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FCP 7 / Thunderbolt Pegasus R6 / Rendering
Hello
I’ve just upgraded to a R6 Promise thunderbolt and expected faster rendering. Perhaps my system is not the power house I thought it was.
Here’s my specs:
Using FCP 7 / Motion 4
imac 3.4i7 chip
16 gbs DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB10.7.2
The R6 comes configured as RAID 5.
It scrubs the timeline amazing fast though while rendering it doesn’t seem to be much faster than what I was using before, 6TB FW 800 external drive,
Can anyone suggest tweaking the settings for better performance? Or do I really just need to invest in a tower with beefed up vid card? The learning curve for video’s been quite frustrating.
Thanks!
David Thomas
Zero State Reflex -
8 Replies
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Faster renders are a product of faster processors. Fewer renders and more realtime performance is what your RAID should deliver.
First thing you need to do is to actually quantify the level of throughput you’re actually getting from your new RAID, and that’s done using the AJA System Test, which is free on the AJA site. Run that and tell us what the throughput is, then we’ll guide you from there.
BTW, what is the video codec you’re editing? And, when you look in teh RT drop-down (the RT over to the upper left of the timeline). what are the settings selected there?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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Outstanding, thanks for the help,
:
Here’s what I came up with:
My current project sequence settings in FCP 7 are:
1920×1080 HDTV 1080i (16:9)
Comp: prores 422So in the AJA system test I used the following to test the Read Write:
Video Frame Size
DVCProHD 108060i
File Size 128MB
Write: 405 MB/s
Read 442.6 MB/sMy codec/compressor for the sequence file is Proress 422, I believe that is what you’re referring to.
My RT settings are: (ones that are checked)
Safe RT
Scrub High Quality
(playback vid qual)
Dynamic
(playback frame rate)
Full
Multiclip playback
(recored to tape)
Full QualityI think that’s everything,
It appears that the transfer rate for the RAID seems slow (?)..
David Thomas
Zero State Reflex -
First off, with the AJA test…test a larger file. 2GB…not 128MB. And no, 400MB/s isn’t slow, that’s FAST!
Second…render power is all Processors, and sometimes graphics card, depending on the effects that need rendering. Drives don’t really count when it comes to render speed.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Right. Once your HDs are fast enough for what you are editing, faster HDs help nothing. I think that Thunderbolt delivers more speed than most us need and bottlenecks are in CPUs and GPU.
You can’t check how the GPU is working, but CPUs are easy to check in the Activity Monitor.
rafael -
[Rafael Amador] “Once your HDs are fast enough for what you are editing, faster HDs help nothing.”
Well, sure they do Rafa… Increased throughput equals increased realtime performance.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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That was my understanding to, faster throughput is always good. And you’re right about the speed, the R6 is fast compared to an 800 Firewire according to the test number’s I’ve seen.
For my situation I’m getting into a lot of compositing so for normal edits my machine’s power is enough. Though the better I get I’m realizing it just requires a fast system all the way around, processor, GPU, through-put etc,.
Thanks for everyone’s comments. I just have to win the lottery to afford the machine I really want,..
until then I’ll just be waiting for the rendering to happen.
Thanks!
David Thomas
Zero State Reflex -
[David Roth Weiss] “Well, sure they do Rafa… Increased throughput equals increased realtime performance.”
What I mean is that if the bottleneck is in the processing, faster storage wont increase the performance.
If your CPU/GPU are working at full performance with an eSATA Raid, a Thunderbolt Raid won’t add any speed. The CPU/GPU can’t take more data than the one can process.
rafael -
[David Thomas] “Thanks for everyone’s comments. I just have to win the lottery to afford the machine I really want,..
until then I’ll just be waiting for the rendering to happen.”
Switch to FCPX. Then you’ll see the true power of your machine revealed.
Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!
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