Check hard disk speed

To check the hard disk speed--and determine if it's fast enough to capture DV without dropping frames--test with a third-party hard disk utility.

HD Speed is a good one

Working with DV video, (IEEE 1394), Adobe Premiere Pro requires a hard disk that can sustain a minimum data rate of 5 MB per second for smooth playback.

In addition, disks should have a rotational speed of 7200 rpms or greater. As you save more content to the disk, access and transfer times to the disk increase to slow performance. If you work with disks at near-capacity, use a faster disk (for example, one with a speed of 10,000 rpms) to compensate for the decrease in performance.

If you use external drives, make sure that the cables can handle the drives' data rates and rotational speeds. Having a large capacity UDMA 66 IDE or SCSI drive dedicated to video only is the best. If you use an IDE disk drive for capturing video, see the next task in this document, "Optimize IDE disks." Adobe Premiere Pro doesn't support multiple devices on a FireWire chain or multiple devices on a FireWire card.

Optimize IDE disks

Windows XP enables Direct Memory Access (DMA) by default on most IDE devices . If DMA has been disabled, reenable it to improve the transfer rate of IDE disks and prevent dropped frames and jerky video during capture and playback.

Verify that device drivers are compatible with Windows XP

Device drivers are files that allow Windows to communicate with devices such as capture cards, video display adapters, SCSI cards, and disk drives. Contact the device manufacturer to ensure that you have the latest driver for it.

Optimize the video display

Display options and hardware acceleration can conflict with capture card drivers, resulting in a system error, and screen savers can interrupt the flow of data when you capture video, causing dropped frames. 

Final Cut Pro users

If you use Final Cut Pro, rendering is primarily dependent on processor speed. So the best way to reduce render time is to use a faster Mac. Supposedly, the MacIntels are quite a bit faster than thier PPC counter parts so I'm waiting for the Intel chipped desktops to come out.

Something that should help would be to convert your files to match your sequence settings prior to importing them into FCP.

Optimize your computer's RAM

FreeRAM XP Pro is an excellent application to free and optimize your computer's RAM (Random Access Memory), resulting in an increase in system performance and productivity.

Last update: 10:47 AM Saturday, February 3, 2007