot of effects on your clips in the timeline, this might be a good idea. If you're doing primarily cuts and single track timelines with supers, then I think adding some RAM or looking at a newer iMac would probably be better for you.]

I have late 2011 Macbook pro.64bit system, i7, 2.7 GHz and 16 GB ram. Intel hd 3000 Graphic card.

When ever i try to render footage in Premier Pro CS5 it uses almost 95% CPU but it doesn’t uses more than 2 or 3 GB Ram. I have tried different settings in the prefference = memory menu but things don’t change.

how can i make it use more Ram, I feel that 16GB ram is not paying off.
You are my only hope help me out.

[DR - You can see in the preferences that there is a memory setting in Premiere Pro. Make sure that you have approximately 75% of your RAM allocated to Adobe applications. I would guess that it is 11GB/5GB which should be fine. If it's not, then change it. Also, your laptop probably has another graphics card - ATI or NVIDIA. In the Energy Savings setting, you can TURN OFF automatic graphics switching which will then allow your better GPU to always be working. This will also make a performance difference though less so on RAM. Hope this helps.]

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 8 GB

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 4850
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
I run FCP7 and Adobe Pr CS5, my problem is rendering, very slow. can you please tell me what I need to do, to improve this problem.

Thanks
Al

Thanks!

[DR - well Al, at least for the Adobe part, I'd say that you don't have enough memory. With a 64-bit application, the hardware really needs to be balanced. RAM, CPU, GPU and Disk all must work together. 8GB of RAM is not so great these days.]

[DR - I can't speak for what NVIDIA might do, but I can say the Quadro 4000 is an excellent card, so I would take the plunge now. Also, make sure you give CS6 a trial as the UI and other new features are really strong. Good luck!]

[DR - you should check out Adobe.com's official forums where you can get a lot of help from other users. I'd trash the prefs and clean the media cache as a first step.]

[DR - CS5.5 works on a Mac Pro great, go for it. For animation, there are several types of animation out there that you need to be aware of but the short answer is that After Effects is your best all around animation tool. Flash is fine on a Mac. The player performance is mostly an issue of a few years ago and Flash Professional again works on a Mac just as it does on a PC. Flash Pro is also a great animation tool. Good luck.]

[DR - Welcome Michael! As for CUDA cards, the Quadro 4000 for Mac is really the way to go. I don't see the old GTX285 anymore (discontinued) and they're hard to find. I hope this helps.

As for your problem project, I'd open clear cache and clear prefs (similar to FCP) and then open a new project. Then I'd import the XML and do an immediate save. Duplicate the project and then begin to carefully experiment. At the end of the day, our XML implementation is good, but not a miracle worker and there may be some large and complex projects that just don't want to come over.

Good luck and I hope this helps.]

[DR - Hey Lucas, I think the question you're asking is whether to buy a Mac or PC. Truth is, we try not to make that a part of your decision. both platforms are great and have a lot to offer. If you're comfortable with Mac, then stay with it and purchase a Quadro 4000. If you like Windows then you have more NVIDIA choices on that platform.]

[DR - I agree. Adobe = Open workflows whenever we can and that includes choice. To that end, having AMD/ATI support would be important. OpenCL though wasn't even ratified until after CS5 shipped and didn't really become legit until 2011. I hope we'll see AMD/ATI support in the future via OpenCL. Until then, CUDA/NVIDIA is your only answer - but it's a very good one. Thanks for your comment.]

I’m using macbook pro 2011 , 15inch, 2.2 ghz, 8g ram, using premiere pro 5.5.1 with nikon d3100 h264 clips and I can’t get one clip to play back at even 1/4 res without choppy playback. Do you know why?

[DR - While I definitely have opinions, I am afraid that sharing them is not something that I feel would be appropriate. Suffice it to say that Adobe likes competition and likes the Apple platform, but our intentions should be on being #1 in the space and for our customers. I think we're demonstrating that in the last several years.]

I am seeing slow play back when scrubbing in AE and also glitchy/slower play back in premiere when adding color effects (like colorista)…Any thoughts or recomendations? I’m still pretty new to Adobe, and have switched over because FCP (x) isn’t FCP anymore.

