CS6 Premiere Pro choking on mundane stuff

[Steve Wolla]

I have a pretty decent system for editing that now seems to have been brought to its knees by CS6.
My machine is an HP built just for editing. It has:

i7 990 with 3.46 ghz processor (6 core) .
24 GB's RAM DDR3
Nvidia GTX580 video card
About 10 TB's of attached storage. Drive C is just for programs, a WD 4TB Raid 0 external drive is used for projects, and it is backed up to WD 8TB "Sentenal" running in Raid 5.

Timing for this to happen really sucks, I have to cut down two concerts I shot in April to make demo reels for the bands.

I had been running Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium with just fantastic results. But the cost of the upgrade was low enough that I decided to go for it.

Well that apparently was a mistake. Now I cannot play back anything without major issues. For example, when trying to play back a single video track shot on my Panasonic AC160 at 1080/60i, I can hear the audio playing just beautifully....but the video images stays frozen like a still image. The video is not advancing with the audio. If I let it run for ten minutes, the video will be 10 minutes behind the audio.

When I open up a project from last April with three tracks of video, which was originally edited in Premiere Pro CS5.5, there are red lines all over the top of my timeline where there were none in April. I try and render the timeline, and it tells me "time remaining = 104:38:15"!!!!! For a project that is not even 45 minutes long.

Now when I installed CS6 Production Premium, it was an upgrade to my CS5.5 Production Premium, which was an upgrade to CS4 Master Collection, which was an upgrade from my CS3 Master Collection.

Could that history of upgrading be the issue?

Curently I am transferring files from my CS6 computer to my old computer that is still running CS4.

I am also attempting to burn an H.264 file on the CS6 computer because there is no way I can edit on it. My hoping was that by burning the H.264 file I could drop that on a new timeline in CS4 and cut the clips I need out of that.

Is there a way that I can "cleanly" delete my CS6 upgrade and revert to CS5.5 without munging things up?

The computer running CS6 litterally cannot be used for video editing as it is. Before installing CS6, I had no such problems.

Has anyone else had this type of problem with installing CS6? If so how did you resolve it? Any advice or help would certainly be appreciated, I am at a real loss.
Thanks in advance,
SW

[Pete Bauer]

Multiple versions of CS should co-exist on the same system with no problem as they are completely separate installs. Similarly, you should be able to uninstall a version without affecting the others. That shouldn't be necessary though since your hardware sounds very much up to snuff.

But there must be a bottleneck somewhere. Some of the common gotchas, most of which should only take a few minutes to check, and if necessary, fix:

- C drive almost full and/or severely fragmented. Many programs, including CS, default their temp/cache/preview files to the C drive and it is easy to get surprised with a near-full disc that starts bogging down your computer. The first thing I do after installing programs is to go to preferences and point all those working files to a fast drive with ample free space.

- Throughput from the project array. You mention that your source files are on an external RAID0. Assuming it is 4 discs all set up as a single RAID0, that's great editing, but the next question then is "what's the interface?" For example, USB2 wouldn't cut it for multicam editing. That's probably not the case, since your system's performance in CS5.5 was good. But even if you don't really think this is the problem, do use a utility to check the sustained throughput of the array to rule out a choke point.

- Make sure GPU acceleration is working for you. I believe the GTX580 is certified so you shouldn't have to do the GPU hack, but if you have red bars everywhere it either means you are using non-accelerated effects, or GPU acceleration isn't turned on, or both. Check in the Project preferences to make sure it is enabled.

- Incompatible third party hardware / software. What else is on the system? Any custom controllers or capture cards?

- If all else fails, try uninstalling and re-installing, as maybe the install has a corrupt driver or something. Hey, it happens. Since you describe freezing video frames, this seems fairly likely.

So many of us are really happy with CS6 that I have to think your troubles relate not to the software per se, but some system glitch. Will be interested to hear what the problem turned out to be.

[Steve Wolla]

Thanks for the fast response, Pete.

Now that you mention it, I do have a rather full Drive C. It's showing that it has "only" 153GB's left out of 1.82TB's. It's little bar in "my computer" is red. I will go pick up a new Drive C and start transferring data over.

As for my connection to the computer, it is eSATA.

I will double-check to see that my graphics card accelloration is turned on and working. It was certified for CS5.5, I asked Adobe if it would work for CS6 and they said yes. But....I never double-checked to see that it was enabled after the install.

No custom controllers or such, although I did download NewBlueFX Colorfast immediately prior (about a week) to installing CS6.

These are all very good suggestions, thanks Pete. I am a real fan of Adobe CS, have been since 2004.

[Peter Manojlovic]

Sorry Steve...

But what do you have in C:\ drive, that would fill it up??

Except for OS, and program installs, nothing else should be on there.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Steve Wolla

Now I cannot play back anything without major issues. For example, when trying to play back a single video track shot on my Panasonic AC160 at 1080/60i, I can hear the audio playing just beautifully....but the video images stays frozen like a still image.

You aren't the first or only person to see something like this. It's typically due to configuration issues. Search the Adobe PPro forums, maybe ask a question there.

[Harm Millaard]

Steve,

There is something seriously wrong on your C: drive. Even with CS5, CS5.5 and CS6 Master Collection installed, it would be difficult to use anything more than say 60 GB. With the fill rate on your 2 TB drive it seriously slows down and I would suggest you clean up massively. Around 1.6 TB or more should be deleted permanently. Maybe the best approach is to go for a complete format and fresh install of OS & programs on your C: drive.

