I received this as a gift several months ago and have had trouble running this software on my computer. I can edit and output, but it's slow, choppy to view and edit on the small monitor, and only outputs to tape without dropped frames about 40% of the time. Here are my current system specs:

Sony Vaio Laptop (Aug. 2003)
Pentium 4 CPU 2.66 GHz
1024 MB RAM
Windows XP Home Edition
Drive C: 5.36 GB free space out of 13.9 (main drive)
Drive D: 15.7 GB free space out of 18.6 (Adobe Premiere 2.0 loaded)

I recently did a cleaning on my computer, wiped off the whole hard drive, and reinstalled everything from scratch. The only software on my computer is what came with Windows XP and Adobe Premiere 2. I downloaded the program 'End it All 2' and run it before starting Premiere. I also loaded Premiere's files onto my extra D: drive so it would free up more space on my main C: drive.

Now, both main hard drives on my computer are in the laptop and are four years old, so they run at 5400 rpm. Slower than recommended, but I use a 500 GB firewire drive that runs at 7200 rpm and it captures perfectly, no glitches. It is only when I edit in my timeline that it lags on the monitor. Occasionally it surprises me by running smoothly, but most of the time it's choppy.

I originally had 512 MB of RAM but doubled it a few months ago in the hopes it would make a difference. It didn't.

I could probably use a video card upgrade, but can't since it's a laptop. My resolution only tops out at 1024 X 768 and the highest color quality is 32 bits.

Any suggestions? Should this be happening with what I have? Let me know if I need to provide further information.

This could take a while.......

1. Why have you got Premiere loaded on the D drive ( I presume you mean the programs?). All your programs ( read only) need to be on your C drive and out of the way of the chaos.

2. What is "End it all 2"?

3. Can I take it that you capture to your external and read from that to place your "work" files on your D drive? If not, how, exactly, are you doing it?

4. Are you killing everything in both your "Startup" and "Services" groups in the MSconfig setup before attempting to edit? (Watch out for that "Services" thing, it can get dangerous). Oh, and kill your network connection (if you have one) as well.

5. Considering the hardware available, I think you're doing pretty damn good to get what you've got.

Get back to us with an update and we'll take it from there.

CS

If your external drive is Firewire connect, and your final data is streaming from that to your camera (also on Firewire) that could well be the reason for the dropped frames.

If the drive has dual connnect capabilities (Firewire/ USB), shift it over to the USB connect port instead - Firewire has limited bandwidth on multi - connects.

If that is not possible, shift your data to the D drive so nothing else is competing with the Firewire bandwidth.

CS

Consider disableing "write behind cacheing" on your external drive

AND

increasing your disk memory cache to 2 or even 4 gig.

CS

This could take a while.......

1. Why have you got Premiere loaded on the D drive ( I presume you mean the programs?). All your programs ( read only) need to be on your C drive and out of the way of the chaos.

2. What is "End it all 2"?

3. Can I take it that you capture to your external and read from that to place your "work" files on your D drive? If not, how, exactly, are you doing it?

4. Are you killing everything in both your "Startup" and "Services" groups in the MSconfig setup before attempting to edit? (Watch out for that "Services" thing, it can get dangerous). Oh, and kill your network connection (if you have one) as well.

5. Considering the hardware available, I think you're doing pretty damn good to get what you've got.

Get back to us with an update and we'll take it from there.

CS

Thanks for answering. Sorry I've taken a while to respond. I wanted to try out a few of your later suggestions.

To answer your above questions:

1) After cleaning and reinstalling everything on my PC, I chose to load Premiere on the D: drive which had much more free space. This also limits the space taken up on the C: drive.

2) End It All 2 is a program that does as you suggest in question #4 - it clears the OS of any unnecessary programs running in the background.

3) Yes, I capture to the external drive and then run Premiere off drive D:

4) End It All 2

5) I know. I should have enough hardware to run Adobe smoothly. That's what baffles me.

If your external drive is Firewire connect, and your final data is streaming from that to your camera (also on Firewire) that could well be the reason for the dropped frames.

If the drive has dual connnect capabilities (Firewire/ USB), shift it over to the USB connect port instead - Firewire has limited bandwidth on multi - connects.

