Shooting 1080p video with the K-5. Having problem with Adobe Premiere Elements 9. Help!

[yvon_bourque2]

<p>I shot my first 1080p video last weekend with the K-5. The video looks great on the camera monitor. The video look great when looking at it with windows 7 video on my laptop. The problem is that I purchased Adobe Premiere Elements 9 just for editing my K-5 videos...The files are AVI and are enourmous. It brings my Intel Quad 2.80GHz, 4gig RAM, Windows XP Pro Dell computer to a crawl. I downloaded a file converter and tried to save the AVI files in MPEG, but it is still soooo slow. Anyone with experience with Premiere? There are no easy instructions with the program, just on-line tips.!!</p>

[yvon_bourque2]

<p>Don't tell me that I need to change platform and go to iMac, I know that already, but it's expensive and I would rather spend money on lenses and equipment.</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>No need to switch platforms. I have quite a few friends who do video production professionally using Windows and others who do graphics work for 3D gaming on Windows boxes too.</p>

<p>The issue is two fold. First, I don't think your XP machine can access the other 2GB of RAM so you have 2GB of ram that is useless, plus I bet your laptop has a shared video memory and not it's own graphics processor and memory. This means your CPU is taking the graphics load and eating quite a bit of RAM for video editing. Often if I'm running FastStone, Lightroom, and Photoshop at the same time, my ram gets into the sub 100MB range, and none of those are as resource intensive as HD video. I have 2GB on my Windows XP 32 bit desktop. Second, laptop drives are typically not fast, they are usually low RPM drives designed for power savings and durability. Combine those 2-3 issues and you have a much lower powered machine for graphics intensive task than you once thought. Also, do you know what interface your hard drive is, older interfaces are a lot slower for big files like HD video.</p>

<p>Last, my guess is you have your windows box setup for cute transitions and have tons of background processes running, I turn all that crap off...THIS might be where getting a Mac comes in handy. I have a friend who simply didn't know all the little tricks to make his Wintel powered netbook fly, same one I have (actually a newer version), and we went over them with him one weekend. Will killed graphical menus and transitions, killed every unneeded but default loaded windows service, and also killed all the startup programs that run in the background. He looked at us and said, "forget it, I'm getting a Mac." Sure enough he did just a few months later. Of course netbooks were never intended to be powerful, just handle the basic task 99% of the people use a computer for, so we never understand his hatred for his little computer.</p>

<p>I'd definitely recommend a desktop for HD video editing!</p>

<p>The bottom line is Windows machines are dollar for dollar more powerful than Macs (perhaps arguable, but certainly not an absurd statement), but they require tons of user maintenance and control to get them running optimally. On a really powerful desktop with a 64 bit OS and a hefty graphics card, none of this little stuff matters, but on most underpowered portable machines every little bit of CPU and RAM overhead you free up really makes a difference. That isn't to mention that Adobe programs have always had a reputation of not being light on system resources.</p>

<p> </p>

[DWScott]

<p>Yvon, I will make a couple of general suggestions. Unfortunately I am not familiar with what Elements will do, so my suggestions may require different software. I am running a Mac, but your PC isn't a big issue.<br>

Yes, the high quality MJPEG files that come out of the K-5 are large, but the data rate is not too punishing. It's about 10 MB/s which is perfectly possible with a regular PC and a regular hard drive. (That used to require exotic SCSI drives and RAIDs but the march of progress has been kind to video editors :-) In fact, though the file sizes are larger, MJPEG or similar codecs (DVCPRO100, Apple ProRes, etc) are easier for your computer to decode than a heavily compressed codec like AVCHD or MPEG. Heavy interframe compression schemes are good at squeezing video file sizes down, which lessens the bandwidth required for storage and delivery. But they require more horsepower to compress and decompress the footage. But no matter what kind of codec is used, any time your computer or editor doesn't support that codec, it will either fail or attempt to transcode the footage in real time, which is punishing for any computer.<br>

Likely Premiere Elements doesn't like the vanilla MJPEG codec Pentax creates the K-5 files with. PC folks have had good luck installing the MotionJPEG codec from Morgan Multimedia, or from MainConcept; then you can edit the K-5 files directly.<br>

I am a Mac user. I haven't played with finding an alternative codec for my K-5 footage; I have just used the tools available in Final Cut Studio. I load up all my clips in Apple Compressor, and output them to Apple ProRes 1080p codec, with the same file specs as the original. This transcoding is quite quick on my MacBookPro and essentially lossless. The Apple ProRes clips play very nicely with Final Cut Pro.<br>

If you eventually want to end up with MPEG (for DVD or Bluray output I assume?) you make that conversion as the last step. MPEG is very lossy, and tough to edit. Think of it only as a final delivery format, like a print. You never want to shoot or edit in MPEG.<br>

This probably all sounds a little counterintuitive, as the consumer camera market has embraced AVCHD and other MPEG-based formats. This is convenient only if you are going to shoot and show the clips unaltered. The moment you want to edit your footage, you are better off with a higher bitrate, intraframe compressor.</p>

