Premiere Pro CC and the New Mac Pro (2014)

[eschillay]

I'm expecting delivery soon of a new Mac Pro, nicely loaded, which I purchased mainly because of all the work I do with video. Yet, I read in a review that Adobe Premiere Pro isn't optimized to take advantage of the new Mac Pro, won't run faster, and I'm better off using Apple's Final Cut.

1. Is this true?; and

2. If so, will Premiere Pro be updated any time soon to run best on a 2014 Mac Pro?

My new Mac Pro will have the following configuration:

•	3.5GHz 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache

•	32GB (4x8GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC

•	1TB PCIe-based flash storage

•	Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each

[DellPatrick]

Thanks for the tip. Just bought this mac with 10.9.3 installed though - no restore points

Might just have to wait for a fix.

[DellPatrick]

Just upgraded to the 10.9.4 beta and initial results are not promising - Premiere Pro still crashing/hanging when using OpenCL 

[tpf1952]

No go on Carlos' workaround. Discouraging to hear of DellPatrick's findings with 10.9.4. Many thanks to everyone here who's trying to find something that works.

Tom

[carlosq00]

I am back to square 1 and can confirm that my earlier success with exporting has come to a complete halt. Back to FinalCut for now.

[DellPatrick]

After two days of figuring out the best way to downgrade to 10.9.2, i'm happy to report that everything looks OK so far.  My solution:

Boot your MacPro in Target Disk mode while it's connected via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 to another Mac.

Format your MacPro's drive

Install an earlier version of OSX

Upgrade to 10.9.2 (Very important - MacPro 2014 won't boot anything earlier than 10.9.2)

Upgrade to latest Creative Cloud versions

This will be quicker than waiting for 10.9.4 - which may not solve any issues anyway.   Stick with .2 until Yosemite or .4 is confirmed to be compatible.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks very much for posting the process to revert to OS X 10.9.2. I know this has been a stumbling block for some. Much appreciated!

Best,

Kevin

[carlosq00]

I just downloaded the new version of Premier Pro...going to give it a try and see if this new version which is supposed to be designed to leverage the graphics cards makes a difference.

[tpf1952]

Just opened up an ongoing project in today's new version of Premiere Pro. I'm not sure this is the cure. After rendering a few seconds from a sequence in OpenCL, still getting the artifacts. Will reboot and try once more. I"m on my second new MacPro after returning the first copy because of our issues with working in OpenCL. Still beats U-Matic.

[carlosq00]

So far so good. I rendered a 3 minute Cinema DNG ProRes 444HQ 4K file with color correction effects and it rendered without issue...keeping my fingers crossed that my luck continues.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Good to hear. Keep the feedback coming.

Kevin

[pslettershome]

Apple replaced my d700 cards in effort to fix the OpenCL render & artifacting issue. No go. Its definitely a software thing.

FCPX works fine hitting OpenCL hard.

REDCINEX works fine hitting OpenCL hard.

Resolve has issues, but they seem relatively minor. More glitchy than anything.

Adobe Premiere and Media Encoder are unusable when the GPU is enabled. At best they cause render artifacts. At worst they cause the UI of Premiere to go haywire and crash the app and/or the machine.

These issues were present day one with 10.9.2 and were elevated with 10.9.3. Going backwards would solve little I fear.

I definitely understand this to be a primarily OSX issue, however the Adobe products seem the worse for it.

90% of my workflow revolves around Premiere & Resolve, so I've basically got a very expensive machine that runs arguably slower than the ancient cuda powered option I left behind.

[DellPatrick]

Again, the issue is 10.9.3 and above.  I finally was able to downgrade (Apple doesn't make it easy) and Premiere / Encoder / AE work like champs.  Very fast rendering, no glitchy issues.  My only complaint now is Adobe Bridge seems plauged with bugginess since the new update.

10.9.2 is the ONLY version out that works with Adobe products, and 10.9.1 or earlier WON'T BOOT on the new mac Pro.    STRANGE ISSUE - I believe conspiracies are afoot.

[carlosq00]

I've been working on getting my hands on 10.9.2 but as you've stated, apple does not make it easy. There is no way to get a prior version of the build from them. Which makes life that much more interesting.  I've also had trouble exporting the XML file of my Premier Pro projects to finish them in FinalCut X...all in all one big mess.

