jcs

Adobe's .MXF importer is probably more optimized since it's for the higher-end professional cameras (and must handle 8-12-bit (perhaps as high as 16-bit?)).

Yeah, try the 7200 HDD. You might be surprised how far you can get.

@Orangenz - makes sense you needed fast random seek (SSD) with this many clips. For 1-2 clips I can get away with 5400RPM USB3 external drives (smooth 4K editing; any hiccups are PP CC optimization issues (2010 12-Core MacPro on OSX Sierra; Win10Pro box and latest Nvidia drivers is generally much faster (faster 10-Core (single chip), Win10Pro and Nvidia drivers just plain faster than same hardware under OSX, GTX 1080 8GB probably only has a slight real-world improvement over the GTX 980ti 6GB)). Perhaps try your test again with all video tracks (except the bottom) set at 50% opacity (or crop them so all clips are at least partially visible) . The last time I tried a test like that FCPX beat the pants off PP CC.

When PP CC was heavily leaking memory, the more one had the better (time required before having to restart). Perhaps best to monitor memory usage and see how one's projects are doing before adding more DRAM (same for VRAM, which would require a card swap). I put 64GB in the new box thinking I need a ton more DRAM (and is so cheap now). However after Adobe and Nvidia fixed their software, the 24GB box is working OK again. Have you done tests with drives? While I have a 2TB M.2 drive in the new machine (3.5GB/s read), I can edit smoothly off the internal 4T 7200, and on the 2010 MacPro, can edit without issue on external 5400RPM USB3 WD drives. Perhaps drive speed is more of an issue when cutting between multiple clips frequently (music video, short commercial, etc.)? The max bitrate for the 4K files for the C300 II and 1DX II are still under 1MB/s, so that's a lot of video streams which can be read before bandwidth is an issue.

10-bit 422 H.264 4K (ALL-I) plays back better than 8-bit 420 4K MJPEG (C300 II and 1DX II respectively). For the latest build of PP CC, I can play everything smoothly (10-bit 422 4K, 12-bit 444 RGB 1080p, H.264 IPB; anything) on latest Win10Pro box: Intel 6950X, 64GB RAM, GTX 1080 8GB, Samsung 960 Pro M.2 2TB SSD (also plays just as fast on 4T 7200 HDD- drive speed not really an issue for these highly compressed files (less then 1MB/s transfer needed per track). Keep in mind OS and video card drivers (especially Nvidia) have a huge impact on performance. Right now Adobe and Nvidia are 'aligned' and things are working OK right now. However, in the past 4K editing in real-time went away for months (perhaps 6?) as both Adobe and Nvidia had serious issues with software performance and reliability. Win10Pro (latest updates and drivers) and OSX Sierra (latest updates and drivers) is once again working OK for 4K (C300 II and 1DX II). Highly compressed 8-bit 4K GH4 and A7S II footage also works fine, as did 10-bit 4K GH5 footage I downloaded from @Neumann Films before Adobe broke the 10-bit GH5 compatible importer (again, the MXF rewrap trick solves the problem with no transcode and is as fast as a file copy).

Cool profile pic ??. That sounds like what I experienced back in December when I had to build a new Win10Pro box to edit 4K. Since I switched to Sierra and the latest Nvidia drivers, everything has become more stable and the latest PP CC edits 4K again. HW is 2010 12-core MacPro 24GB RAM and GTX980ti (modded for OSX by Macvidcards). A major part of the issue is the Nvidia drivers (Nvidia Sierra drivers have so far been pretty stable).

