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Render problems with 7D footage on 2007 MBP
I’m a FCP user who’s testing out PP CS5 with some 7D (H.264) footage. I like the fact that I don’t have to transcode to ProRes422 but I’ve applied some color correction to one clip in the timeline and now it appears that it needs to render (red line above it) so I’m wondering what I need to do to get the clip to render and playback smoothly? The clip can’t be played back smoothly now even with the playback resolution set to 1/4.
I’ve tried Sequence > Render …. but nothing happens.
I am also a little bit confused as to what format PP is converting / rendering the actual h.264 footage to?
My machine in an older 2007 2.6Ghz MBP with 6gigs of ram and a 8600GT graphics card.
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5 Replies
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DSLR footage is H264 4:2:2 at 50 Mbits/s. It’s just as large a file as XDcamHD422, but a tougher decode.
First I’d ask if you are using the free trial of PPro CS5…if so, the MPEG based formats (from MPEG2 formats like all XDcam and HDV to MPEG4 formats like AVCHD and DSLR) are not installed until the software is purchased…some licensing thing…don’t ask me, I’m just the messenger.
If you’re using the trial, then the only way you’re even seeing the footage work at all is that QuickTime is somehow picking it up and 64 bit PPro CS5 seems to have to drag old 32 bit QT kicking and screaming on Macs in some cases…
If you’re not using the trial install, then I’d suspect your processor is just not up to the task of doing the large task of both decoding the video and processing the effect. Not transcoding is great, but ProRes is built to maintain quality and even though it ends up being a large bitrate, the amount of CPU load isn’t nearly as high as MPEG4, which is why it runs well on a variety of configurations.
The part of all this that seems to get lost in the balloons and confetti about PPro CS5 (and I would have to classify myself as an ‘advocate’ but an honest one), is that you pay now or pay later.
Transcoding to an intermediate format like CineForm or ProRes makes a larger file that takes more harddrive to store but less processing to handle. Camera formats are all about smashing the video as small as possible so you can cram as much footage into a camera-load as possible…lower data rates, smaller (sometimes MUCH smaller) files, but it takes a monster machine to handle that kind of pixel, temporal, and vector-based decoding (and re-encoding) fast enough to have a responsive edit session.
CS5 has the capabilities, but you need some serious power to run it…and like Final Cut’s minimum system requirements, you have to assume they copy/pasted them from Microsoft’s requirements for Outlook Express and just disregard them…
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
The red line means your footage needs to pre render to be played back at an acceptable frame rate (although not fully rendered) Yellow means the footage is interpreted as not necesarry to render or it has been rendered somewhere else (i have had weird problems with a yellow render bar with After effects dynamic links)
to render the red bar away for smooth playback press enter and a window should come up to pre render the footage turning the red line to green.
if this is not working make sure you have the sequence active (either double click in the project pane the name of your sequence then press enter, or look into your timeline and pre render preferences)
hope this helps?
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Computer animation Student
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MACHINES
> Mac Book Pro 13” 4 gig Ram Nvdia320m intel dual core.> PC – 16GB Ram Quad core intel 1TB 2×24” HP monitors
SLI 2X nvidia Geforce GT9800 windows7 ultimate +ubuntuCAMERA
> Panasonic HDC SD700 2×8 GB -
I have the full version of PP CS5. I have tried clicking the Render Effects and Render Entire Work Area but nothing happens.
Are you saying that there is no way to render this H.264 sequence, get rid of the red line for smooth playback, without first having to transcode to Cineform or ProRes?
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Thanks for the explanation guys. My in and out points did not include the clip in question hence me unable to render it! Perhaps this is a feature 🙂
Works fine now!
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Your in and out points…or your sequence work area brackets?
Actually that IS a feature…if you need to render a little part to view an effect or something, you don’t want to have to render the entire length of a program.
You can also define what you export via this method.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,
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