I am afraid this is query is a bit long, but I have tried to provide all the
info I can ....
THE PROBLEM
My old PC died, so I bought a new PC to improve my video processing speed, and also move off Windows XP.
- I installed the same copy of Adobe Premiere Elements 8 on both PCs.
- I applied no updates (on either machine) as the original versions works fine (on XP - why fix something that isn't broken)
- I changed the preferences to stop background rendering (due to data volumes -
same on old PC).
- I then copied the project file (.prel) from the old PC to the new.
Having set up the new PC, I carried out a benchmark test in Premiere Elements 8.0 converting the same 4-hour long HD file from M2TS to MPG on both PCs.
It was 4 times slower on the new PC !!!!
I then tried out another video conversion program (to demux MPG files so that they can be edited in Premiere) and that was 30% faster on the new PC.
In the Premier test the original file was on a 6GB/s 3TB disk drive with the output file on a 6GB/s 2TB drive (which also has the Windows system and Adobe cache files).
- Both processes ran identically without errors. In fact the output files were almost identical (one was 12 685 358 KB, the other 12 658 402 KB). I ran MediaInfo on both output files and it summarised them as identical in terms of codecs, size, etc, etc.
- On the old PC, CPU utilisation is usually around 90%, on the new one it is closer to 50%.
- Disk and memory utilisation are not limiting factors.
Can anyone help me finding out why the new PC is so much slower than the old?
SPECIFICATIONS
OLD PC
ASUS P8Z68-V
INTEL CORE I5 2500K 3.30GHZ
2 x KINGSTON 4096MB DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 1GB
1 x 2 TB disks with 4k sectors
4 x 3 TB disks with 4k sectors (each with 2 partitions)
Windows XP Pro SP3
NEW PC
ASUS P8H77V
INTEL I7 3770 3.4GHZ
2 x KINGSTON 4096MB DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 1GB
1 x 2 TB disks with 4k sectors
4 x 3 TB disks with 64k sectors
Windows 7 Pro
BACKGROUND
I have a very specific use of Premiere (for research purposes):
- I have 2 HD video Sony XDR160E camcorders monitoring bird nests 13 hours per day.
- Each camera generates 160 GB data per day on its internal HD.
- File sizes range from 20 GB (smallest) to 160 GB.
- I download the files from the camera to disk using the cameras download facility.
It is then that I use Premiere.
- I open a project that has the exact specs of the camera's output.
- I open the M2TS file in Premiere, drag it onto the sceneline.
- I do not view the file but immediately share it using a preset that matches the requirements of my MVIX PVR.
This bit is not relevant to the problem per se, but provides background info:
- I then copy the file onto the PVR decoder.
- I view the file through an MVIX PVR which allows viewing at 32x speed with minimal data loss.
- I will then identify activity periods (which may be only 5 minutes per day).
- I use the camera's editor to extract the relevant clips keeping all the camera metadata intact.
- After that I may use Premiere again to create illustrative montages.
CONCLUSION
Does anyone have a clue as to why I am having this problem? (it is not an error per se)
- The obvious differences are the operating system, the graphics card and the disk allocation unit size
- It may well NOT be a Premiere issue, it may be Windows 7 Pro that is causing the problem.
- I assume that the graphics card is irrelevant as I never actually view the video in Premiere (in this scenario)
- Could it be that Adobe cannot handle the 64k disk allocation size?
- Is there some special setting in Windows 7 that I need to enable that wasn't required in Windows XP?
- Is there some special setting in Adobe that I need to enable when running in a 64-bit environment?
Or is there something else I am missing?
Any help would be really appreciated - it could take weeks to try out all the various combinations to identify the problem.
Giles