If that is not possible, shift your data to the D drive so nothing else is competing with the Firewire bandwidth.

CS

Sorry, this was a mistake on my part saying it was a Firewire. The Seagate drive uses a USB 2.0 which should be fast enough.

I use large imported video files (several GBs) and thought this may be what is causing the problem, but I uploaded 30 sec to 4 min clips and cut them together and it was still choppy to watch on my preview edit monitor.

Consider disableing "write behind cacheing" on your external drive

AND

increasing your disk memory cache to 2 or even 4 gig.

CS

I tried disabling write behind caching, though I've also seen on other pages that it is useful for programs like this. No difference, either way.

Is increasing disk memory cache the same as increasing Virtual Memory?

Have you tried defragmenting your drive? I had a problem with choppy video and after I defragmented everything played smoothly.

Have you tried defragmenting your drive? I had a problem with choppy video and after I defragmented everything played smoothly.

Well, I ran the analysis last night to defrag and it said it wasn't necessary. There wasn't much for it to do (not unsurprising, since I just wiped my hard drive clean and started over from scratch with reinstalls and such).

Aron,

I really would suggest you un - install Premier from your D drive and put it back on the C drive. I'm talking about the programs here. The software is read only and is only competing with your data by being on the D drive. With such slow drives it really pays to have nothing competing for drive access that doesn't need to. I realise this may leave you pretty tight on the C drive but there really should be nothing there but software (ie programs) that in the main are read only.

If "End it all" does as you say then there seems little to be gained by persuing that avenue of thought, although, it would still be worth checking your "Services" and "Startup" tabs after running it to see what it has left still running (if anything).

Going back to point 5 in my original post - you will find people (on DVinfo)in similar situations to yourself with choppy playback, with far more powerful systems than yours, why? I have no idea but even my monster can have "bad hair days" and throw an occasional "chop".

I do think that if you can get your system to be bouncing your data back and forth between your D and, er, "F?" drive with nothing else in the way is your best chance, tho' it may well be that your 5400 drive just cannot cut the mustard with this application.

CS

I think the problem is your laptop which can't keep up, premiere can be quite demanding for your system, I have cs3 and a desktop pc which was high end 2 years ago, in "normal speed " editing everything runs fine, only if I fast forward through the time line the image in the preview monitor skips a few frames and it looks like it can't keep up. It can't be the c drive because I have a 10k raptor drive and the videodrive is a dedicated 7200rpm drive and I'm editing sd footage. My best guess is that it's, or the processor, or the memory which is not sufficient. I have a P4 3,2 and 1 gig of memory but plan to add an additional 1gig stick soon to see if that makes any difference.

forgot this in my last post (and my first, second....) as well!

Check out the following :

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/333161.html

AND

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/333204.html

If you can't sort it from those, I don't think you will.

CS

So is that 2.66 a hyperthreading processor? If so, do you have hyperthreading enabled or disabled in the bios? I noticed that once I went from Premiere 6.5 to Premiere Pro 2.0 if I do NOT have hyperthreading enabled Adobe runs like pure poop ... as soon as I enabled it, no more choppy video. Keep in mind that when I was running 6.5 it wouldn't make any difference (that I could tell) whether or not I had it enabled or disabled. This is all SD video ... it will be a decade before I make the swap to HD :-)
Below you will find my specs:

P4 3.0 GHz proc (HT enabled)
ECS mobo
2 Gigs of RAM
C: 74 gig Raptor HD (10K rpm) -- all programs & OS are installed on this drive
D: 250 Gig 7200 rpm Seagate -- video capture drive, project files, pagefile is on this drive
Cheap video card that I had laying around

Well, I ran the analysis last night to defrag and it said it wasn't necessary. There wasn't much for it to do (not unsurprising, since I just wiped my hard drive clean and started over from scratch with reinstalls and such).

I never trust the analysis ... I would defrag anyway .. just my $.02 ..

