Setting up your system for HD, DV, or HDV capture

For Premiere Pro system requirements, see the Adobe website.

For tips on optimizing a computer system and Premiere Pro for performance, see this white paper.

With this setup, you can capture audio and video from a DV or HDV source. You can monitor the signal on a TV monitor while editing. Finally, you can export any sequence back to videotape.

Set up an SD-SDI, HD-SDI, or component system

With this setup you can capture audio and video from an SD-SDI, HD-SDI, or component video device (camcorder or VTR). You can monitor the signal on a TV monitor while editing. Finally, you can export any sequence back to the camcorder or VTR.

This setup requires either an SDI or component PCI card installed in the computer. Alternatively, it requires an external SDI or component device connected to the computer via FireWire. Either an internal card or an external device would provide ports, usually with BNC connectors, capable of receiving SDI or component video signals.

Some SDI and component PCI cards come with breakout boxes which provide ports for the SDI or component signals. Some breakout boxes also provide ports for genlock. Others provide the necessary outputs directly on the card.

Set up a file-based system

With this setup, you can import or transfer audio and video files from card readers, drives, or tapeless camcorders recorded in any of the following digital video file formats:

• Panasonic P2

• XDCAM HD

• XDCAM EX

• AVCHD

• AVC-I

• a high-definition capture card,

• a display card with component, SDI or HDMI outputs.

Set up an S-Video or composite system

With this setup, you can capture audio and video from an analog camcorder or VTR. You can monitor the video signal on a TV monitor while editing. Finally, you can export any sequence back to the camcorder or VTR.

To convert the analog source signal to a digital file the computer can read, this setup requires an analog/digital (A/D) converter, or digitizer. You can use any of the following to digitize the video signal:

• an internal digitizer, installed in the computer,

• an external digitizer, connected to the computer,

• a digital camcorder or VTR capable of digitizing an incoming analog signal.

Specify the default audio device

Audio Hardware Settings (Windows only)

When you click ASIO Settings in the Audio Hardware panel of the Preferences dialog box, Premiere Pro opens the Audio Hardware Settings dialog box, which contains an Input tab, and an Output tab.

Determines which connected audio device is routed into and out of Premiere Pro. If the device is an ASIO device, select the ASIO drivers for the device. If the sound card does not have manufacturer-supplied ASIO drivers, choose Premiere Pro WDM Sound for this setting. To enable a device, be sure to install an up-to-date driver for the device (Windows.) If you want to input more than two stereo channels or monitor 5.1 surround audio, the device driver must comply with the ASIO (Audio Stream Input Output) specification. If it does not, only stereo inputs and outputs are available, regardless of the number of hardware inputs and outputs that are connected.

Specifies the size of the buffer, in kilobytes, that Premiere Pro uses for recording audio.

On the Input tab, check Device 32-bit Recording to record audio in 32-bit samples. On the Output tab, check Device 32-bit Playback to enable 32-bit playback.

Set up a USB microphone (Mac OS)

Specify ASIO device settings (Windows only)

Specify whether to render audio when rendering video

You can specify whether Premiere Pro renders audio previews by default.

Select Sequence > Render Effects In to Out, or Sequence > Render In to Out. These commands are used you have set In and Out points to mark the area to render audio previews, rather than the work area bar.

Rendering audio previews could improve playback performance, but could take additional time when you select either of these commands.

Specify the duration for preroll and postroll pauses

You can set the length of preroll and postroll for clip and sequence previews in the General pane of the Preferences dialog box.

Specify scratch disks to improve system performance

When you edit a project, Premiere Pro uses disk space to store files required by your project. Premiere Pro stores captured video and audio, conformed audio, and preview files. Premiere Pro uses conformed audio files and preview files to optimize performance, allowing real-time editing, 32-bit floating-point quality, and efficient output.

All scratch disk preferences are saved with each project. You can select different scratch disk locations for different projects. If you reopen an earlier project after editing another project with different scratch disk locations, Premiere Pro will seek out the files belonging to the earlier project at the scratch disk locations you chose for that project.

If you delete preview files or conformed audio files for a project, Premiere Pro automatically recreates them when you reopen the project.

By default, scratch disk files are stored where you save the project. The scratch disk space required increases as sequences become longer or more complex. For best performance, dedicate a hard disk or disk strictly for your media assets. Choose a disk for the assets other than the disk where you keep your project file, operating system files, or the files for applications. That way your media disks can access and play media files as fast as possible, without having to access other files. Use the Project > Project Settings > Scratch Disks command to specify which disks Premiere Pro uses for media files. Choose scratch disks when you set up a new project.