[wpoupore]

<p>Yvon, I'm a longtime Mac user, and I can say with absolute certainty that you don't need a Mac. Mac-Windows, whatever operating system you want is fine. But you MUST have a powerful computer for video.<br>

Maybe I'l a little dense today, but from your post it wasn't clear whether you're the laptop and the quad core are the same or two different computers? A quad core laptop running XP seemed a bit incongruous. With that in mind:</p>

<p>1) Under XP only 2 GB memory is normally available to applications. So you are likely better off with Vista or Windows 7.</p>

<p>2) Video card - This is where manufactures typically save some money to be able to offer a computer at a lower price. If you computer uses what is called "integrated video" then it is using part of the main computer memory instead of it's own dedicated memory, which is slower than dedicated video memory and also reduces memory available for other tasks. And combined with this is a relatively low performance video processor. Together they mean poor performance when editing video.</p>

<p>If we're talking about a laptop then you're pretty much stuck with what's in there. I haven't heard of a laptop with upgradeable video card but that doesn't mean there isn't one. If it's a desktop then you've got a few choices, some of which cost more than some computers...</p>

<p>3) Laptops typically ship with slow hard drives. You can get a much faster (7200 rpm) 500 GB laptop drive for under $100. It will make it seem like you've bought a new computer just in regular use, even apart from video. If you're talking about a desktop, getting a new hard drive will still help a lot. Video needs all the speed it can get, and the drives have changed enough that just replacing whatever you have with something big and new will make a noticable difference.<br>

And that's just the beginning. If you need real speed then you start talking about striping drives together and...solid state drive (SSD) will go even faster, but are much more expensive per GB of storage and.....The old saying: Speed costs. How fast do you want to go?</p>

 

[yvon_bourque2]

<p>I am taknign about two computers here. I use my laptop when I travel. I used it when I was the the San Diego Photo Expo and it ran the video fine, not editing, but just playing the video. <br /><br />Back home, I installed Premiere 9 on my desktop, the Dell computer with windows XP Pro. I tried to edit the video I had taken and that's when everything went to hell. The desktop can't handle it. It closes the program, or play the video jerky and with the sound un-synchronised, etc. Someone told me to reduce the files by changing the format. I downloaded a program to do that, I converted to MP3, MP4, MPEG, and it still doesn't help any.<br>

Premiere 9 does eat up memory as just running the program, without creating or opening a project, is very slow. Costco sell a powerful gateway computer, with windows 7 pro, 8gig, 500 gig HD, all bells and whistles for less than $550.00. It's a heck cheaper than any Apple Computers and if I understand correctly. Microsoft base desktop would do a as good of a job as iMac.</p>

 

[MattB.Net]

<p>Actually with 32 bit you should get about 3.5 GB available to Windows+apps, but that is pretty lean for HD video. Something like what Yvon suggests (or many like it) would likely do much better for video editing.</p>

[wpoupore]

<p>Yvon, you don't mention what video card the Gateway has. This is really important and at that price level I expect it will be the achilles heal of the system. I would also be surprised if it wasn't integrated which is best avoided if you can. The good news is that even if it has integrated video you can also add a video card into one of the slots at a later date to make up for any deficiency. Just remember that a "really powerful" computer for other things may be "just getting by" when it comes to video editing. </p>

[jeremy_corbin]

<p>I'm with Matt: any 32-bit OS is going to kill your performance for this task starting with your RAM. This includes XP, Vista, and 7. Not all CPUs are 64-bit. The fact that you're running XP still tells me you probably have a 32-bit CPU. I have 6GB on my linux box since it's 64-bit. Talk about smooth....</p>

<p>Anyway, $550 for a machine you saw at CostCo (or where ever) will probably process video smoother than you do now. 8GB would be awesome for video crunching. My first suggestion would be to snag that box and uninstall all the preloaded stuff. Everything. I'd even go as far as to uninstall the anti-virus program (shortly after <em>never</em> connecting it to the internet). Anti-virus programs have an awesome habit of actively scanning every file that is open and moving around, and that slows down your video processing (great for the internet, awful for processing video). Then save all your videos to an external hard drive that you can move back and forth between your current desktop and push the video to the internet when you're all done.</p>

<p>Really though, the best bet is to have a dedicated machine to these tasks, and leave the daily stuff on a daily machine.</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>Matt,</p>

<p>You're correct, XP Pro CAN address closer to 3GB max (though not 4GB), as can NT based machines and servers running 32bit (up to 4GB or more).</p>

<p>XP Home can't (at least officially), I actually wasn't aware that XP Pro had the 3GB switch option, I have a copy of Pro I never loaded on the desktop because I didn't see any advantages, looks like it's time to upgrade and add a GB of RAM.</p>

<p>According to Microsoft though just adding 3GB of ram on XP pro doesn't activate the other 1GB, I believe something has to be changed in the boot.ini file to address it. I'm sure if Dell included this ram in Yvon's build they edited the boot.ini file, but if he added this on his own, it probably wasn't edited.</p>

[MattB.Net]

