Searching for a machine that runs premiere pro and lightroom smoothly!

[michaelg71274904]

Hey!

I work a s a professional photographer and filmmaker. Most of the time i use Lightroom and Photoshop (60%), Premiere Pro (30%) and After Effects + other Applications like Illustrator and Indesign (10%). For the last six years i was on a macbook pro. Since Lightroom 7.2 update it run's ok, but premiere pro is a mess to edit in. I hate final cut so that's no option.... Recently i found out that premiere pro is not making really usage of my gpu acceleration. I have a macbook pro mid 2012 with 2,6ghz, 16gb ram and a geforce gt650m with 1gb VRAM. When using Open CL and Metal my Premiere pro often crashes! When switching to software only it runs smooth, but i always have to render and that takes really long sometime, but the playback is much better as with gpu support!? I will go for a new machine for my usage. First Idea was an imac pro with 8cores, 8gb Vega 56 graphics and 64gb ram + 1TB SSD. Reviews and Videos on Youtube say that building Lightroom Previews is much faster than an older machines like the 5K imac, also Premiere runs much better! BUT!!! When have a look at this forum i often hear people reporting about troubles with the imac pro, like they are not better as their imacs from 2014. Whats really in it that Premiere Pro and Lightroom run better with less cores and higher clock speed? Also the problem with the gpu support, so i need a nvidia card to have gpu support in those programs? Imac Pro user also report that they have to turn of gpu acceleration to run premiere pro without crashes...

I suppose I want to build my own pc by a budget of 3000-4000€. I plan to go for something like this: The Productive 4K Video Editing PC Build | MSI Motherboard

Philip Bloom also tested one out an was impressed. BUT... there is a list which graphics are supported from premiere pro: Adobe Premiere Pro System Requirements

So when i go for a gtx 1080 or 1070 it won't be supportet? Same problem with the Vega Pro 56 8GB from the Imac Pro!

My configuration plan for the machine is following:

• i7 8700k 6Core CPU, maybe overclock it a bit

• gtx 1070  or gtx 1080 graphics (if it is supported by premiere pro?)

• 1 M.2 SSD with 500gb for system and Lightroom Cataloge

• 1 normal SSD with 256gb for Cache Files

• 1 normal SSD with 1TB for actual Projekts (saving them extern on a Raid 1 with 8TB)

• Z370 SLI Plus motherboard

• some 4k or 5k Monitor

What do you guys think about it?

Thank you!

[JEShort01]

Michael,

I'm not sure why nobody has posted a reply yet to your post as your questions seem both reasonable and well posed.

General comments:

- 6 core vs. more cores -- you say you're a filmmaker - how long, what media etc.? (for example while you may be quite happy with a 6-core to cut single track Sony consumer 4K, you wouldn't even want to think about it for RED 6k or higher)

- think PC with a decent GTX NVidia GPU for fast, trouble free Premiere Pro editing (Adobe just seems to work better that way)

- you don't mention RAM size; I'd suggest 64GB

- I don't see a need for a dedicated cache file drive, but would not use std. SSDs for the small storage size you're thinking about (go with 2 M.2 drives or 1 M.2 + 1 PCIE SSD)

- If I were doing a 2018 build at your targeted price point it would definitely be a x299 (gives a whole lot more expansion room and CPU options)

Cheers,

Jim

[devynb73008579]

Hi, I am in a very similar situation as Michael, with similar thoughts about what might make a good system.

Here are some of my specfic needs:

• Edit 4K footage from popular mirrorless cameras, GoPro, DJI footage (never Raw footage)
• Documentary film editing
• After Effects motion graphics titles

You mentioned the x299 chipset gives more expansion room? I was wondering about this. I was leaning towards the 8th Gen i7-8700k chip because I thought the socket was just redone and that the chipset is newer... I'm confused on this point. I was also considering the i9 X Series chips, but thought that it wasn't necessary to go all out with an enthusiast 10-core or 14-core chip on this build to meet my needs. Any clarification on this would be of major help to me!

[devynb73008579]

For example, I am looking at this Coffee Lake:

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/WqYYHh

But thinking maybe I should go Skylake:

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/Bf3n7W

[michaelg71274904]

Hey, i also went for a 8700k machine. And i can say i am totally happy with it. I bought a msi z370 motherboard with 32gb ram, a gtx 1070 and a i7 8700k. Now my lightroom previews render 2-3 times faster than in my 2012 macbook pro, and adobe premiere pro never crashed... i tried out to edit some red 6k and 8k sample footage an was really impressed. It handles the 4k light raw from the c200 without any problems...Editing is so much more fun to edit on this machine. I definately can recommend you a 8700k station! I have a 256gb m2 ssd where i run my software, a 500gb for the cache of lightroom and after effects and a 1tb ssd for the actual projects...

[JustinWoo]

How is timeline performance for you with your i-7 8700K build? I have an i7-8700K with a GTX 1080 Ti and 16 GB RAM and I get occasional 100% CPU spikes (especially when I first start playback) and dropped frames in the timeline. It's a pain in my ass and it makes editing more difficult. I also occasionally get 1-3 second delays when hitting play. All my footage and the project file itself is on a separate Samsung 850 SSD, my OS and Premiere are on an SSD speed M.2, and all my other non-essential games and programs are on a separate standard 2 TB HD.

I feel like I should be getting way better performance than I am. Any thoughts on how to improve that?

EDIT: I'm editing multi-cam (2 cameras) timelines with 4K footage shot on a GH5 using 150mb 10 bit Long GOP footage.

[devynb73008579]

Hi JustinWoo — what is your Motherboard and are you overclocking? What footage are you using? I suspect the RAM in your system is too low (32GB recommended for HD, 64GB for 4K according to Puget Systems). Also, you're OS should be on the slower SATA SSD and the Project/Media files on the fast M.2 SSD (will depend on project size, 1TB or above M.2 SSD would be preferred for larger projects, or an internal RAID 0 Array would work depending on footage).