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Frustrated with my NLE, looking for other options for my P2 workflow
I know this isn’t an NLE forum, but I know a lot of people on this board are using FCP and P2 and that is what I have questions about…
I bought an HVX-200 and a Matrox Axio editing system at the end of last year as I took my first step into the HD world. For those who don’t know, the Axio system runs Adobe software and my particular setup is 8-bit uncompressed with an Axio LE card and BOB that gives me HD-SDI I/O. To make a long story short, I haven’t been thrilled with the performance of this system. I spent about $17,000 for an HP xw9400 with 4GB of RAM, two ATI Raedon 1950s to run three monitors, an interal 3TB array, and the Axio LE cardset and BOB. That’s the shortlist of features. It performs pretty well when you are using the Matrox effects (which are all real time), but when I start to use the Adobe effects and adjustments it doesn’t do much better than my older (and considerably cheaper) software based system. Don’t get me wrong, it works well, but not the kind of knock-your-socks-off power I was expecting to get for 17 grand!
My questions: What is the FCP solution in this price range? What does it cost for an uncompressed 8-bit system with that knock-your-socks-off power? What are all of you using and how do you like it? If I make the switch I want to make sure I’m just not being too picky and end up in the same spot I’m in now. I want to know if the editing system I’m dreaming of is even a possibility.
Thanks for any input!
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9 Replies
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I’m sure that everyone has a different setup that fits them best. I shoot HVX-200 usign the HD modes but 95% of my output is SD still. I just use the G5 2.5 dual, FCP, and I have an Auoroa Pipe Pro SD card and use the SDI out to a DVCPRO 50 deck. I shoot most of my projects in the 720p. Edit just using the 24″ Dell monitor when in HD and then I drop it down to a SD sequence and check everything with my Sony 14″ trinatron.
On location I use a G4 laptop and can transfer P2 using the internal slot on the computer.
I have been happy with this set up. The next step is to go with a Kona 3 card. As far as I can tell the Kona and Black Magic are the same except the Kona card can do a real time HD to SD down convertion.
-Lars
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Interesting that you are frustrated with that system because it is exactly what I’m looking at to do the exact same thing.
Where is it really failing you? My main intention is to use it for a couple of layers of 720p, from a p2 card and after effects for the fancy bits.
I cut on one this summer and it seemed pretty snappy and I loved the built in ability to go out to an HDTV monitor. It seems like an open ended and useful system so I’m thinking what am I missing? What is it that’s causing grief exactly? What kind of effects?
Working in 8 bit uncompressed is no small feat for any machine. It seemed to run through the basics fairly well. Dissolves, resizing, colour correction, all seemed fine. What was causing the most grief?
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[FischTale] “My questions: What is the FCP solution in this<$17,000> price range? “
quite abit.
first off a top of the line Kona card that offers cross conversion (720-1080 and back) is $3500, add that to a top of the line mac desktop and storage and you are set – but 3 internal sata drives are barely fast enough to cut uncompressed 1080 HD. 720p is not an issue but 1080 would be.
An FCP/ Kona system would allow you to work in the native DVCPROHD codec that gives you terrific 8bit video in a compressed space. – This would give you a system similar to the one used to cut the Food Network show “Good Eats” done by the cow’s Walter Biscardi, shot on the HVX 200s big brother the Varicam.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows -
Matrox…
I finally dumped my old SD Matrox system….
Poor support….
I am using P2 with Mac and FCP and I feel like
I finally have a sytem that will grow and
be supported for many years to come.
I can edit 720 24p all day
with Firewire 800 drives and no dropped
frames. -
Wow, someone else bringing out the big fear of Matrox…lack of support. So close to buying that system for all its interoperability and the fact that we don’t really need to play nice with the rest of the world. We’re in house.
I looked at FCP but it didn’t seem clear what the prime setup was for us and I couldn’t get a clear idea from anyone I talked to.
Back and forth I go…Axio…Avid…FCP.
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I appreciate all the feedback so far. I’ve been talking to my dealer and he thinks there is some tweaking that can be done to give the system some more guts before I switch to a new platform. We’ll see how that plays out. My biggest draw to the Matrox was that it felt more like a complete package than some of the FCP options, but maybe I was wrong.
To answer some of the questions, I really noticed the lack of power when I was editing a handful of stills in the timeline. They had some simple moves applied and dissolves between. The rendering seemed slow so I did a test to compare the Matrox to my old system. The old system (which is now my email computer) is a dual Xeon 2.4 with 2GB of RAM, no hardware acceleration and internal IDE drives. It took 9:15 to render a short sequence of stills. The Matrox which is an HP xw9400 with dual 2.8 Opterons, 4GB of RAM and an internal SATA array did the same render in 8:50. That’s a difference of about $11,000 to save 25 seconds on a render! Maybe this system just needs some work to be better optimized, but it seems like it would take more than a tweak to make it great. We’ll see…
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That is so interesting about the show “Good Eats” I am working on a local Real Estate program and I am looking for a host that is funny and out going. I use the guy on “Good Eats” as an example of what I am looking for.
To funny, and good show by the way.
-Lars
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Believe me, I was looking at the Axio because I was worried about rendering.
But you know, I did all my PC effects in After Effects….
With FCP you can get realtime playback with HD using a laptop….
And FCP is set-up to do about 95% of what I did in AE.
Sure it has to render here and there but it is much
faster than my old PC. My system does not crash near
as much as my old Matrox system. And the MAC is so much
easier to deal with system wise. You plug it in
and it works.
That is what I do mostly now. I go to the clients and edit on the spot.
And nowadays I hardly go back to tape. I do the ocassional TV spot
and use the Matrox to go back to BetaSp…. -
There may be nothing wrong with your machine. In order for you to see the performence difference your software must be able to utilize CPU and when it comes to PPRO it’s very poor(I don’t believe it’s optimized for multicore, and the if it’s Adobe PRPO-don’t hold your breath to fix any time soon..). Also remember that your slowest part is disk I/O which is going to slow you down no matter how fast your CPU/Mem is.
The simple test to see your system is performing do some MPEG2 encoding using encoder that uses true multi threding like Cinemacraft SP.
Or switch to Avid or Sony products.
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