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Advice on docu workflow with SD tape footage, FCPX or not?
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[Robin S. Kurz] “[Steve Connor] “it does struggle with long timelines”
How do you define “long”. My current timeline is around 1:40:00 at the moment and growing, coming from an event with around 40hrs. of material and I have no (speed) issues whatsoever.
“This is precisely the kind of interchange that worries me
and has kept me watching X grow at a distance,
as it seems it will behave very well for some
and kind of badly for others,
and from what I’ve read and seen firsthand also
it seems that X’s performance issues
are independent of hardware configurations,
as it may behave great or poorly on similar
top of the line new mac pros for instance.
It seems like kind of a hit and miss thing,
although I’m also aware that some of those
performance issues are far from deal breakers
as usually people will still get the job done
and manage them with simple solutions like
quitting the app every now and then
or keeping the inspector closed and all waveforms
off when not absolutely needed.
I will of course test it on the machine
I get assigned to work with as soon as I can.
Still, I have to say performance is a big deal for me,
and I don’t mean performance on fast renders
but more like having very fluid basic operations
in the timeline, like having an immediate
response when hitting play/stop,
going from/to next/previous edits or
properly displaying frames when fast forwarding…
I name these as I have seen issues like this and more with FCPX
working with simple light footage (xdcam HD422)
or even prores HQ, on systems on which FCP7
behaved better with the exact same footage…
So Robin, for instance,
you say you don’t have any of these issues at all?
Also, I’m not talking about bugs,
as those are expected from any program
there is or probably will ever be… -
[Mauricio Lleras] “So Robin, for instance,
you say you don’t have any of these issues at all?”No, none. And we’re talking for the most part 5K material, too. Have I had similar issues in the (now far) past? Yes. Just not anytime since probably even before 10.1.
And honestly? With SD footage?? I highly doubt it. Unless maybe you’re on a(n old) Mac Mini with 4GB of RAM and a FW400 disk.
My experience has also been, that most people that have had such issues were also the ones to install an endless amount of bizarre “oh so smart and useful!” tools that have constant lingering tasks in the background and the likes, that fill even the menu bar of a 27″ screen from left to right with ease. So I’m generally very careful to make any one app personally responsible for performance issues.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Robin S. Kurz] “No, none. And we’re talking for the most part 5K material, too. Have I had similar issues in the (now far) past? Yes. Just not anytime since probably even before 10.1.”
Could we have a show of hands, apart from Bill and Robin, who has NO performance issues with FCPX?
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[Craig Alan] “Do you really want to ingest SD DV to H264? I understand that for export if that is the requested codec on a site.
“Having just taken down a huge tape library with thousands of hours of VHS, Hi-8, and DVCAM material – I’ve digitized what I want to keep to h-264 and it’s not only great for keeping file sizes small – every time I go back to review the content I’ve stored, I’m reminded that it looks really darn good compared to the analog and 25mbps digital streams I was getting off the original tapes. This is my own work archives, not a commercial system, so there little risk to me in doing so. I know the stakes are vastly different on something like a documentary – but what I’m seeing seems pretty solid and eminently watchable.
Stable colors (right or wrong on capture!), no glitches (unless it digitized one during capture) – and all the material is not only extremely watchable – I’d actually not hesitate to cut what I’m seeing into a program if I had to use something from my archives in a future production. The reason I elected h-264 is that it was small, easy to edit with in FCP X – and it simply looks pretty darn good considering the size of the source files.
The question at hand: IS there a huge gain from storing old analog signals (or even “limited” digital signals like DV, DVCAM) as lesser-compressed or even uncompressed new masters? Or is it more like rolling off VHS onto Digibeta? Just better storage of a lousy signal, but not much of any actual “content signal” improvement at all. Be an interesting question to get a definitive answer on. Anyone know if there’s an answer out there? If it’s a big quality hit that’s one thing. If it’s a fractional one, that’s quite another.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Steve Connor] “apart from Bill and Robin”
Implying what exactly? Why the seeming snark and not just right out say what you mean?
[Steve Connor] “who has NO performance issues with FCPX?”
Never mind that I never said that I have NO performance issues. So maybe try it again sans the insinuations and re-read. Since it was talk of SPECIFIC issues.
– RK
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Hold on.
I HAVE had performance problems along the way with X.
I just looked into and SOLVED every one.
Exactly like the ones I had with FCP v1-v7.
Confining it to X, back in 2012, whenever I stacked a bunch of graphics – like for a title sequence – my old machine performance bogged down massively. Drove me nuts until I figured out that X was trying to composite the multilayered stack with super high rez and all those layers of graphics was bogging things down. Making them a compound clip FIXED the problem. Later, as they improved X, the problem totally disappeared no matter which way I set up my graphics.
