Background
Many customers have reported performance issues when working
with Long-Form Premiere Pro projects. By Long-Form, we mean
projects that are typically over an hour long with hundreds or
more video clips in them. Projects of this nature can cause the
Premiere Pro project file to become very large. In addition,
with the larger frame sizes introduced with HDV, attempting to
scrub or export a project can cause Premiere Pro to crash.
During these crashes, if you're monitoring your RAM usage in the
Windows Task Manager, you will notice that it spikes up very
high at the moment before a crash.
Many people have speculated as to
the cause of the problem. Is it a Premiere thing? a CineForm
thing? or a Windows XP thing? Well it's not a CineForm thing. In
fact, CineForm actually helps minimize the problem. CineForm
products use a separate memory process than Premiere Pro, so
Premiere Pro should still have access to it's full memory
resources. However, once Premiere Pro projects reach a certain
level of complexity, the memory it needs bumps up against the
maximum amount that the operating system allows.
But where does that leave the end user, just trying to get
his/her project done?
Recommendations
- The first thing we recommend
is that you try the Windows XP tweaks provided at
VideoGuys.Com:
http://www.videoguys.com/TweaksWINXPVE.html
In addition, installing more RAM in your system might also
help. Keep in mind that Windows XP has a 2GB limit, but you
can open it up to 3GB by using a couple of command line
switches (below) at bootup. There are no guarantees Premiere
will acknowledge the 3GB. (What it might do is move system
stuff out of the way so Premiere can have a full 2GB). Of
course this will require that you have 3 or 4 GB of RAM
installed.Edit the
boot.ini file (right click My Computer, click Properties,
click Advanced, click Startup & Recovery Settings, and then
click Edit in the system startup box). Put /PAE /3GB (with a
space before the slash) after the main command to start XP.
So it would probably say something like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft
Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin /PAE
/3GB
You might want to make a
backup of boot.ini before you try this. If you crash, use
safe mode or recovery console to restore the file. The
Microsoft Knowledge Base has several articles about crashes
when using the /3GB switch. It seems not all hardware likes
the ram shift. But if you have it backed up you can't hurt
anything.
- We have had several
customers report that these customizations have eliminated
their crashing problems. However, if these solutions do not
work for you, the alternative is to break your long project
up into several smaller Premiere Pro projects (20-30 minute
segments). Then export each project as a CineForm HD AVI
file. Once each project is exported, then re-import the
previously exported files into a new project and compile
them in order onto the new timeline. From there, you should
be able to export a final CineForm HD AVI file.
If you need further assistance
with this issue, please contact
support@cineform.com. |