<p>I'd forgotten about the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/pae/paemem.mspx">boot.ini switch</a>. That may help a little in the short term, but a better machine with a lot more RAM (and a faster bus & CPU wouldn't hurt either) is likely to be your only/best long term solution.<br>

My main home PC has a AMD quad core 2.5 GHz CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 7200 RPM hard drive with a 32 Mb cache running Win7 x64. It's pretty nice for everything I have thrown at it so far. I built the whole thing myself for a few hundred dollars.<br>

At work I have a similar setup but with 12 GB of RAM for my software development job. It's a Dell because at work my time is more valuable making software than tinkering with my hardware.</p>

[yvon_bourque2]

<p>"Really though, the best bet is to have a dedicated machine to these tasks, and leave the daily stuff on a daily machine."</p>

<p>I think this makes sense and I will probably do just that. I will have a computer running Adobe programs, still and videos only. I will install just the exec on the main drive and put all files on the separate HD and from the other computer, also save on the internet as backup.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the good info. I know about Photography, but the Computers are only used as my "darkroom" . I don't want to know to much about how it's working, I just want to use it.</p>

[MattB.Net]

<p>Alternatively, you could just disable AntiVirus when you are going to do video editing.<br>

While we are talking AV, I'll chime in that <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/">Microsoft Security Essentials</a> is great, low-overhead, and Free! That's an unusual combination of traits but it's true! :)</p>

[DWScott]

<blockquote>

<p>I tried to edit the video I had taken and that's when everything went to hell. The desktop can't handle it. It closes the program, or play the video jerky and with the sound un-synchronised, etc.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Seriously Yvon, make sure you have a compatible codec installed.<br>

You can spend $10,000 on faster computers and it still won't work any better without the right codec installed.<br>

If your laptop can play back the files, computer horsepower is not your primary concern.</p>

[DWScott]

<p>To point you in the right direction, here are some sources for a MotionJPEG codec. Note, these are untested by me. You should play with a trial version of these if available. None of the products are expensive either.<br>

http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/<br>

http://www.mainconcept.com/index.php<br>

http://www.accusoft.com/pvmjpegdownload.htm</p>

 

[DWScott]

<p>And from Adobe's own forums, another recommendation for the Morgan codec. (Note, this thread is about the K-x, but Pentax is using the same compressor for all their cameras.)<br>

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2379777#2379777</p>

 

[mountainvisions]

<p>Agreed on security essentials, I was weary of MS antivirus, but I got tired buying updates which seem to get more and more expensive. </p>

<p>Anyway, been running security essentials after a decade of Norton, and so far so good. </p>

<p>I will third the idea of a dedicated power Windows system with NOTHING ON IT but editing software. Go 64bit with the best video card, and fastest HDs you can, and you should be smiling. Backup to a RAID server or an attached SATA external drive. <br>

<br />You can build a really nice powerful windows box for around $1000 if you already have a monitor, use a KVM switch to use the same keyboard, mouse and monitor and save some dough and space!</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

<p> </p>

[william_koehler1]

<p>I hate to be the grinch, but this is part of the reason Adobe has a free trial download of the program.</p>

<p>On a brighter note, I have a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 4 GB of RAM, 3.5 usable, running Windows XP Pro. The events I shoot for my church range from 45 minutes to two hours in length, using HDV (25 Mbps 1440 x 1080 MPEG-2) codec. Using Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Pro and doing fairly simple cuts, fades, exposure, and contrast correction...no problem.<br>

Enormous is not very descriptive. HDV runs 13 GB per hour, and that may seem like a lot, but in the video/cinema world it is at the basement end of things. It is all what you are used to. So is slow. My rig renders from HDV to DVD compatible video in near real time. That means an hour program will take an hour+ to render. What are your expectations for speed? Can you translate that to Frames per Second?</p>

<p>And having a Pentax K-x, I can assure you that the MJPEG codec is at the utter low end of the computationally intense codec end of things. My rig cuts through it like a hot knife through butter. Yours should too. Moving to a 64-bit OS is not going to change things much. Reason? You're running a 32 bit app, which among other things means that app can use at best 4 GB of memory, regardless of how much memory you load into the computer or what OS you run on it.</p>

<p>I wouldn't worry about the video card to much. At this (entry) level, the video editor uses it mostly for pushing video frames to the screen. At this level it is much less a factor in video editting than in say, game play.</p>

<p>To me it sounds like something else is wrong, but what i can't put my finger on...I'll give the free trial a look...</p>

<p>One big, big possibility is the fact the K-5 shoots 25 Frames/second video, which is fine if you live in PAL land. If on the other hand you have your footage sitting in a 30 fps (NTSC) timeline, then the program is probably trying to do a frame rate conversion. Generally speaking, frame rate conversions are BAD and TIME INTENSIVE. And it is this that is slowing it way, way down. A quick test would be to set the project properties to PAL(25 fps) instead of NTSC (30 fps), retry a render or play, and see what happens.</p>

<p>It's a big reason the K-5 does not appeal to me - I live in the USA, the heart of NTSC 30 fps land.</p>