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Without a doubt, when it comes to video editing, you will get the best "bang for your buck" using Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium or Master Collection on a properly configured PC. Bill Gehrke and Harm Millaard have done the editing community a great service with their release of "Premiere Pro Benchmark for CS5". The PPBM5 performance spreadsheet takes the guesswork out of hardware selection specifically related to building an optimal editing rig for Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.

Bill and Harm are both very excited about their recent observation related to RAM in a PC-based Adobe CS5 video editing system. Harm Millaard recently confirmed that doubling memory will reduce MPEG encoding times by 50%. More specifically, because of cost, most guys and gals have capped their system RAM at 12GB. X58 motherboards generally have 6 RAM slots, so these 6 slots have typically been occupied with 2GB modules. Just for reference as of August 26, 2010, Crucial has a 12GB kit consisting of 4GB RAM sticks priced at $419, while 12GB of RAM utilizing 2GB sticks comes in at roughly $276. As prices come down on the 4GB sticks, we will see more and more editing computers utilizing the 4GB modules. 8GB RAM sticks are the next up-and-coming thing us editors have to look forward to. They are already available, but are cost-prohibitive for most folks.

Update - August 27, 2010
The "ADK Juggernaut" is now at the top of the PPBM5 performance list. As a side note, It looks like Bill, Harm and Eric are working on a performance comparison test to see how the new top-end Mac Pro + Final Cut compares to a top-end PC + Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 with the Mercury Playback Engine enabled.

Update - September 13, 2010
"Studio North" is now at the top of the PPBM5 performance list. It's impressive that an Intel 980X is beating out a dual Xeon 5680 with twice the memory.

Update - September 23, 2010
"ShtSh00ttr Chris" is now at the top of the PPBM5 performance list. This is a dual Xeon system with 24BG of RAM.

Update - October 1, 2010
Here is an excellent example of a video editing system performance problem being solved in the Adobe Hardware Forum:
New Video Workstation yielding poor performance:
Bill Gehrke:
Dan, here is a current Process Explorer picture of one of my configurations. One thing you could do is create another user account on your computer. We had this situation (high Render Timeline with Hardware Accelerated MPE) before and in that case creating a new user account solved the problem but we were never able to backtrack to find the original problem.

Update - November 2, 2010
Bill Gehrke and Harm Millaard have added a new page to their PPBM5 website, titled "Latest News". This page offers a great chart for Premiere Pro CS5 system builders called "Best Bang-for-the-Buck". Have a look Here.

Red Digital Cinema

Red Digital Cinema was founded by American businessman and founder of Oakley, Inc., James Jannard. Oakley, Inc. sold in 2007 for over $2 billion. I agree whole-heartedly with the concept behind Red. That is, build high quality component-based technology. When an upgrade is available, you upgrade your existing hardware, rather than buying an entirely new unit. Of course this approach isn't practical in every instance. I believe that industry as a whole, worldwide should adopt the philosophy behind this approach to product manufacturing wherever possible. So much is made of the theory of Global Warming in the media. Think about it. One volcanic eruption, where the lava tube intersects an underground petroleum deposit is capable of wiping out years of "benefit" derived from draconian government emissions regulations. I firmly believe that from an environmental perspective, we as a people can get more "mileage" out of a global industrial policy of building quality upgrade able products designed to last. Unfortunately, today most product development strategies include the principle of planned, intentional part failure. For instance when a clothes washer fails, one must evaluate whether the machine is worth the price of the repair part. If not, when a new washer or dryer is purchased, often the old unit will end up in a landfill. Of course, certain parts of the old unit are recyclable, like the steel, but not all parts are. A percentage of the discarded unit will amount to more pollution of our earth.

The concept behind Red Digital Cinema IS the future of Video production. Red's first camera, the Red One garnered support from Peter Jackson and Steven Soderbergh. Feature films shot with the Red One camera include District 9, Gamer, The Informant, Knowing, Rabbit Hole, Fair Game, and others. Us video professionals are awaiting the release of Red Digital Cinema's EPIC and Scarlet.

