Issues I am having with 6K BRAW in After Effects on my aging iMac Pro

So I am in the middle of making 2 short films shot on my BlackMagicDesign 6k Pro, and I am shooting in 6k 23.976 Blackmagic Raw Constant 8:1, and both have serious visual effects. And I have been having issues with running out of memory in After Effects.

Now my machine is getting old, it is a an iMac Pro with the upgraded Radeon Pro Vega 64X with 16 GB of RAM, but I only have 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, which I am thinking is the main issue. And I am running of a RAID 5 with 36 GB of mechanical drive space, which has at least half empty. And I have even moved the After Effects Disk Cache to a fast external SSD with a 250 GB cache.

For BRAW support I am using the amazing BRAW Studio from Autokroma. This plug in really is great in Premiere Pro because it allows selection of multiple BRAW clips to allow editing if they are all shot the same, and also to save out a sidecar file easily so any program can see what you have done. It works in Premiere Pro and After Effects and replaces Blackmagic’s BRAW plugin which has more limited functionality.

Still using this I do seem to be having RAM issues with RAM previews where my RAM is running out very quickly and won’t render out a whole shot. I find myself having to restart after effects to get a longer RAM preview, and many times even a computer restart.

Now I am also doing a lot of green screen and using Maxon formerly Red Giant’s Primatte Keyer 6 to key, so that might be also a RAM hog here. I have never had an issue with 4k Alexa ProRES footage in green screen though.

I tend to think it might be the BRAW , as on some shots I used BRAW Studio to do the initial grade and save out a sidecar, and then render them in Media Composer in ProRES HQ. With this footage I get much longer renders. Now I know it is less compressed, as the files are larger, and with the LUT added, there is less to decode, but this is very drive intensive.

And sure the 6K is bigger than 4K, and eating more RAM.

And the new M1 chips with ProRES processor wouldn’t help here, because it is BRAW, and 128 GB of shared memory and video memory doesn’t seem like a whole bunch more.

I am hoping the whole lesson isn’t that BRAW 6K is just too processor intensive.

Adobe has released Adobe Premiere Pro Best Practices Workflow Guide for Long Form and Episodic, and it is a must read

Adobe has followed in the footsteps of Blackmagic and done a really great in depth manual, but this one specifically for Long Form and Episodic Workflows in Premiere Pro.

You can Download the PDF here, and it really is a must read for pros.

It goes in Depth on Hardware and settings, workflows with Dailies, Proxy workflows, working with Productions, Mutli-Camera editing, dynamic link with after effects, turnovers, remote & cloud workflows, panels and integrations, and resources & tutorials.

And right on the first stage of text it tells you why not to use Merged clips (though it doesn’t tell about the exporting XML workaround to fix it, and honestly would rather have Adobe remove the feature if they are going to say this, though really I would rather have them FIX IT).

This guide is a must read for all editors working in Premiere Pro. I love that Adobe has done this.

Scott Simmons at PVC on Avid Media Composer 2022.7 adding keyboard layouts for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve

Scott Simmons posted this article Avid Media Composer updated to 2022.7, now with competing keyboard layouts.

I can honestly say I never though I would see the day when AVID was really trying to get people from Premiere and DaVinci.

Personally I always learn the default keyboard setup of a program, but this is great for a quick jump for people.

Oliver Peters at digitalfilms on six Premiere Pro Game Changers

Oliver Peters at digitalfilms on Six Premiere Pro Game Changers. And these are on fairly recent adds.

The Auto Transcribe is really a huge game changer, though I don’t use for Captioning though, I use it for Testimonials, and it is amazing and could really use a new interface for that use. It is amazing, and makes cutting testimonials so much faster and better.

Scott Simmons at PVC on his single most loved feature in Adobe Premiere Pro, customization, and he is right

Scott Simmons at the ProVideoCoalition has a great article entitled, “My single most loved feature in Adobe Premiere Pro.”

Customization is really the best thing about Premiere Pro.

Of course AVID was the start of this because every editor doesn’t want to work the same way or have the same setup to work on, so being able to have your own setup is so important and AVID premiered this feature in the editing space.

The original Apple Final Cut Pro also had this feature.

The new Final Cut Pro, previously Final Cut Pro X, did away with this and wants you to edit their way. You don’t have as many ways to do things and you really can’t do a lot of customization in the workspace.

DaVinci Resolve has added editing to it’s color correction program and it is great, but it also does not let you customize, it is once again how they want you to edit. Yes you can use one or two monitors, but the windows are all very fixed where they are.

Premiere though is like AVID in customization, but adds to it, especially with so many available 3rd party extensions, like from AESCRIPTS, and it’s extensive keyboard shortcut options.

Scott Simmons is so right that Premiere’s customization abilities are it’s absolute best feature and it is a shame that DaVinci Resolve doesn’t allow the same customization.

Premiere Pro Beta can now click and drag to select multiple track targets

As posted by Marjorie Sacks from Adobe int he Adobe Premiere Pro Beta discussions.

Track targeting just got a lot easier in Premiere Pro (Beta). You can select and target multiple source or target tracks by holding down CMD/CTRL as you click and drag the cursor across multiple track buttons in the timeline panel.

Holding down CMD/CTRL + Shift while dragging will invert the targeted selection.

Yea I could not be happier about this, AVID always did a better job with track selection, and this does a lot to bridge that gap.

Alexa has announced the ALEXA 35, their first new sensor in 12 years!

The Alexa 35 looks amazing and it looks like Alexa has done it again, though way out of my price range.

Here are some links and videos I checked out about it.

Potato Jet has a video Review.

Brian Hallett at ProVideoCoalition has a look at it.

As does Yaroslave Altunin at No film School.

I edit a lot of spots shot with Arri, so hopefully will run into some footage from one of these soon.

I just wish that Adobe would allow us to not have the damned AMIRA Lut automatically applied, especially since it doesn’t do this for other cameras. On a pro editing system I want to control it,