[DR - Well, After Effects isn't a real-time engine - Premiere Pro is... If you're dropping frames in Premiere Pro, then you might look at your hard drives. Your core specs look just fine to me. Check out the Adobe forums for Premiere Pro - you will find a lot of helpful people there.]

I plan to buy the fastest (july 2011) iMac, beef it up with 8 or 16 Gb RAM, and edit H.264 and RED. But I want to run PPro CS5.5 on Windows on the iMac. Because the Mac-version lacs some effects, and also for example the histogram in the Levels effect (why is that BTW?). Here is my question:

Do you know of any issues, specially performance-related, running PPro in BootCamp’ed Win7, on an iMac?

All the best,
Simon (ACE (CS4)) from little Denmark.

[DR - Simon, I don't have any other tips for you other than to say that I think the rig will run great once you have it set up!]

[DR - As always, a specific 'yes or no' answer is difficult because I don't know what kind of work you're doing, the format, etc. Your 2 year old iMac is probably pretty fast, but yes a newer iMac would be faster still. CS5 and CS5.5 are able to use all of the CPU cores so if the newer Mac has more cores and you can put in more memory, your CS5 performance will be faster. The GPU component of the system will not improve CS5 performance because it is AMD/ATI. The GPU hardware acceleration for Adobe requires an nvidia GPU which Apple currently does not support. I hope this helps answer your questions.]

Just found your awesome site. Great info!

I’ve been using Final Cut for many, many years now but recently have been thinking of jumping over to Premiere, in fact the entire CS5.5 production suite. I LOVE After Effects and the idea of similar interfaces and integration are niggling at my ‘just buy it’ buttons. And your site is just making it worse

I’m also thinking of trashing my old reliable MacPro G5/Blackmagic card setup in favour of (gulp) the latest iMac!

I have a Mac-evangelist expert/friend who is ‘absolutley positive’ that the latest iMac (ie7 with 16GB of RAM) will be more than enough for my needs, which has till now mostly been editing and compositing P2 footage.

I’m a little skeptical but open-minded enough to consider it. The idea of spending up to $3,000 less for the iMac is a big attraction. My only worry is that we’re now starting to shoot RED and Canon DSLR footage and I don’t want to be buying into a ‘slow and frustrating workflow’.

Would love to know if you think the iMac with PremierePro is a workable solution.

Thanks in advance. Cheers,

ALEX

[DR - With Adobe CS5 and CS5.5 (64-bit native apps) the trick is really balancing the your system between various components. In short, when you have more cores, more memory is always a good thing. 16GB of RAM is good and a quad-core i7 CPU should be pretty spiffy as well. Make sure you have a decent drive system (via thunderbolt, firewire 800 or USB2 - in that order of preference) and you should have a nice system for editing SD, HD or RED. In the case of RED, Premiere Pro gives you definable fractional playback options to give you the best balance of real-time playback and highest quality image. Hope this helps.]

Upon starting up Premiere (which never gets past this error msg): “Adobe Premeire Pro could not find any capable video play modules. Please update your video display drivers and start again.”

Actions taken thus far with nothing working yet:
1.) System update so everything should be the latest Rev including the GPUs.
2.) Tryed starting with battery only to use the Intel GPU and with the power attached to use the AMD GPU. Rebooted
3.) Tryed both turning on/off the automatic graphics switching feature. Nothing works. Rebooted

MacBook Pro 8,2
Core i7
2 GHz
4 Gb Memory
AMD Radeon HD 6490M, VRAM (256mb)
Intel HD Graphics 3000, VRAM (384mb)

[DR - moments ago (literally seconds!) I just approved and edited your comment... You should ask this question at the Adobe Premiere Pro forum.

Not knowing too much about your problem, I would recommend:
Uninstall, run the CS5 clean script for Mac, reboot and reinstall.

BTW - I would highly recommend going to 8GB of RAM, but that's not indicative of your problem.

You can also send me a private message on the Adobe forum if you can't get your question answered.]

Macbook Pro8,2
Core i7, 2 GHz
OSX 10.6.7
AMD Radeon HD 6490M
Intel HD Graphics 3000
4gb Memory

[DR – This is a perfect question for you to ask in the Adobe Premiere Pro forums…