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ADOBE PREMIERE 5.0
User Guide
Appendix C: Maximizing
Performance
he performance requirements of video editing make it especially sensitive to how
you set up your computer system and the decisions you make when you edit a
program. Knowing how to set up and work efficiently can help you save time while
preserving quality.
Preserving quality and performance during video capture
Video capture is one of the most system-intensive tasks you can demand of a personal
computer. Getting professional results depends on the performance and capacity of all of
the components of your system working together to pass frames from the video-capture
card to the processor and hard disk. Your system is only as fast as its slowest component.
Video-capture hardware
Your video hardware must be fast enough to capture video at the level of quality required
by your final medium. For broadcast-quality video, a video-capture card must be able to
capture full-screen video at the frame and field rate of the broadcast standard you use,
without dropping frames. For full-screen, full-motion NTSC video, the card must be capable
of successfully capturing thirty frames (sixty fields) per second at 640 by 480 pixels; for PAL
and SECAM, twenty-five frames (fifty fields) per second at 720 by 576 pixels. However, if
you’re capturing video for a project that uses a smaller frame size or lower frame rate than
those listed here, such as for Internet video, specify the lower values. Specifying full-screen,
full-motion values when you don’t need them will unnecessarily consume processing time
and disk space.
c00.book for PS Page 359 Tuesday, March 31, 1998 1:28 PM