@Kisaha, to start working with Ambisonics, get http://www.reaper.tv/ and http://www.ambisonictoolkit.net/. You can place mono and stereo recordings in 3D space, then render them out to stereo, binaural 3D (for use with headphones, using an HRTF to convert to stereo will localize the sound in 3D- left/right/up/down/front/back vs. simple stereo or 5.1/7.1 etc. (which are planar 3D- no elevation)). Putting together single full-sized mics to get an Ambisonic recording might be challenging (physically). The best way at the moment is with 4 bare mic capsules arranged in a tetrahedron. This will capture "A" format (4 channels). The Sennheiser plugin converts this A format to "B" format (still 4 channels) which can then be manipulated by Ambisonic processing- placing the recorded source in any 3D location, simulate any kind of mic and mic direction, etc. You can also get pretty cool 3D like results with a mid-side recording. This is typically a shotgun/hypercardioid and a figure 8 mic. Use http://www.voxengo.com/product/msed/ to adjust the sound field of a mid-side recording in post. With speakers and headphones, some of my mid-side recordings sound ultra-real in 3D, meaning you'll turn around thinking something recorded just happened in real life. I experimented with mid-side using directional mics and a cheap ribbon mic (figure 8) and it sounded really good, so I purchased an Audio Technica BP-4029 which works well on camera too. In post you can get a tight shotgun, wide stereo, or anything in-between, and it can sound very 3D/real. The Ambeo and all tetrahedral mics (4 capsules) are the 3D extension of mid-side mics with two capsules. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics

Check out Affinity Designer to replace Illustrator: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/

The Ambeo works great! We're going to start recording gongs and bowls in Ambisonic 3D, for meditation (mixed down to binaural using an HRTF). Are you familiar with Ambisonics? The recording is basically 3D. In post you can rotate the sound source in 3D, and simulate pretty much any kind of mic from an omni to a narrow shotgun. Then for playback you can create 5.1, 7.1 or binaural with an HRTF (3D spatialized). For directional we use Schoeps (shotgun and hypercardioid) and Audix (hypercardioid)).

@Axel how do you like Affinity Photo? Why do you still use Photoshop and not just Affinity Photo? I also use Illustrator and Acrobat from time to time... Two more apps to replace (Affinity has Designer to replace Illustrator?).

Looks like Acid and SoundForge are now part of Magix software? SoundForge+Acid+Spectral Layers Pro could replace Audition on Windows. Agree rolling Pr/AE/Au into one app is the long term right answer.

The modular approach to file format support is a great design idea; should be the standard. How's the stability? Good to know Avid is another viable cross-platform option (I even considered Hitfilm- too bad it's so slow; has a lot of neat features for FX). What we need is a team of seasoned game developers to write an NLE. They'd get it done reasonably fast, and it would use 100% of the available computing resources along with state of the art 3D effects, 3D match-moving, 3D tracking, integrated 3D particles with video layers, and even 3D scene relighting with shadows/occluders! All effects integrated into one app, no more PP/AE or FCPX/Motion. This has actually been possible for years, instead we're stuck with these clunky ancient-tech NLEs. Blender now does video editing, I wonder how far one could get writing an NLE in Unity 3D

Ambisonic recording is amazingly cool! I'm currently using the Sennheiser Ambeo into a Zoom F4 (will probably switch to a Sound Devices MixPre-6 at some point to get the excellent analog limiters). So far only used in the studio. For on-camera it would have been super helpful if Rode had built a SD/MicroSD card into the device (+ low-noise ADCs etc.) to allow direct recording of the 4 track audio.

Back in December when I had to shell out cash to build a new machine to handle 4K I was in the same boat- really disappointed that the software was so slow and buggy. I slowly learned what made it crash (such as using Matte Soften in Ultra Key!), and they've slowly fixed it. I haven't gotten any nesting crashes lately, though sometimes I need to restart due to nesting bugs. Fortunately a restart fixes the bugs so far. I use Audition too, and also use Logic and Reaper (used to use SoundForge on Windows, and Pro tools long ago on OSX). For low-level waveform editing, what can Audition be replaced with? (don't say Audacity lol; not going back to Pro tools). What to replace Photoshop with? Especially what you can do with Camera Raw (I use it heavily for raw stills and also as a filter)? AE gets used from time to time too. Kinda hard to 100% bail on Adobe subscription until there are more options for replacement apps.

