Classroom in a book

3
Optimizing performance
Editing video is memory- and processor-intensive work for a desktop computer. 
A fast processor and a lot of memory will make your editing experience much faster 
and more efficient; 2 GB of memory is the minimum, and 8 GB or more is better for 
high-definition (HD) media. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 takes advantage of multicore 
processors on Windows and Macintosh systems and will run on Macintosh com-
puters with multicore Intel processors.
A dedicated 7200 RPM or faster hard drive is recommended for standard-definition 
(SD) or high-definition video (HDV) media. A RAID 0 striped disk array or SCSI 
disk subsystem is recommended for HD. Performance will be significantly affected 
if you attempt to store media files and program files on the same hard drive.
The Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro can operate in software-only 
mode or GPU acceleration mode. The GPU acceleration mode provides significant 
performance improvement. The GPU acceleration is possible with select video 
cards. You can find a list of these video cards on the Adobe website at 
http://www.
adobe.com/go/premiere_systemreqs
.
Copying the lesson files
The lessons in 
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Classroom in a Book
use specific source files, 
such as image files created in Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 and Adobe® Illustrator® CS5, 
audio files, and videos. To complete the lessons in this book, you must copy all the 
files from the 
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Classroom in a Book
DVD (inside the back 
cover of this book) to your hard drive. You will need about 3.5 GB of storage space 
in addition to the 12 GB you need to install Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.
Although each lesson stands alone, some lessons use files from other lessons, so you’ll 
need to keep the entire collection of lesson assets on your hard drive as you work 
through the book. Here’s how to copy those assets from the DVD to your hard drive:
1
Open the 
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Classroom in a Book
DVD in My Computer 
or Windows Explorer (Windows) or in the Finder (Mac OS).
2
Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS; if you’re using a super mouse 
or pen, you can right-click) the folder called Lessons, and choose Copy.
3
Navigate to the location you set to store your Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 projects.
The default location is My Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\5.0 (Windows) or 
Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/5.0 (Mac OS).
4
Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the 5.0 folder, and choose Paste.
Following these steps will copy all the lesson assets to your local folder. This process 
may take a few minutes to complete, depending on the speed of your hardware.
 Tip:
A common disk 
configuration is to put 
the operating system 
and applications on 
drive 1, video and audio 
files on drive 2, and 
export files on drive 3.
For HD work, drive 2 
should be a RAID 0
striped disk array or 
SCSI disk subsystem.

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ptg