MP 7,1 How is it for multicam editing in Premiere?

[The Other One]

I'm currently using a Windows machine that I built myself last year initially as a Hackintosh, which worked fine — except that the anxiety over updates did me in. After a couple months, I gave in and installed Windows and resigned myself to just waiting for the Mac Pro to release.

To date, I haven't really found any real-world info about performance of the new Mac Pro specific to my use case (below), and it's leaving me hesitant to bite the bullet and order. So I'm hoping someone can shed a little light and first-hand experience.

My usage is for video editing and VFX. Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects (heavy on Red Giant suites and Element 3D) specifically. For the editing component, I'm dealing with concert events... so it's always multicam editing, typically 5-8 cameras (though, thankfully, usually just HD footage — I'm okay with having to use a proxy workflow for the rare times we shoot in 4K if necessary). We shoot exclusively on Sony cameras, some footage is XAVC-I and some is XAVC-L (we do not use ProRes ever). While I don't care about export times at all, I absolutely do need smooth playback on the timeline during multicam editing if I'm to keep my sanity. The i9-9900K PC I'm using right now can mostly keep up... but if I'm going to shell out $12k+ on a Mac Pro, I really need it to do better than "mostly keep up." But I can't find any direct info on performance for that particular scenario (i.e. timeline performance in a multicam edit with, say, 6+ shots in Premiere). All I see are export times, which don't matter if I can't get through the initial edit without cutting my wrists.

Does anyone have any experience with complex multicam editing on a 7,1? I have no expectations of pin-your-ears-back performance — I'm using Adobe software after all. And I am willing to pay JUST to get back to macOS... but I definitely don't want to feel like I've taken a step backwards.

 

[OkiRun]

I'm currently using a Windows machine that I built myself last year initially as a Hackintosh, which worked fine — except that the anxiety over updates did me in. After a couple months, I gave in and installed Windows and resigned myself to just waiting for the Mac Pro to release.

To date, I haven't really found any real-world info about performance of the new Mac Pro specific to my use case (below), and it's leaving me hesitant to bite the bullet and order. So I'm hoping someone can shed a little light and first-hand experience.

My usage is for video editing and VFX. Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects (heavy on Red Giant suites and Element 3D) specifically. For the editing component, I'm dealing with concert events... so it's always multicam editing, typically 5-8 cameras (though, thankfully, usually just HD footage — I'm okay with having to use a proxy workflow for the rare times we shoot in 4K if necessary). We shoot exclusively on Sony cameras, some footage is XAVC-I and some is XAVC-L (we do not use ProRes ever). While I don't care about export times at all, I absolutely do need smooth playback on the timeline during multicam editing if I'm to keep my sanity. The i9-9900K PC I'm using right now can mostly keep up... but if I'm going to shell out $12k+ on a Mac Pro, I really need it to do better than "mostly keep up." But I can't find any direct info on performance for that particular scenario (i.e. timeline performance in a multicam edit with, say, 6+ shots in Premiere). All I see are export times, which don't matter if I can't get through the initial edit without cutting my wrists.

Does anyone have any experience with complex multicam editing on a 7,1? I have no expectations of pin-your-ears-back performance — I'm using Adobe software after all. And I am willing to pay JUST to get back to macOS... but I definitely don't want to feel like I've taken a step backwards.

16-core with 384 Gb Ram and 8Tb T2/SSD Internal, Pro Vega II Duo, and Afterburner

We use multicam 4k with both FCPX and PP with no issues. We use the Afterburner as most of our work is with FCPX and it changes files automatically to ProRes when uploaded and accepts ProRes directly from the Atmos. I don't think the Mac Pro does any better with PP than our several tricked out PCs. However, the Mac Pro is not slowing us down when using PP and Aftereffects. You might not really see a big change if you migrate back to macOS using PP. I can say that my editors are happy with the UI of the Mac Pro and how it handles the bigger editing projects. What would be important for you is to ensure a high performance CPU, GPU, and enough RAM. If that were the case... the move would probably be seamless.

 

[chfilm]

I agree with everything that @OkiRun wrote. I tried a Sony AVC Multicam project myself in Premiere, though it was with 4x 4k streams in an HD timeline. It works fine off my Promise Pegasus2 R6 Raid, though I definitely HATE how premiere handles those AVC files in general. Prores just runs so much better.
If I were you and had a fixed recurring workflow like this and not having to deal with different clients who shoot with different cameras each weak with no influence on the capture workflow myself, I would STRONGLY recommend switching to a prores recording workflow and looking into an afterburner, hoping that it will soon be utilized by Premiere as well.