So is that 2.66 a hyperthreading processor? If so, do you have hyperthreading enabled or disabled in the bios? I noticed that once I went from Premiere 6.5 to Premiere Pro 2.0 if I do NOT have hyperthreading enabled Adobe runs like pure poop ... as soon as I enabled it, no more choppy video. Keep in mind that when I was running 6.5 it wouldn't make any difference (that I could tell) whether or not I had it enabled or disabled. This is all SD video ... it will be a decade before I make the swap to HD :-)
Below you will find my specs:

P4 3.0 GHz proc (HT enabled)
ECS mobo
2 Gigs of RAM
C: 74 gig Raptor HD (10K rpm) -- all programs & OS are installed on this drive
D: 250 Gig 7200 rpm Seagate -- video capture drive, project files, pagefile is on this drive
Cheap video card that I had laying around

Unfortunately, it's not a hyperthreading processor. I had hope there for a second, anyways.

Looking it up, HT-enabled processors had just come out about a year before, so it probably just missed out.

Aron,

I really would suggest you un - install Premier from your D drive and put it back on the C drive. I'm talking about the programs here. The software is read only and is only competing with your data by being on the D drive. With such slow drives it really pays to have nothing competing for drive access that doesn't need to. I realise this may leave you pretty tight on the C drive but there really should be nothing there but software (ie programs) that in the main are read only.

If "End it all" does as you say then there seems little to be gained by persuing that avenue of thought, although, it would still be worth checking your "Services" and "Startup" tabs after running it to see what it has left still running (if anything).

Going back to point 5 in my original post - you will find people (on DVinfo)in similar situations to yourself with choppy playback, with far more powerful systems than yours, why? I have no idea but even my monster can have "bad hair days" and throw an occasional "chop".

I do think that if you can get your system to be bouncing your data back and forth between your D and, er, "F?" drive with nothing else in the way is your best chance, tho' it may well be that your 5400 drive just cannot cut the mustard with this application.

CS

forgot this in my last post (and my first, second....) as well!

Check out the following :

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/333161.html

AND

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/333204.html

If you can't sort it from those, I don't think you will.

CS

I didn't have time to go through all the Adobe checks last night, but I did uninstall Premiere from D and install it back on C. I will go through the whole list over the weekend.

I'm wondering now if it isn't a weak video card. Not only does my laptop run the Premiere preview window choppily (is that a word?), but is also plays back streaming video (such as YouTube) sporadically. For a few seconds and even minutes sometimes it's very clear, and then the video turns to garbage and lags for seconds at a time.

However, being a laptop, and also being the particular laptop I have, I'm stuck with the video card I have. I did download the latest driver for the video card off of Sony Vaio's website, and actually so far I haven't had a problem with YouTube again. The new driver is still about four years old (dated 2003), so I'll keep looking for updates in the hope that that will improve the programs I use.

As I've said, Premiere was still choppy on the C drive, but I tried rendering the work area a little at a time and setting the preview monitor to draft quality, and that seemed to help a bit. It still wasn't perfect, but I had a better chance of it working for longer periods (20-30 sec) uninterrupted, which is better than what it was doing.

Does using larger sized capture files affect preview playback at all? I shoot live bands sometimes, so this is hard to avoid since I need the entire set for the audio, at least. Would using smaller sized .avi files help?

Is there any way I can limit the quality of the preview window more so it would run more smoothly, at the cost of pixel quality (just for the preview)? In previous versions you could change settings for DV playback, Desktop playback, etc. but I can't find that option in Premiere Pro 2.0.

I think the problem is your laptop which can't keep up, premiere can be quite demanding for your system, I have cs3 and a desktop pc which was high end 2 years ago, in "normal speed " editing everything runs fine, only if I fast forward through the time line the image in the preview monitor skips a few frames and it looks like it can't keep up. It can't be the c drive because I have a 10k raptor drive and the videodrive is a dedicated 7200rpm drive and I'm editing sd footage. My best guess is that it's, or the processor, or the memory which is not sufficient. I have a P4 3,2 and 1 gig of memory but plan to add an additional 1gig stick soon to see if that makes any difference.

I have 1 GB of RAM, so I would hope that was enough. But I think you're right - I don't think my laptop is quite up to the task. Before Premiere Pro 2.0 I was using a cheap copy of Pinnacle to edit, and that ran very well on my system. Premiere is a processor eater, though.

I never trust the analysis ... I would defrag anyway .. just my $.02 ..

Will do. Especially with the new install and switching drives.

Just to throw you a curve ball .............