Maybe an OSX thing? Haven't tried Resolve 14 on the 4K box: Win10 Pro, 6950X, 2T M.2 SSD + 4T 7200RPM HD, 64GB RAM, GTX 1080 8GB. Given what you reported it will probably play everything like butter . Good to see they are making nice progress, they'll get there someday! A toolkit that allowed us to quickly write custom filters using the GPU would be super rad (major pain with PP/AE; example code is a joke). Yeah read about the new free version, have you tried it? Doesn't Avid transcode EVERYTHING to DNxXX? PP CC, FCPX, and Resolve can play native files, which is super helpful (even though it's much harder to support).

It's a decent update but still much slower than the latest release of PP CC and FCPX (can't play C300 II or 1DX II 4K material in real-time, which both PP CC and FCPX can do). Also doesn't load GH5 video track (10-bit). They're getting closer- someday we'll have another viable option beyond PP CC and FCPX. It's still great for coloring and effects, but can't do basic editing yet on par with PP CC and FCPX (4K).

Just tried Resolve 14 beta. Looking better in terms of UI and flow. However it's much slower than PP CC and FCPX with 4K C300 II and 1DX II footage (choppy non-real-time playback with one video track and no effects, constant audio drop out, didn't render waveforms in Fairlight etc. (still beta)). Interesting to note CPU usage was almost nil, however the GTX 980ti has enough RAM and cores to easily handle multiple streams of 4K- so some optimization needed there (tried both CUDA and OpenCL). And it also doesn't load the GH5 video track either; not just an Adobe issue. I predict you won't bail on PP CC just yet. I agree Adobe's subscription model hasn't been worth it value-for-performance-reliability, however until Resolve catches up for even basic editing, there's not many viable options beyond maybe FCPX on OSX (and not an option for folks who don't want to use Macs or Hackintoshs). I'm getting decent performance from the latest PP CC release, and so far no annoying crashes, so maybe they are making slow progress in the right direction (they'll fix the GH5 issue; it's trivial, only a matter of QA, testing, etc., which unfortunately takes more time than it should. Too bad they can't offer a hot fix for just GH5 users (reduces QA liability if they break something else for other users)).

@Neumann Films I spent over $5K on a new computer to edit C300 II 4K footage smoothly in PP CC. I knew back then (December) that the 'old' 2010 12-Core Mac Pro with GTX 980ti was more than powerful enough (way more than powerful enough) to easily edit multiple 4K streams in real-time, let alone just one. I knew it was Adobe's software holding back performance since FCPX ran rings around PP CC for 4K footage in real-time on the same hardware. Now four months later, PP CC can edit 1-2 4K streams well enough that the new machine purchase could have been avoided, saving $5+K. The new machine is still useful, as it is much faster, however it's no longer required to do basic 4K edits. The latest release may have also increased rendering export speed (didn't notice until recently, 2x real-time 1080p on the old machine). It also looks like they may have improved Ultra Key (fine hair detail seems to look better). @SuperSet since the GH5 footage edits fine when rewrapped into MXF (don't transcode! waste of time and quality loss; solution posted on this site for PC users), the GH5 fix for Adobe is trivial as far as code changes. However, the QA process takes a long time for something as big, monolithic, and ancient as Adobe's code base. I've done everything in software from development to executive management. It's absolutely not up to developers what gets done. It's up to executive management (who are typically given filtered info from middle management). Unless the executives are code-savvy and technical (surprisingly rare in tech companies, believe it or not), getting things fixed and the right features added is sometimes very difficult for large companies. What other large company is doing better? Apple? Microsoft? Google's software is terrible, lol, not even a contender. Why? Internal politics and they are making so much money from Big Data sales it doesn't really matter. I too used to get into a 'rant state' with software vendors (probably the most with Microsoft in the past), now I just figure out (and share) solutions to work around the issues since there really aren't any other options. Adobe's code base is so old it's very hard to work on it. They really need an all-new ground up rewrite (as was done with FCPX). The challenges are many. First, great software architects are very few. Most of them aren't working for big companies, being smart enough to know they can make way more money in a startup (of which they are part or sole owner). Only when there's a truly drop-in replacement which can compete with Premiere will Adobe be forced to make big changes due to lost revenue. Resolve could do that someday, but they are currently far away in performance let alone feature parity. FCPX on OSX is decent, but still a ways off in features (especially color grading without add-ons; even so still prefer Lumetri in PP CC). For now, use the MXF rewrap tools for GH5 footage- no loss in quality and as fast as a file copy. The issue is with Adobe's format importer. The MXF code path can handle the GH5's (industry standard, nothing new here) 10-bit H.264 (the MP4/MOV importer code path cannot; probably a simple 'one-liner' code change to fix it by the way (perhaps as simple as a switch to handle the FOURCC format type for the video stream). It might even be possible to drop on the appropriate DLL (and perhaps a config file) from the prior release to fix it...