In terms of performance, it's best to dedicate a different disk to each asset type, but you can also specify folders on the same disk. You can specify unique scratch disk locations for each of the following types of files:

Captured Video

Video files that you create using File > Capture

Captured Audio

Audio files that you create using File > Capture, or by recording through the Audio Mixer as when recording a voice-over.

Video Previews

Files created when you use the Sequence > Render In to Out, export to a movie file, or export to a device. If the previewed area includes effects, the effects are rendered at full quality in the preview file.

Audio Previews

Audio preview files are created by all of the following commands:

• Sequence > Render In to Out

• Use export to a movie file

• Export to a DV device

If the previewed area includes effects, they are rendered at full quality in the preview file.

Specify scratch disks

You set up scratch disks in the Scratch Disk pane of the Preferences dialog box. Before changing scratch disk settings, you can verify the amount of free disk space on the selected volume. by The amount appears in the box to the right of the path. If the path is too long to read, position the pointer over the path name. The full path appears in a tool tip.

Optimizing scratch disk performance

For optimum performance, follow these guidelines:

• If your computer has only one hard disk, consider leaving all scratch disk options at their default settings.

• Set up scratch disks on one or more separate hard disks. In Premiere Pro, you can set up a separate scratch disk for each type of media. For example, you can set up one disk for captured video and another for captured audio.

• On Windows, specify only partitions formatted for the NTFS file format as scratch disks. On Mac OS, use partitions formatted for Mac OS Extended. FAT32 partitions are not recommended for video. They do not support large file sizes.

• On Mac OS, disable journaling for best performance.

• Specify your fastest hard disks for capturing footage and storing scratch files. You can use a slower disk for audio preview files and the project file.

• Specify only disks attached to your computer. A hard disk located on a network is usually too slow. Avoid using removable media because Premiere Pro always requires access to scratch disk files. Scratch disk files are preserved for each project, even when you close the project. They are reused when you reopen the project associated with them. If scratch disk files are stored on removable media and the media are removed from the drive, the scratch disk is not available to Premiere Pro.

• You can divide a single disk into partitions and set up partitions as scratch disks. However, partioning doesn't improve performance because the single drive mechanism becomes a bottleneck. For best results, set up scratch disk volumes that are physically separate drives.

• You can capture audio and video to separate drives, if supported by the format codec. (The native DV and HDV capture in Premiere Pro does not support capturing audio separate from video.) Set the locations for new files by choosing Edit > Preferences > Scratch Disks (Windows) or Premiere Pro > Preferences > Scratch Disks (Mac OS). If you don't change the defaults, all files captured or created by Premiere Pro are stored in the same folder in which it stores the project files.

Online resources for improving system performance

See this forum thread for advice from experienced users on setting up disks for a video editing system.

See this video to learn about hard disk setup for optimum performance in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.

To learn how to format a disk as NTFS on Windows, see this web page on the Microsoft site.

To learn how to format a disk as HFS+ on Mac OS, see this page from the kenstone.net website. The information on this page is valid for Mac OS X 10.4-10.7

Move or clean the Media Cache Database

When Premiere Pro imports video and audio in some formats, it processes and caches versions of these items that it can readily access when generating previews. Imported audio files are each conformed to a new .cfa file, and MPEG files are indexed to a new .mpgindex file. The media cache greatly improves performance for previews, because the video and audio items do not need to be reprocessed for each preview.

A database retains links to each of the cached media files. This media cache database is shared with Adobe Media Encoder, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Audition, so each of these applications can each read from and write to the same set of cached media files. If you change the location of the database from within any of these applications, the location is updated for the other applications, too. Each application can use its own cache folder, but the same database keeps track of them.

For more information, see How do I manage the Media Cache in Premiere Pro?

Optimize rendering for available memory

By default, Premiere Pro renders video using the maximum number of available processors, up to 16. However, some sequences, such as those containing high-resolution source video or still images, require large amounts of memory for the simultaneous rendering of multiple frames. These sequences can force Premiere Pro to cancel rendering and to give a Low Memory Warning alert. In these cases, you can maximize the available memory by changing the rendering optimization preference from Performance to Memory. Change this preference back to Performance when rendering no longer requires memory optimization.