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XDCAM FCP render problems
I’m currently being driven crazy by the XDCAM footage in FCP.
The project is a fairly substantial corporate video, two cameras, 4 days, morning and afternoon seminar.
Corporate land, being full of awkward customers, requested this time to have the footage given to them on DVD’s so they can take their notes and give back the paper edit to have the process repeated for a final stage.I synced up the first two days footage, I dropped a slug on the 3rd video track, Dropped the timecode generator on the slug, resized it to the TCG window size. Happy Days. FCP was happy, Compressor was happy. This was all SD footage.
Day 3 and 4 came in on XDCAM 1080i50 (35mb/svbr) 4.4mb. 25fps.
I was impressed by the fact that the HD import allowed you to continue working in FCP unlike the traditional Capture settings.I repeated my workflow for day 3 and 4 as I had done day 1 and 2.
No bother at all when I dropped the slug or TCG. then I resized the SLUG and FCP was looking to render the whole timeline,throwing up an estimate of 18 hours !! Madness!!Before I wrote this I threw down some of the HD footage on the 3rd video track and resized it expecting it to behave as the SD would and not require rendering but it did !! ???
My system is MAC OS X ver: 10.5.6, 2 x 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 8 GB 800Mhz DDR2
I’m running FCP ver: 6.0.5.
What am I overlooking or doing wrong ? is this common ?? I scrutinised the Sequence settings and they match perfect ??
The mammoth render is playing havoc with compressor !! its the first time too that my system seemed under pressure !!
Help !
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9 Replies
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SD footage is DV, right? Very light on system resources…and is a full frame format.
XDCAM is a GOP format…not individual frames but a few with a group of pictures in between, guesstimating at what the next frames will be. This makes GOP formats VERY processor intensive. So if you add stuff like the TC Gen and slug, yup, you are looking at a long render. This is why people import this footage as PRORES…get out of the GOP format right away. But that takes up more space.
So that is the big trade off…longer render times and less space requirements, or shorter render times and LOTS of space required.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Wesley Nolan] “Before I wrote this I threw down some of the HD footage on the 3rd video track and resized it expecting it to behave as the SD would and not require rendering but it did !! ??? “
This operation would always require rendering.
That you don’t get a red bar on top doesn’t means that do not need be rendered. means only that you have RT playing.
As Shane suggest, don’t export back to XDCAM because the MPEG-2 rendering will take ages.
Render to any other codec.
rafael -
Thanks for replying Raf’,
The compression times are killer eh ! What are you using instead of MPEG-2 on a project of say 2hr long? from HD footage ? there’s so many options its a nightmare !! My system was busy for almost 20hrs the last time I made these discs ! 😀
WeZ
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Thanks for taking the time to reply Shane,
I dont mind using more space if it means the machine is not clattering away all night on the compression/render !! 🙂
PRORES an option when importing the HD into FCP ? or is a seperate work around ?
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Hi wesley,
Normally i edit in an XDCAM sequence, but when is time to export I change the sequence codec to Proress.
There is also an option where you can edit in XDCAM but the renders are done in ProRess.
As Shane points the rendering to XDCAM is a bit heavy. You don’t only have to render as with any other codec, you have to rebuild all the GOP structure.
Rafael -
Well, Wesley…
I read all of the other posts and they are right. But let me explain some more here…
You are trying to edit an XDCAM SD project (now, we don’t know what codec you are using – IMX or DVCAM) and you’re wanting to add footage that is XDCAM HD 1080i50.
First, are you working entirely in PAL or is it the HD footage that is in PAL?
Just as Shane has said, the HD footage is a form of HDV which is VBR compression. This means that every time you add footage to you SD timelines you are going to have to render, which in HDV land means that you will have to conform the video then render. Very lengthy renders.
You need to change your user prefs, render control tab to codec: Apple ProRes 422 (HDV, XDCAM HD/EX Only). This will help with your render times but not eliminate them.
Personally, I would suggest that you batch capture all of you HD footage into SD footage and then edit from there, if that’s what you are delivering.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
Thanks Wayne,
Its kinda madness to be honest ! I don’t know why the cam guy shot it all full blown HD when the end delivery was gonna be DVD, but you live and learn I suppose !
All the work I’m doing was shot here in Ireland, so yeh, its all PAL.
The big nightmare is compression time !! Almost 13 hours or more to compress out 7 hours of footage !!
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[Wesley Nolan] “Its kinda madness to be honest ! I don’t know why the cam guy shot it all full blown HD when the end delivery was gonna be DVD, but you live and learn I suppose ! “
Not necessarily… Its better to shoot in HD now and be able to use it in HD later than to shoot in SD then uprez it at a later time.
[Wesley Nolan] “The big nightmare is compression time !! Almost 13 hours or more to compress out 7 hours of footage !!”
From what you are talking about, depending on your particular computer, those render times don’t sound too far off. It looks like you have one of the new Mac Pro systems. There are some bugs that are still being worked out on these but I can tell you that your memory could be upgraded to 16 gigs and that would boost your performance some with FCS2. I’m hoping there will be an update very soon to address this issue and others like the loss of render files.
It seems that FCP has more issues with PAL than anything else… Let’s just hope that Apple fixes this soon.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
“Not necessarily… Its better to shoot in HD now and be able to use it in HD later than to shoot in SD then uprez it at a later time. ”
I know what you mean, but this corporate is a one off, very low budget that will see no other light after the DVD’s are delivered… 😀
I was sent an add for a H.264 compressor “Matrox Compress HD” any experience with the card ?? worth the cash ??? bout 500 dollars !
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