Because the Red One is capable of recording 4,096 horizontal by 2,304 vertical pixels, editing footage from a Red One can be challenging. Adobe has really stepped up to the challenge with Premiere CS5. CS5 is 64 bit only and includes what is called the Mercury Playback Engine. This technology co-developed with Nvidia utilizes the power of select Nvidia GPU's for processing video alongside the CPU. The list of GPU's currently providing the best performance in the benchmarks are the Nvidia GTX 480 and the GTX 470. The Mercury Playback Engine (dubbed by users as MPE) provides a significant performance boost as indicated in Bill and Harm's PPBM CS5 Benchmark spreadsheet. Performance is only going to get better with future versions of Nvidia cards. It's amazing what Adobe and Nvidia have been able to accomplish with this 1.0 release of the Mercury Playback Engine. I have used it since it first became available, and it is truly a cost-effective time saver that takes a lot of the pain out of dealing with hi-def files, in particular, AVCHD, Canon 7D and Red One footage.

02-14-2011 Related News:
Level Ten Studios built the website for fallschurchgravesites.com. Falls Church Virginia, located just six miles from our nation's capitol is the home of National Memorial Park. We are the current owner of 28 gravesites located throughout National Memorial Park. All 28 gravesites are for sale at a discounted rate. For more information, please visit the website.

10-08-2010 Related News:
One of my recent website clients, John Temmel, owner of Temmel Siding phoned this morning. He phoned just to thank me for the work I did on his website four months ago. While his competitors are hurting for lack of work, John said he has more work than he can handle. Of course, I can't take all of the credit for that. John Temmel, The Siding Guy and his crew recently completed a total re-do of the siding on my home. He did a great job and it's his reputation for doing such great work that is responsible for his company's success. Of course it doesn't hurt that Level Ten Studios effectively gets the word out on the Internet, related to the great work he and his crew does.

GHA Loved the "Hospital Heroes Videos"
Georgia Hospital Association was thrilled with the Hospital Heroes videos Level Ten Studios helped shoot, edit and produce, to the point of sending me a personal Thank You note.

A reputation, good or bad, will commonly outlive the reality of a company's current quality and ethics. For example, several years ago we had an auto transmission problem. We asked an acquaintance who owned a car lot to recommend a transmission repair shop. We had the shop he recommended do the repairs and were surprised at the high quality work they performed at a very reasonable price. Four years later we had another transmission issue with our Nissan Stanza. The transmission would not up shift out of first gear. I took the car to the same transmission repair shop and they handed me an estimate totaling $2300. They told me the transmission needed a complete rebuild. Of course, I wanted to avoid spending $2300, so I did a Google search for "automatic transmission will not up shift out of first gear". I located an article on the Internet that offered a solution that took less than an hour to perform and did not cost me a dime. It turns out that the Nissan Stanza has a mechanism called a "governor" that is easily accessible from the engine compartment and is held down by one bolt. Per instructions, I removed the governor, freed its sticking movement with WD-40 and put the governor back in. The transmission immediately began shifting properly and has worked perfectly for the last 10 years.
A technology reality shift has recently taken place related to professional video editing hardware and software. The following is an example of how perception and reputation are slow to catch up with the current reality of actual performance and value. Final Cut Pro on a Mac Pro is still considered by many to be the intelligent choice for a professional low-cost alternative to the more expensive Avid and Media 100 solutions available. Premiere Pro CS5 was released by Adobe on April 12, 2010. Premiere Pro CS5 is a 64 bit native video editing program. Final Cut Pro is a 32 bit native video editing program. Adobe worked with Nvidia in the development of the "Mercury Playback Engine". Now in Premiere CS5 only, select Nvidia cards take a good bit of the processing load off of the CPU in intensive video processing tasks. The performance results speak for themselves:
Standard video export test:
Mac Pro - 4 layer - 115 minutes - $8199
PC - AMD Phenom 2 6 1090T at 4.03GHz - 4 Layers - 46:42 minutes - $2000
PC - 980X at 4.0GHz - 4 Layer - 46:24 minutes
PC - Dual Xeon X5680 CPU's at 4.0GHz - 4 Layer - 34:47 minutes
PC - Dual Xeon X5680 CPU's at 3.33GHz - 4 Layer - 41:09 minutes
PC - Dual Xeon X5640 CPU's at 3.8GHz - 4 Layer - 35:43 minutes
PC - ADK 9000 Laptop 980X at 3.33GHz - 4 Layer - 80:43 minutes
PC - 980X at 3.33GHz with 285GTX Video card - 4 Layers - 52:46 minutes

