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AndrewCollar
AndrewCollar
Participant
July 5, 2019
Question

Premiere Pro disk setup for iMac

  • July 5, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 1222 views

I've got a few questions that I hope you guys can help me out with. I'm going to reinstall Premiere on a newly restarted iMac. These are my specs:

Processor: 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5

Memory: 8 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

Graphics: Radeon Pro 575 4GB

I also have a WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-Bay 8TB Hard Drive

How should I set up Premiere Pro as far as the disk setup goes? If someone can give me a blueprint for where to route certain files (cache, etc.) to make the workflow simpler and more organized, that would be ideal.

Also: should I keep Premiere Pro on my desktop, but store the files on my Cloud drive? Or should I move Premiere Pro off of the desktop and onto the Cloud Drive, and then route everything to different files on the drive?

Thank you in advance,

Andrew

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    Warren Heaton
    Community Expert
    Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 13, 2019

    If it fits your budget, replace your WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-Bay 8TB Hard Drive with an external SSDs in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

    That said, if you're cutting 1080p Apple ProRes, your WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-Bay 8TB Hard Drive will be fine.  For 2160p, you may need to switch to using the Proxy workflow.

    Peru Bob
    Community Expert
    Peru BobCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 5, 2019

    moved from Premiere Pro to Hardware Forum

    E
    excited_Genie16B8
    Legend
    July 5, 2019

    Here's what I recommend as the ideal starting point.

    System drive

    Project drive, holding project files, audio files and still images

    Cache and Scratch drive

    Media and Proxies

    Exports

    All drives should be internal.  Use networked and removable drives only for backup and archiving.

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    July 5, 2019

    Premiere should be on the system drive, period.

    It's good to use fast newer internal SSDs as much as possible. Especially for project files and cache/cache database files, media,  and preview files.

    m.2/NVMe drives are frequently excellent and have enough throughput for say project files and all cache and media files.

    It's nice to have exports to a different drive than the media is on.

    Neil

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
    AndrewCollar
    AndrewCollarAuthor
    Participant
    July 5, 2019

    is there a way to go about it that doesn’t require using  new internal SSD? I’m not savvy enough to install one on my iMac unfortunately. Also, should I set up separate folders for cache and database files, etc?

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    July 5, 2019

    Jim laid out an ideal setup.

    An NLE is constantly accessing AND writing to either disc or RAM an insane amount of data. Splitting that load up to avoid choke points is a major concern. An internal NVMe drive can hsndle several parts of Jim's list because of extremely high sustained read/write and access speed.

    External connections  ... USB-C can be okay with say Samsung T5 SSDs, for one or two parts. That's roughly the same as a Thunderbolt I think on the Mac.

    Neil

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
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