Let's just assume that Resource Hog Premiere is not ever going to sit comfortably with your laptop, and that it is going to annoy the c**p out of you in the process every time you use it...........why not.............

Download the trial versions of either PE 3 or Ulead VS 10 (hey, why not both if you can cram 'em on yer C drive) and see if either of those sits more comfortably with the available resources?

I don't know what features of Premier are "must haves" for you, so it's your choice, but if either of the two I mentioned "do it for you", then it may be a better solution than trying to get a quart out of this particular pint pot.

Just a thought.

PS. I'm sure there are other options I haven't thought of, but you get the idea.

CS

I use premiere 1.5 with an Athlon 64 processor 1.6 ghz, but on windows xp pro (32 bit, reluctant to change over).

Anyway, when I had one gig of ram I had similar problems. I doubled it and they went away, for the most part. I know 2 gigs of ram sounds like overkill, but it isn't. Or it wasn't for me.

Also, I don't know how others feel about this, but I don't think you will ever get away from choppy looking video with a 32MB graphics card. 64 is also inadequate. I have an ATI with 128MB (can't remember the bus speed). It is adequate, but I wish I would have invested in a 256MB card.

And I agree with previous posts, put your programs on your c files. Save your projects and captured video to other drives that have the space.

I use premiere 1.5 with an Athlon 64 processor 1.6 ghz, but on windows xp pro (32 bit, reluctant to change over).

Anyway, when I had one gig of ram I had similar problems. I doubled it and they went away, for the most part. I know 2 gigs of ram sounds like overkill, but it isn't. Or it wasn't for me.

Also, I don't know how others feel about this, but I don't think you will ever get away from choppy looking video with a 32MB graphics card. 64 is also inadequate. I have an ATI with 128MB (can't remember the bus speed). It is adequate, but I wish I would have invested in a 256MB card.

And I agree with previous posts, put your programs on your c files. Save your projects and captured video to other drives that have the space.

It's on the C drive now.

Unfortunately, what I have on my computer is what I got - it's all maxed out. Since it's a laptop I can't upgrade the graphics card, and the max RAM I can hold is 512 MB for two, or 1024 GB total. That's what I have.

Yeah, it's a four year old comp.

Just to throw you a curve ball .............

Let's just assume that Resource Hog Premiere is not ever going to sit comfortably with your laptop, and that it is going to annoy the c**p out of you in the process every time you use it...........why not.............

Download the trial versions of either PE 3 or Ulead VS 10 (hey, why not both if you can cram 'em on yer C drive) and see if either of those sits more comfortably with the available resources?

I don't know what features of Premier are "must haves" for you, so it's your choice, but if either of the two I mentioned "do it for you", then it may be a better solution than trying to get a quart out of this particular pint pot.

Just a thought.

PS. I'm sure there are other options I haven't thought of, but you get the idea.

CS

Having Studio Pro (well, CS3 now) is what I eventually wanted so I was given Premiere Pro as a gift over the holidays. Just don't think my system can crack it at full speed, though I have been able to put it too good use with several projects. But it would be so much easier if it ran more smoothly.

In the near future I plan on upgrading to the CS3 studio pack, during which time I plan on also investing in a desktop system that can handle it and put my laptop out to pasture with simple tasks like word processing and checking my email.

It is a resource hog, though, very much. Never had this much trouble getting a program to run on this before.

I'll look into PE 3 and Ulead, though I don't know much about them to be honest.

Ulead VS10 Plus is so simple even I can use it (and that's saying something!). PE3 ain't bad but suffers a bit from the same "resource hog" problems as it's big brother, tho' not as easy to use (for me) as VS10.

VS10 doesn't seem to need nearly the resources as either of the others, but maybe someone can come up with alternatives that are better suited.

In the very short term, not knowing your financial resources, you can get round the C drive space limitation for application software by tacking on yet another external drive. I normally wouldn't advise it, but running apps off an external drive has the benefit of not interfering with the data drives, and if the software needs a module, everything has to stop till it's got, simple as that - no dropped frames etc.

It doesn't need to be a monster either - heck, you've got a C drive so small you could mistake it for an aspirin! The smallest "tack on" drive you can get your hands on would do the job - if you get it with both Firewire/ USB you can use one connect (USB) during capture (say) and the other (Firewire) for editing - bit messy but do - able if you have the energy for it.

