I am trying to decide whether to purchase the Adobe Production Premium CS6 Suite for either Windows or Mac. I have been testing both out with trials and I have to say that I am very surprised at the performance difference between the two. To be totally fair, my Windows PC has better specs than the MacBook Pro I am testing with, however, the disparity I am seeing cannot be attributed to hardware alone.
The main issue I am having with the MacBook Pro is how long it takes, after opening a project, for my video files to become available and subsequently scrub-able. I have the exact same project loaded in both systems and it takes 9 seconds to reach a total working state in Windows and a full minute more on the MacBook (1:08). It takes additional time on the MacBook before I can scrub through my timeline and get the video to update in realtime. Is this a common issue on the Mac version of Premiere Pro? At this point I can't even imagine going with the suite on OS X.
All apps and operating systems are fully updated.
System specs: MacBook Pro MD103LL/A
- 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 Current gen i7
- 8GB DDR3 RAM; 128GB SSD
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB Graphics
- Mountain Lion 10.8.3
- Premiere Pro CS6 6.0.2 (latest)
System specs: Windows PC
- 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 920 First gen i7
- 8GB DDR3 RAM; 128GB SSD
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580
- Mountain Lion 10.8.3
- Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit
- Premiere Pro CS6 6.0.3 (latest)
Test video specs: 1 hour in length
Video: MPEG-4 AVC (High 4.0) 12.1Mbps, 1920x1080p 30fps
Audio: 216Kbps, 48Khz, 2 channel, AAC
I know the specs favor the Windows PC, but the different in generating the preview file seems silly. Just be be clear what I am talking about, when I open my Premiere Pro project the Program preview will display "Media Pending" for over a minute before it shows even a frame. It then takes an additional 30-40 seconds before I can scrub through in real time. On the Windows PC this whole process takes 9 seconds.
Is this really because of the hardware differences or does the Mac version of Premiere Pro really perform this poorly compared to the Windows version? Is there a setting I don't have right on the Mac that will improve this? I have Googled the issue and found a few things the toggle, but none of them has any effect on my issue.
I'm look for both help and information on this. I want to go with Mac because I use Motion and Garageband, but cannot justify the purchase based on the performance I am getting.