So basically, a relatively low-end $2000 AMD based system performs nearly 2.5 times faster than a $8199 12 Core Mac Pro.

Thanks to Eric with ADK for running these benchmarks. Needless to say, it pays to research so you don't spend your money unnecessarily.

Another example of how Level Ten Studios saves you money is through nonparticipation in the "long-haul" business model so common today. The term, "long-haul" has its origins in the taxicab industry. Here is one example that recently took place in Las Vegas:
A customer gets in a cab at McCarran International Airport and told the driver that he hadn't been to Vegas before. After leaving the airport, the cab drove through the airport tunnel, went east on I 215 to the Pecos Road exit then west on St. Rose Parkway beyond M Resort. The cab then drove north in the direction of the Las Vegas Strip and arrived at its destination, the Bellagio Hotel. The cab trip from the Airport should have cost about $15, instead, the customer was charged approx. $60.

A version of the long haul exists in nearly every industry including technology. For example, many companies selling computers enable you to configure your new computer system online. The long-haul becomes evident when you check prices of the individual components (which are often second rate at best) that make up the computer system you are configuring. You will commonly find the same components available at newegg.com or Fry's Electronics at a fraction of the cost. So... how is a company selling custom computers online supposed to make a profit if they don't markup their individual components? By contrast, Level Ten Studios buys only quality components at the lowest possible price and charges a build fee. In addition, we take the time to learn your business and deliver an appropriate product with a much longer than average life span. For example, we use only GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 3 series motherboards, Crucial (Micron) RAM and high end Corsair power supplies in all of our system builds. Better quality components cost more, but not a lot more. Top end components are certainly well worth the extra cost when you consider the expense of component failure which does occur with greater frequency when you build with cheaper parts.

The Crushing Overhead Factor:
Keep in mind, big companies providing video, media and technology solutions have crushing overhead and are going to charge you much more than you need to be paying.

My family experienced the effects of the overhead factor recently when my daughter needed to have her retainer removed because its usefulness expired and it was loose on one side. The other side was slightly loose, but rather than trying to pull it off myself and risk chipping her tooth, my wife took my daughter in to see the orthodontist. It took the orthodontist under a minute to remove the retainer and he charged us $125.

Another example involves a local Atlanta Fortune 500 company who hired a new president. This particular president (an inside hire) had his own outside media person he used in his previous position with the company. This media person provided staging support for corporate meetings which are typically held in hotel ballrooms. Upscale corporate meetings of this type are commonly enhanced with several types of video; patriotic openers, meeting openers and informational videos such as a current year's marketing video. This particular media person did not have video production experience or capabilities, so it was necessary for her to hire a subcontractor to produce the videos that this company was accustomed to and expected. The subcontractor used a large video production company. They charged an arm and a leg for their services. Their work was polished but generic. It was without heart, soulless and uninspiring. This particular Fortune 500 Company was nickel and dimed with extravagant video production invoices. The Fortune 500 customer eventually went back to using a smaller all-in-one video production company that offered a much better product and value.

Lesson learned:
Hire a smaller qualified company that is willing to take the time to familiarize themselves with your company, provide personalized service and has a grip on of the realities of today's corporate budgets.

Level Ten Studios' broad range of products and services include:


- Chuck McIntyre, President