As I say, a temporary work - around for the circumstances. If anyone has suggestions for viable alternative software I'd be interested - must be tons of stuff out there that does the job without needing a Cray 3 to run it.

Whatever, if you get to the end of the Adobe check list and it still isn't playing ball, worth giving some thought to.

Good Luck

CS

Ulead VS10 Plus is so simple even I can use it (and that's saying something!). PE3 ain't bad but suffers a bit from the same "resource hog" problems as it's big brother, tho' not as easy to use (for me) as VS10.

VS10 doesn't seem to need nearly the resources as either of the others, but maybe someone can come up with alternatives that are better suited.

In the very short term, not knowing your financial resources, you can get round the C drive space limitation for application software by tacking on yet another external drive. I normally wouldn't advise it, but running apps off an external drive has the benefit of not interfering with the data drives, and if the software needs a module, everything has to stop till it's got, simple as that - no dropped frames etc.

It doesn't need to be a monster either - heck, you've got a C drive so small you could mistake it for an aspirin! The smallest "tack on" drive you can get your hands on would do the job - if you get it with both Firewire/ USB you can use one connect (USB) during capture (say) and the other (Firewire) for editing - bit messy but do - able if you have the energy for it.

As I say, a temporary work - around for the circumstances. If anyone has suggestions for viable alternative software I'd be interested - must be tons of stuff out there that does the job without needing a Cray 3 to run it.

Whatever, if you get to the end of the Adobe check list and it still isn't playing ball, worth giving some thought to.

Good Luck

CS

Thanks again. I do have a Seagate external drive with 500 GB of space. Is that what you mean? It was a lifesaver when I got it. No more worries about my C: drive running out of space.

that wasn't what I meant. If that Seagate is your only external drive and is the one you stream captured video to, you do not want software apps on it as well (well, at least nothing you're going to run during capture/ writeback, anyway).

If you let both types of data share the same drive, all it takes is for the software to make a module call from track 1 (say) whilst the drive is quite happily writing to track 7,956. The resultant seek to track 1, read, and seek back to track 7,956 loses you 5 dropped frames of video (-ish).

If you are going to put software anywhere but your C drive, it really should be kept away from any drive used for streaming video to/ from, especially on such a performance challenged system.

Hence why I suggested yet another external drive to overcome you C drive limitations for software apps.

The reason for suggesting dual connect (USB/ Firewire) was that during capture the camera is hogging the Firewire and you don't want a disc drive on that link. During editing/ rendering etc the Firewire is idle and would be better suited to your second external hard drive, especially if you are running your edit/ render software from it.

Does that make sense?

CS

that wasn't what I meant. If that Seagate is your only external drive and is the one you stream captured video to, you do not want software apps on it as well (well, at least nothing you're going to run during capture/ writeback, anyway).

If you let both types of data share the same drive, all it takes is for the software to make a module call from track 1 (say) whilst the drive is quite happily writing to track 7,956. The resultant seek to track 1, read, and seek back to track 7,956 loses you 5 dropped frames of video (-ish).

If you are going to put software anywhere but your C drive, it really should be kept away from any drive used for streaming video to/ from, especially on such a performance challenged system.

Hence why I suggested yet another external drive to overcome you C drive limitations for software apps.

The reason for suggesting dual connect (USB/ Firewire) was that during capture the camera is hogging the Firewire and you don't want a disc drive on that link. During editing/ rendering etc the Firewire is idle and would be better suited to your second external hard drive, especially if you are running your edit/ render software from it.

Does that make sense?

CS

Before I get too confused or confuse anyone with what I was using and what I am using now (after starting this thread and reading suggestions), let me state what I am using now:

C: drive (internal hard drive) - XP OS, all Premiere Pro program software, misc software
D: drive (second internal hard drive)- some Premiere videos, downloaded files, misc programs, Word documents, etc.
G: drive (Seagate USB 2 external hard drive) - exclusively used to save Premiere videos, cache folders, projects, etc.

I now run Premiere on C: and capture files and save them to the G: or D: drive(depending on how long the video is I want to capture). I only used the D: drive for the Premiere software to save the 1 GB of disk space, but it is now on the C: drive. I am running all software off of the C: drive now.