When I say I hate the performance, it‘s because it playback, yes, but scrubbing through using either the mousewheel of the Magic Mouse or the JKL buttons, I find it pretty unresponsive, or a bit laggy in comparison to Prores footage. I have a 16core, 192Gb, Vega II single. Nothing that I‘ve thrown at the machine so far has pushed either the CPU or the GPU up higher than maybe 40% load in Premiere or After Effects. It‘s really a shame on Adobe‘s end. Davinci and FCP make so much better use of the available compute power, I have the strongest urge to move over to Resolve in the foreseeable future.

If you want, upload me four typical clips of your cameras and I‘ll happily test it and make a screen recording for you.

 

[OkiRun]

I agree with everything that @OkiRun wrote. I tried a Sony AVC Multicam project myself in Premiere, though it was with 4x 4k streams in an HD timeline. It works fine off my Promise Pegasus2 R6 Raid, though I definitely HATE how premiere handles those AVC files in general. Prores just runs so much better.
If I were you and had a fixed recurring workflow like this and not having to deal with different clients who shoot with different cameras each weak with no influence on the capture workflow myself, I would STRONGLY recommend switching to a prores recording workflow and looking into an afterburner, hoping that it will soon be utilized by Premiere as well.

When I say I hate the performance, it‘s because it playback, yes, but scrubbing through using either the mousewheel of the Magic Mouse or the JKL buttons, I find it pretty unresponsive, or a bit laggy in comparison to Prores footage. I have a 16core, 192Gb, Vega II single. Nothing that I‘ve thrown at the machine so far has pushed either the CPU or the GPU up higher than maybe 40% load in Premiere or After Effects. It‘s really a shame on Adobe‘s end. Davinci and FCP make so much better use of the available compute power, I have the strongest urge to move over to Resolve in the foreseeable future.

If you want, upload me four typical clips of your cameras and I‘ll happily test it and make a screen recording for you.

"I have the strongest urge to move over to Resolve in the foreseeable future."

LOL I've recently felt that pull from the dark side too! We use Davinci for color editing although FCPX did improve that UI; and it a severe time pinch we use it. Wishing the next upgrade to FCPX will significantly improve the audio editing UI.

 

[jasonmvp]

LOL I've recently felt that pull from the dark side too!

Everything in "Studio" is just so much snappier when editing than with Premiere. At least it is for me. However, all of my source footage is long-GOP format, which Resolve happily hands to the GPU to decode in hardware. Premiere won't do that. And then on export, it's right to the hardware again.

We have cookies here. Trust me.

 

[chfilm]

Everything in "Studio" is just so much snappier when editing than with Premiere. At least it is for me. However, all of my source footage is long-GOP format, which Resolve happily hands to the GPU to decode in hardware. Premiere won't do that. And then on export, it's right to the hardware again.

We have cookies here. Trust me.

Are you using the editing keyboard with resolve?
I feel like the actual editing process / besides the UI and playback being a lot more snappy, isn’t as refined and fast as in premiere of fcp, due to a lack of how the timeline works with shortcuts and how slow scrolling is in the timeline using a Magic Mouse.

I have a sense though that with the 1000$ keyboard, things would be different..

But I’m dealing with very stubborn clients who want me to hand over projects when finished so that their in house editors who can only use premiere can potentially continue working on the projects.

 

[jasonmvp]

Are you using the editing keyboard with resolve?
I feel like the actual editing process / besides the UI and playback being a lot more snappy, isn’t as refined and fast as in premiere of fcp, due to a lack of how the timeline works with shortcuts and how slow scrolling is in the timeline using a Magic Mouse.

No. Video editing is just a hobby for me and there's no point in me getting a special keyboard for it. As for the Magic Mouse: that's one of the first things I threw away. ;-)

 

[chfilm]

No. Video editing is just a hobby for me and there's no point in me getting a special keyboard for it. As for the Magic Mouse: that's one of the first things I threw away. ;-)

I like scrolling horizontally and zooming with the Magic Mouse in Premiere A LOT, it's super fast, I dont even know how to achieve this kinda speed without this multidirectional "wheel" function without using a jog dial. How do you scroll in the timeline in resolve?

 

[jasonmvp]

How do you scroll in the timeline in resolve?

Grab the horizontal scroll bar and... move it?

 

[chfilm]

Grab the horizontal scroll bar and... move it?

Haha, no way I would be half as quickly if I'd do that every time I have to move within the timline which happens like every 2 seconds.
This particular issue really bugs me about Resolve, because somehow the scrollspeed via mousewheel is super slow.