Given the decent lowlight performance and high quality noise reduction in the C300 II and 1DX II, the C100 III, with a flip out screen, very low RS, native Canon AF support, and of course, Canon color, perhaps there's not really a letdown the A7S III won't be released any time soon. Probably 8-bit 420 for 4K to differentiate from C300 II 422 10-bit (would think they'd need to release a FW update for the C300 II for 4K60 to offer 4K60 in the C100 III (differentiator would be 10-bit 422 vs. 8-bit 420)).

Adobe just broke support with the latest update. The previous PP CC build supported the GH5 10-bit files- that's an option, install the prior build.

Cool- I tried Photon (which I wrote) which uses ffmpeg- however the latest version of ffmpeg doesn't rewrap the video correctly to MXF. Good to hear someone has it working (as it should in theory for rewrapping).

C300 II 10-bit IPB and ALL-I 4K and 1080p play ok in the latest release (MXF container). Haven't checked since last release; 12-bit 1080p played ok but slower. I think I read somewhere that rewrapping GH5 to .mxf without transcoding will work (fast as a file copy and lossless).

The Mix Pre 6 ($900) looks like a nice upgrade from the Zoom F4 ($650): https://www.sounddevices.com/products/recorders/mixpre-6 (MicPre-3 only has 3 inputs- can't use for 4-channel Ambisonic 3D recording, which is what I use the F4 for). The extra $250 is for the analog limiters (amazing!), build quality, and excellent sounding preamps (not just quiet- also a very full sound; though couldn't find a review for the new Kashmir preamps).

Specs look pretty good for video, even without SLog. However, have they fixed the most important thing for both stills and video: the color science? (A7R II and A7S II are actually pretty good for color (RAW stills), however still behind Canon).

I'd skip it and focus on shooting Those settings are for matching other cameras, under special conditions, 'just in case', etc. Canon Log 2, Cinema Gamut, and Production matrix works very well with PP CC ARRI LUTs, and FCP X automatically applies a LUT which looks pretty good. In order to speed up production for some blogging stuff I'm working on (shooting me at my desk vs. models/actors in the studio), I've started testing Canon Log 3 with Rec709. So far it's looking pretty amazing straight from the camera (don't want to spend any time in post at all, just shoot, cut, upload, done). Another reason to figure this out (great look straight from camera) is for live streaming (which BTW- the C300 II doesn't do 4K over HDMI, only 1080p (4K out is RAW only)). Using something like OBS (free), it's possible to record live to H.264 locally (and of course straight to YouTube or Facebook) so zero post work is possible. This guy works well for 1080p capture (recommend the heatsink mod for long-term usage): https://www.amazon.com/Magewell-XI100DUSB-HDMI-Capture-Video-Dongle/dp/B00I16VQOY. For 4K (Sony A7S II), this works well: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1271171-REG/epiphan_esp1100_av_io_4k_usb_3_0.html. Both the C300 II and 1DX II make great live-streaming cameras because of the excellent SOOC color and AF.