Several things come to mind here that no one has mentioned:

Are there *2* physical internal drives in this laptop? It seems more likely you have 2 partitions on one drive.

The computer is almost 4 years old and it's a laptop. It most likely is FILLED with dust and is running hot. I'm willing to bet the upper left corner of the keyboard is getting hot. The fans are probably running fast and loud on this.

Pop off the cover above the keyboard between the keyboard and the display hinges. There's a fan underneath there which is probably filled with dust and junk. This one is easy to get to on the VAIO's, but there should be other fans that can be reached through further disassembly.

Definitely keep the drives defragmented. The one with XP is decent (it's a light version of Diskeeper, but it's almost 6 years old at this point). The only files that get fragmented are the ones you use often, so even if it the drive is 1% fragmented, odds are it's fragmented exactly where you need it contiguous.

The paging file's minimum and maximum need to be set to the same value for minimum and maximum or the paging file gets fragmented EVERY time it's accessed.

More RAM will probably help, but it should run fine for basic capturing and basic cut stuff.

When was the last time Windows was cleanly installed on this computer? If you don't remember, it's been waaaaay too long. Windows (all versions) lose performance over time and doing a clean install will get everything running nice and smoothly once again.

There's probably a bunch of junk running on there, like iTunes helper, QTTask and a lot of other useless things, taking up lots of RAM. A clean install will get rid of all this stuff and cleaning out the fans and heatsinks internally will increase the performance by a lot, and also make the computer much quieter and nicer to work on.

Hope this helps. :)
Eric

Several things come to mind here that no one has mentioned:

Are there *2* physical internal drives in this laptop? It seems more likely you have 2 partitions on one drive.

The computer is almost 4 years old and it's a laptop. It most likely is FILLED with dust and is running hot. I'm willing to bet the upper left corner of the keyboard is getting hot. The fans are probably running fast and loud on this.

Pop off the cover above the keyboard between the keyboard and the display hinges. There's a fan underneath there which is probably filled with dust and junk. This one is easy to get to on the VAIO's, but there should be other fans that can be reached through further disassembly.

Definitely keep the drives defragmented. The one with XP is decent (it's a light version of Diskeeper, but it's almost 6 years old at this point). The only files that get fragmented are the ones you use often, so even if it the drive is 1% fragmented, odds are it's fragmented exactly where you need it contiguous.

The paging file's minimum and maximum need to be set to the same value for minimum and maximum or the paging file gets fragmented EVERY time it's accessed.

More RAM will probably help, but it should run fine for basic capturing and basic cut stuff.

When was the last time Windows was cleanly installed on this computer? If you don't remember, it's been waaaaay too long. Windows (all versions) lose performance over time and doing a clean install will get everything running nice and smoothly once again.

There's probably a bunch of junk running on there, like iTunes helper, QTTask and a lot of other useless things, taking up lots of RAM. A clean install will get rid of all this stuff and cleaning out the fans and heatsinks internally will increase the performance by a lot, and also make the computer much quieter and nicer to work on.

Hope this helps. :)
Eric

Yeah, it's one disk drive. D: is just a separate partition of one 40 GB hard drive.

I did a fresh install of all my VAIO drive a few days before starting the thread. It's completely clean, no junk on the computer. I usually clean it out once a year and it was past due. I thought this would fix Premiere, but it didn't. Still runs about the same, though with some tweaking it has gradually improved. I just have to know my limits when running this machine.

I'll defrag it tonight and try cleaning out the fans, which I'm sure could use some dusting.

If you just installed a few days ago, it shouldn't be too fragmented. But a little bit happens during a clean install.

I would do a clean install and make one full-size partition. It'll make life much easier for you. A 40 gig drive gives you around 36-38 gigs available, split in half it's even worse. You can also use Partition Magic or similar apps to merge the 2 partitions.

Check out this site for great tips on which services you can disable, and why *not* to use MSConfig to do that. :)
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

My laptop is 2 years old, with a P4/3.46Ghz (HT) chip. Premiere runs fine on it. It runs the same with HT disabled too. I have 1.5 gigs of ram in it and a 5400rpm 80 gig drive currently. I have no capture problems. I don't think you're giving your computer much credit. :)

Eric