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  • Does my FCP performance suck, or normal?

    Posted by Hunter Stevens on June 1, 2008 at 4:11 am

    I am new to FCP, been on Avid forever. I have FCP 6.0.1 and top of the line 8-core mac with 6 gigs RAM and Matrox MXO. I cannot play back 6 tracks of audio in real time! I am working in a 720p/24 timeline. I am working a feature film with 4 basic tracks of audio, but whenever I need to overlap some music or effects for another 2 channels, it won’t play in real time, just beeps at me and I have to render. This can’t be true right, with all that horsepower it can’t even do 6 tracks of audio? There’s gotta be some setting somewhere that I am unaware of? Thanks for your advice.

    Hunter Stevens replied 17 years, 11 months ago 5 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • David Roth weiss

    June 1, 2008 at 8:02 am

    [Hunter Stevens] “whenever I need to overlap some music or effects for another 2 channels, it won’t play in real time, just beeps at me and I have to render.”

    There’s definitely a problem somewhere. Tell us more…

    Why are you still on FCP 6.0.1 and not 6.0.3?

    Is your 720p/24 material DVDCProHD or uncompressed?

    What Easy Setup did you use?

    What type of hard drive array do you have?

    And what about the music and effects? Are they 48khz or 44.1khz sources?

    David Roth Weiss
    Director/Editor
    David Weiss Productions, Inc.
    Los Angeles

    POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

    A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

  • Steven Gonzales

    June 1, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    Check your user preferences and see how many audio tracks are set for real-time. I think it might beep whenever you are above that preference number? I’m not near a machine to check this.

  • William Carr

    June 2, 2008 at 1:38 am

    If you have certain effects/filters on a track that are processor intensive like reverb or some serious EQ, that could be an issue.

  • Tony Young

    June 2, 2008 at 5:29 am

    The real-time audio tracks are probably the issue, as Steven pointed out. I’ve definitely had that happen before–changed the real-time tracks to 12 (or something) and it was fine. No more beeping or rendering.

  • Hunter Stevens

    June 2, 2008 at 5:52 am

    Thanks for your responses. Here’s more info: I didn’t know there was a 6.0.3, just bought FCP Studio a month or so ago and 6.0.1 is what I got. It’s DVCProHD. Hard drives is just 2 7200rpm SATA’s striped. It’s 48k audio. I’m not using an easy setup as none of them worked for my MXO downconvert to NTSC monitor. I am using Matrox MXO DVCProHD 720p/24 settings for sequence and video playback.

    Realtime audio tracks is set at 8 with medium quality, and I’m not using any effects/filters on audio except for the occasional dissolve, but not over areas where it’s asking to render.

    After writing all of that, I just changed the realtime audio tracks setting to 14, and it’s fine! Don’t know why 8 is not enuf for 6, but whatever. (Seems a little retarded tho to have a setting like that, I mean can’t it just tell me how many realtime tracks it’s capable of, or just play everything realtime until it’s overloaded?)

    Anyway, it’s working, thanks!

    Never let the odds keep u from doing what u know in ur heart u were meant to do.

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