[Ron Evans]

By default CS6 puts all files in your My Documents folder which is of course on your c drive. Unless you set up all temp folders etc etc then I expect everything you have done since loading CS6 in on your C drive.

Ron Evans

[Steve Wolla]

This is all really great information.

Yeah, I checked and under "My Documents" on C drive there is an "Adobe" folder. Clicked it, and there was a folder for PP 5.5, with 342GB's of .PRV files.
Can those be safely moved to another drive I have, or do I risk screwing up files that I may have to go back and work on in the near future?

[Harm Millaard]

.PRV contains rendered preview files. They are not needed and can be safely removed, but it means your timelimes need to be rendered again. You can not move them to another drive. I suggest you use both Preferences and Project setup to direct Media Cache files and Preview files to another drive. Also disable hibernation and (manually) remove hiberfil.sys. That can also save 30+ GB. In addition set your Windows environment variables to another drive, Variables like TMP and TEMP. If possible change your My Documents to another drive as well.

[Steve Wolla]

Harm thanks, I can do that.
Won't move .PRV files now, but will make other changes you recommended.

[Steve Wolla]

Need help on video freezing up in CS6 please.
I cleaned out my C drive, replaced a suspect WD 4tb drive with a new G-Raid 4TB, un-installed CS6 and re-stalled CS5.5 so I could get some work done. Tonight I tried a re-install on CS6, but nothing has changed! Video still freezes up, on the simplest AVCHD video clip. It starts out alright, but...if I drag the CTI along the timeline to another clip, he video will freeze on the first frame of that clip and not move at all, while the audio plays back just perfectly.

Do I need to do another un-install and go back to CS5.5, or does Adobe have some sort of fix for freezing video in CS6?

[Trevor Dennis]

It just amazes me how there always seems to be more to learn, and even pretty important stuff that you think you have a handle on, but really don't. Back up the thread Harm suggested serious problems with the OP's C: drive, and I'm thinking that my 238Gb SSD — which is only supposed to have the OS and program files on it, has just 50Gb of free space.

I actually started trying to track things down manually by checking individual folder’s properties, and keeping score with an Excel sheet. Jumping ahead, I later found a handy utility called Windirstat that does all the hard work for you, and delves into all the hidden folders, and system files. That helped a lot.

http://www.downloadbestsoft.com/WinDirStat.html

Amongst other things, I discovered that my Bridge CS6 cache is more than 10Gb in size, but I can't find how to move it off the C: drive. Anyone know the answer to that? I also found lesser, but completely unnecessary cached data in earlier versions of Bridge, so I just purged those.

97% of my User folders consists of 27Gb in my AppData subfolders, nearly all of it related to Adobe apps, and 7Gb in \Local\Temp\After Effects Disk cache — what the heck? I have only just started using After Effects, but have spent a lot of time with the Lynda.com AE CS6 tutorial. I have also set up preferences to use other drives. I think I might purge everything I can in AE, and look again at cache locations. This assumes I am not barking up the wrong tree so to speak — but I did say I know there is always more stuff to learn!

After following the Adobe Premiere Pro Hardware forum for a couple of months when I had my system built earlier this year, I have left my Page file on the C drive, but I am not altogether sure that was the right choice. But with System files taking so much space, I did have a Google round, and discovered that your Restore points can seriously impact on disk space.

http://www.quepublishing.com/article...aspx?p=1804138

I’ve won back an awful lot of space on my C: drive since being prompted to look at it after reading this thread, and have not finished yet. What about hiberfil.sys for instance? That’s another 24Gb on my C: drive, and never use Hybernate.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15140...o-i-delete-it/

[Harm Millaard]

Trevor,

Your 238 G SSD would presumably be a 256 GB SSD, but shows only 238 GB after formatting, right?

I have the same capacity SSD, formally a 256 GB but after formatting only 238 GB. With Win8 64 Enterprise installed and a few other applications, like PerfectDisk, SnagIt, HD Tune Pro, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, Speccy, EVGA utilities, CCleaner, TweakNow and SpyderElite it occupies 15 GB but this is before installing the Master Collection.

To remove the hyberfil.sys file,

Go to cmd.exe as administrator and from the command prompt type in:
"powercfg.exe -h off" without the quotes and press enter. Then exit.

For checking your disk drives for what takes what space, there are two utilities on my favorite list:

1. Treesize Professional, http://www.jam-software.com/treesize/ and
2. Beyond Compare, http://www.scootersoftware.com/moreinfo.php.

[Alan Craven]

Trevor,

Your Bridge cache will be in the same place as the cache for all your other Adobe applications. You can check for its location by going to Edit > Preferences > Cache. It may be that what was on your C:\ drive was left over from from when you moved the Premiere cache.

Once there you can navigate to place it wherever you want. I have it on my F:\ drive - Programs on C:, non-video files on D:\, media on E:\, and Exports on G:\. It needs to be on a fast drive, my E: and F: are both RAID0 - I have an external backup drive.

[Steve Wolla]

At last! I now have CS6 Premiere Pro up and running on my system with no apparent issues. No more freezing up of the video, while the audio keeps playing.

I called Adobe about the issue, and the tech there advised me that it would be best to un-install the CS4 Master Collection, and CS5.5 Production Premium that I had, then re-install CS6 Production Premium. He said they were taking up too much memory. So we did that-deleted CS4, and CS5.5, then re-installed CS6. Now it works like a champ..

Thanks to all on this board who gave their time to respond to my request for help. I wanted to thank you, and post the resulkts in case this happens to someone else, tghey will know that worked for me in solving the problem.

And a big thanks to Adobe for sitting with me for 1.5 hours figuring it out. That was really great.
SW