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MacPro – shameful performance
When rendering in FCP my CPUs are ~85%-90% idle!!
Why do they even bother putting them in the case?
Compressor uses them eh? Of course Apple never bothered to make exporting from FCP to Compressor work.
If you don’t use After Effects, don’t buy one of these boxes.
This is truly shameful, deserving of tar and feathers stuff.
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21 Replies
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Hi Gabriel,
if you don’t explain a bit more about your footage, workflow, configuration etc, your weeping is for nothing.
Do you think you are doing a good maintenance to your system to keep it optimized?
And what about your HDs?
there are millions of people working with this box without any problem. The first thing you need to drive a machine, is to learn how to drive it.
rafael -
Hey Rafael,
New box, 10 gigs RAM, been cutting FCP for about 5 years now.
DV50 Footage from P2 on a 5 drive stripe set, more than enough throughput for many times real….From other threads I’ve found, I’m not alone. FCP rendering on an 8 core box rarely bumps above 150% CPU (of 800% possible), with Magic Bullet, I’m lucky to get 100%.
If I’m wrong, I’m very happy. Just point me to the fix and I apologize heartily for the offense my exasperation has caused. Perhaps I punched the wrong keywords in my searches.
Sorry to bore you with the rant, but here’s one more vote for making the thing work like it should. Rendering is now an essential part of editing, like the trimming that edit* v5.0 still does better than FCP, if you can find an old pentium Windows NT to run it on.
Don’t get me wrong, (though I hope I am wrong) I hate to complain, but this seems ridiculous.
FCP 5 on Tiger
Dual 2gig
4.5 gigs RAM
Aja IOLA -
Hi gabriel,
I really understand your frustration, but think that there are many people working with similar configuration, etc, and they are not having he same problems than you.
Is well know the low performance of FC in the octocores, but when you get a sub-performance you must look for the reason in your System (better than in FC), and in your HDs.
Check the speed of your media drives and run DiskWarrior, TechTools or similar to put your System in order. Now I’m mostly working in a MBP and FC get the 200% CPU. My small eSATAS read/write 75/90 MB ps and I don’t have a crash or trash preferences in months with those routines.
Another thing that may be slowing down your render is the video-card if you are using fxPlugs filters (MBL).
So I think there are few things you may try to increase your Mac performance.
Good luck,
rafael -
[Gabriel Regalbuto] “This is truly shameful, deserving of tar and feathers stuff.”
Say what?
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FCP 6 and OS 10.5 really don’t use all those cores… in fact few apps do. (Compressor will, as will Shake using QMaster settings) It’s not that you have a problem don’t think, it’s that the software needs to catch up to the hardware. You have a 64 bit computer running 32 bit apps on it right now. It’s no better in the PC world FWIW…
This all will begin to change for the better over time, however you are rendering faster right now than if you were on a lesser Mac for sure. AND you can render in FCP, Compressor, and Motion all at the same time with that rig of yours, and you’ll see those cores light up when you do.
That said, Snow leopard will begin to address the OS problems, and (hopefully) FCS 3 will as well… If history repeats itself with upgrading paths, it’s due before long now… It’s been almost 2 years after all.
If you’re having problems exporting directly to Compressor, then you have a software install or edgy media files involved because it works just fine here, and on the 70 FCP stations i administrate. These Macs are everything frm iMacs to 8 cores…
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s
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You kids don’t know how good you got it. Bhy, back when I was your age, when the glaciers were receding, After Effects, then CoSA, took a weekend to render ten seconds of one effect on one layer on my Mac IIfx.
bogiesan
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You had glaciers? Lucky. When *I* was a kid, we didn’t have……
EdBTW Gabriel, it’s confusing when you say have 10g RAM and an Octo, but your tag says FCP5 on a dual 2g w/4.5g RAM. Sync ’em up man! 🙂
Ed -
[Gabriel Regalbuto] “This is truly shameful, deserving of tar and feathers stuff.”
Not really. I can tell you that rendering on the Octo Core is at least 50% faster than rendering on our G5 Quad 2.5. Rendering on the Octo Core is about 20% faster than the Mac Pro Quad 3.0.
We have all three machines in operation everyday and those percentages of rendering equate to jobs being turned around faster and ultimately more income for us.
Nope, nothing shameful about this at all, especially since the fact that FCP does not use all the cores in the same way as other apps has been noted on this very forum for years now. Also the fact that FCP uses no more than 4GB RAM has been noted on here for years.
This is the evolution of hardware being ahead of the software for quite some time now. If you’re a professional cutting FCP and you need a new machine, get the fastest Octo Core you can get. Render times are the fastest of any Mac out there.
I’ve been cutting Non-Linear since 1993 when I was one of the first editors at CNN to learn this new thing called “Avid.” A Mac Mini can run rings around the equipment I used back then.
Your argument that the Mac Pro is “shameful” doesn’t ring true to me in any way shape or form. There is so much information on these forums and the internet as a whole to truly understand how FCP operates with the Mac Pro prior to making your purchase.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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In 1993, I spent 3 days rendering titles and color correction on a 29 minute show. Fastest Mac in the world at the time too. Avid Media Composer. AVR 26 Beta… First show I actually put on the air from an NLE directly to tape. Shoot we had to baby sit it all night too, because it would crash from time to time. Kept the previous render though. That was state of the art just 15 years ago.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s
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[Jerry Hofmann] “In 1993, I spent 3 days rendering titles and color correction on a 29 minute show. Fastest Mac in the world at the time too. Avid Media Composer. AVR 26 Beta… First show I actually put on the air from an NLE directly to tape. “
I did the first Avid edit at CNN that made it to air and I still remember it was a Bruce Burkhardt story for Network Earth and I distinctly remember there was an airplane flying in a blue sky at some point because the solid blue fell apart into a wash of blocks. I don’t honestly recall if the piece went to tape directly from the Avid or if we re-cut it using an EDL from the Avid, but it was the first story that was completely cut on that system for the network. It was either 93 or 94.
See that, we were pioneers together and didn’t even know it!
Oh and remember those “bricks” for hard drives? Don’t recall how much storage they actually held, it might have been 9GB, but the thing was larger than an actual brick and there were two of them in some sort of rack mounted unit. We had more trouble with those darn things…..
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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