[DellPatrick]

I downloaded the 10.9.1 version of Mavericks when it was released and kept it on my drive, so luckily I had that.  Without it I would be in your same position.  If you give me an FTP with 6GB free I will upload it for you.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi CueND,

CueND wrote:

I've also had trouble exporting the XML file of my Premier Pro projects to finish them in FinalCut X...all in all one big mess.

That's not supported. You need 7toX to make that happen: Mac App Store - 7toX for Final Cut Pro

Thanks,
Kevin

[pslettershome]

I cannot accurately say the issue exists or not with Adobe CC 2014 and 10.9.2.

However I can claim as fact that the render and glitch issues existed with 10.9.2 and the most recent (pre 2014)  versions of Adobe CC. I ran into these issues day one owning the new Mac Pro.

Need to confirm from several other sources that going backwards will solve the problems until there is a fix as its an annoying undertaking if its not... much like getting the d700 cards swapped.

[DellPatrick]

10.9.2 + Adobe CC 2014 works for me with D500 cards.

[wrecktv]

I have been having the same issue as @pslettershome and since upgrading my system to a new Mac Pro a week and a half ago.  I have to run with GPU acceleration off and I also noticed I cannot use dynamic linking with After Effects without freezing up the entire OS (and the AE builds are very basic).  Most of my projects are setup with ProRes codecs and these crashes/freezes/heavy visual artifacts in my renders are very upsetting.  Not to mention trying to figure out workarounds and constant restarts have made me miss deadlines, not good . How does one resolve this? How can I downgrade the OS and is that really necessary?  Are PP 2014 users experiencing this?

My setup:

     Premiere Pro 7.2.2
     Mac Pro (Late 2013)
     OS 10.9.4

     2.7GHz 12 -Core Intel Xeon E5

     64GB Ram

     FirePro D700

     1TB internal HD

     AJA IO/4K

     Pegasus 2 R6 External RAID

[pslettershome]

My GPU issues seem to have been fixed entirely with the latest update to 10.9.4

After much research into these problems it seems there was something on the Apple side that was causing most of these frustrating issues.

Is the system you are on truly 10.9.4?

[wrecktv]

pslettershome, I waited to reply till after I checked.  I did have the 10.9.4 update, I kept any GPU acceleration off due to the previous issues.  However, I did my usual weekly project renders yesterday and today with GPU features on ...and it looks like everything is back to operational!  Thanks for pointing out the OS update.  I'm so glad to be back up to speed.

[ostacy]

Glitches come back, mate... And it is really frustrating. Went back to FCP X.

The proxies were encoded with media encoder in 24 hours, with Final Cut create proxy it took only half as much time.

I would think, Media Encoder only uses 1 video card, or an inferior algorithm.

Nevertheless. ADOBE we earn our income with your  software, and you did not fix this MAJOR issue in more than a month.

I believe, you were kinda screwed, since Resolve had similar issues, but FCP X had no problems whatsoever, so you need to find a solution.

Not being able to fix it in such a long term, would teach us 2 things. Not to upgrade, until others confirm its safe. Not to use ADOBE software for critical work.

Please let us know how long until, you can safely say, you have a fix for this issue!

[jasonvp]

ooopeter wrote:

but FCP X had no problems whatsoever, so you need to find a solution.

Here's something to sit and think about, if you're so inclined to do such things:  Right before 10.9.4 shipped, Final Cut Pro X was patched.  Could it be that Apple knew that 10.9.4 would screw up FCPX, so they had to make changes to it?  Or is it just a coincidence?

I'm not one to believe in coincidence.

[ostacy]

I am sure, that Apple is better at making its editing app work on its own OS, than anyone else. I even believe, they use this to their advantage.

I did not upgrade FCP X until a week or so ago, and had no problems... What can you make of that? Previous version worked fine on 10.9.3.

As it happens, Adobe just released a major update to their software line as well. Was that a coincidence? It did not fix the issue. Oops...

1 month was not enough for Adobe to acknowledge the issue, and fix it.

Did not even communicate with us, like "guys, we are trying to find the solution, we will have it in a week".

All they could say is "don't use GPU render".

Thats not a solution.

It is as if the car mechanic would tell you, "we fixed the problem, but from now on, you can only use the 1st and the 2nd gear".

The real problem for me is, that they wouldn't warn people. Don't start major projects on premiere, it is not working. Thats all Im asking for. Would have saved me a lot of extra work.

10.9.4 is better, but its not perfect, Im working with more than 20 hours of R3D, and most of the converts are fine, but there are a couple, which still have the glitch.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi ooopeter,

ooopeter wrote:

Glitches come back, mate... And it is really frustrating. Went back to FCP X.

Sorry to hear that. This is the first report I've seen that the pink lines are still appearing in exports.

ooopeter wrote:

The proxies were encoded with media encoder in 24 hours, with Final Cut create proxy it took only half as much time.

24 hours? What were the settings? Can you post a screen shot?

ooopeter wrote:

I would think, Media Encoder only uses 1 video card, or an inferior algorithm.

Media Encoder uses dual GPUs if the Mercury Playback Engine Hardware Acceleration is enabled. Can you verify if it is enabled in AME? Can you verify if a single GPU is being used for encoding?

ooopeter wrote:

Nevertheless. ADOBE we earn our income with your  software, and you did not fix this MAJOR issue in more than a month.

I believe, you were kinda screwed, since Resolve had similar issues, but FCP X had no problems whatsoever, so you need to find a solution.

We were working with our partners at Apple and AMD on this issue. A team effort. Since you are still experiencing similar issues, please let us know by filing a bug report. It would be the best way to work toward working with our partners in fixing your issue.

ooopeter wrote:

Not being able to fix it in such a long term, would teach us 2 things. Not to upgrade, until others confirm its safe. Not to use ADOBE software for critical work.

It's probably never a good idea to update your software if you are still working on a project. It is common practice to only update between projects. There are plenty of video editors that adhere to not updating any software right away, as well.

Your other piece of advice I would not agree with. Top filmmakers like David Fincher are using Premiere Pro which is pretty critical in my opinion. Thousands of other editors are working away with no issues. I'm very sorry that you've been having issues with your specific system and media and I hope to help you find solutions as best I can.

ooopeter wrote:

Please let us know how long until, you can safely say, you have a fix for this issue!

Yours is the first complaint that the update to OS X 10.9.4 is still causing these issues. I can try to reproduce the issue if you give us the specifics of your case in that bug report. Sorry, but we cannot give out specific dates for updates in advance.

Thanks,
Kevin

[ostacy]

Kevin, finally, someone committed to the issue!

24 hours? What were the settings? Can you post a screen shot?

This is a convert from Media Encoder. You can see the rainbow colour line in the middle, which shouldn't be there (sorry, I just grabbed the middle of the shot, I'm not alloved show more, I'm afraid).

I have converted R3D RAW shot with red MX to Prores proxy, left the resolution at 4096x2304.

These are the settings:

Media Encoder uses dual GPUs if the Mercury Playback Engine Hardware Acceleration is enabled. Can you verify if it is enabled in AME? Can you verify if a single GPU is being used for encoding?

Im certain it is being done with the mercury playback engine.

Wether both GPUs are being used is not easy to say. It seems to me, that they are, because they both heated up almost the same way, so I would think, they are both utilised, Im sorry, for not looking at it before. Still it is strange that FCP X finished with the same task in exactly half the time. I must admit, FCP X converted it to 2K, and ME converted it to its native 4K, this might be important to note. My previous experience lead me to say, that rendering to native dimensions is always faster, than encoding to a different frame size, but I may be wrong.

It's probably never a good idea to update your software if you are still working on a project.

I never did that. That would be irresponsible to do. My mac pro shipped with 10.9.3.

Your other piece of advice I would not agree with. Top filmmakers like David Fincher are using Premiere Pro which is pretty critical in my opinion.

I can agree with you on David Fincher, he is the best. Please tell, him, I didn't want to belittle his art in any way with my comments.

It is however mostly used only for partial issues even by him, not for the most demanding jobs (he used it for conforming in the social network if I'm correct).

Please just communicate with us. State, that you want premiere to shine even on our overpriced paper bins, and I won't have any complaints. Just don't keep silent, so that we don't know what to expect.

Hey Im using it, and I plan on using it a lot further down the way, just help me to enjoy it, and be able to trust it.

We were working with our partners at Apple and AMD on this issue. A team effort. Since you are still experiencing similar issues, please let us know by filing a bug report. It would be the best way to work toward working with our partners in fixing your issue.

Thank you for that comment, this is what I needed to see.

Yours is the first complaint that the update to OS X 10.9.4 is still causing these issues. I can try to reproduce the issue if you give us the specifics of your case in that bug report. Sorry, but we cannot give out specific dates for updates in advance.

Tomorrow I will file the bug report, and we will see it from there, but if I'm not mistaken, by the time I finished my reply, someone else also posted here, that he had problems.

Kevin, thank you for taking it serious, I really appreciate having finally someone on this issue!