Then, there was a period when I was doing a LOT of stills work. I was importing full size DSLR images into my timelines and trying to apply compositing and motion to them…Again, my performance went to hell in a handbasket. After I realized I was asking X to composite literally millions and millions of pixel shifts per second, I switched from just dropping huge DSLR stills into my timeline AS IS – and instead started to pre-resized them to a resonable raster – depending on how much I expected to push in on them. Bingo – the problem totally went away.
And not long ago, I had the experience at NAB where I got those BlackMagic Production Camera files to edit and it was taking FOREVER to process them. When Noah Kadner figured out it was X likely trying to process a bunch of hour-long silent tracks (perhaps frame by frame to look for and preserve any possible audio changes?) embedded in the BlackMagic files, All I had to do was go to the original clips, Open in Timeline, Remove the unused blank tracks and again BINGO – suddenly great performance came back..
So was the software slow? Or had I just not properly faced it’s individual quirks, figured out what worked best – and stopped doing what I was doing that was clogging up my performance?
This is the EXACTLY the same “learning curve” I’ve confronted in every single software program I’ve ever used.
I could certainly have stopped at any of those three junctions and run screaming to the internet about how SLOW and dumb X was. But I’d kind of prefer to do that if I KNOW there’s an actual issue with the software, rather than just how I’m using it. X has had issues. And Apple has addressed many of them. But most of those issues have NOT effected me nor slowed down the work I need to do. So I’ve had a super positive experience with it. Someone trying to do something different might have a different experience. And there’s no way to be sure if what they’re complaining about is endemic to the software or SIMPLY how they are using it – as I’ve expressed above.
Remember, we all use the software differently. Right here on “or Not” a few months ago I shared that “blank audio tracks” discovery with a Chicago editor (iirc) and the conversation went from “this this is SOOOO Slow, to “oh, now it works WAY faster” in the space of a single post.
So IS it slow? Or is it slow for ALL who use it in a particular way? Or is it just slow for YOUR configuration?
They are all fair questions, but they are not the same at all.
It’s very, very complex software used by a very complex matrix of user types.
And sorry, but if you want it to be fast and fluid you MUST learn to operate it well. That’s true of every piece of software out there. If you do that AND you find a performance problem, then by all means bring it up. But not as “it’s ALWAYS SLOW WITH LONG TIMELINES” – because it’s not. It may well bog down with certain types of long storylines involving certain storyline building practices that I haven’t seen. And on other X centric groups, we talk about that stuff all the time and try to help each other solve specific issues. But that’s techniques stuff.
Just clearing what my position ACTUALLY is. Which is not that X is perfect for everyone all the time. It’s that all the problems that I’ve encountered that have have effected my efficiency with it have been solved – or I simply don’t prioritize at the same level that others do. (keyframing, for instance, is NOT something I do a ton of, Maybe every few programs – so in X I can do what I need, when I need to do it – even if the X key framing experience is intolerable for someone who’s keyframing all day every day – but its fine for my level of use – while I wait to see if Apple improves it in the future.)
Different strokes. That’s all.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Robin S. Kurz] “Never mind that I never said that I have NO performance issues. So maybe try it again sans the insinuations and re-read. Since it was talk of SPECIFIC issues.”
Sorry, my bad – so what performance issues do you have?
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[Bill Davis] ” Anyone know if there’s an answer out there? If it’s a big quality hit that’s one thing. If it’s a fractional one, that’s quite another.”
If you are just archiving material for personal storage with the very occasional use and drive space was an issue then H264 is a good codec. To capture footage for a large broadcast project where the majority of the footage is from old tapes and you want a really smooth trouble free post workflow, H264 is a poor choice.
8 bit processor heavy and not lossless so regardless of source, a poor choice for an edit codec in a large project. In this day and age of cheap drive storage hard to justify it as a choice for the doco workflow being proposed here.
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[Steve Connor] “It does OK with big projects, it does struggle with long timelines”
So Steve,
what are you seeing on your end?
How does it struggle specifically?
On what kind of material/project?
Have you found solutions on your problems
as Bill has for many of his? -
Bill,
some good tips in your post
that might come handy, who knows!
Glad to see you’ve worked most of your issues,
and reassuring to see it’s working well for you,
although who doesn’t know that
(been reading this forum probably since the beginning 😉[Bill Davis] “This is the EXACTLY the same “learning curve” I’ve confronted in every single software program I’ve ever used.”
Agreed, all software has it’s quirks and it’s particular ways
of handling things that you need to iron out over the years.
It may well be as you say
that a lot of the issues mentioned on this and other sites
have to do with specific workflows were there might be
offending elements (weird clips, slow effects, bad installs, etc…)
that go unnoticed rather than actual problems with the software itself.
It’s just that I’ve also seen reports from people claiming
they had problems on specced out machines
with clean OS installs and everything,
so that makes you wonder,
but of course you can never know what
their project or workflow contains…
Overall it seems to be reassuring though,
and I’ll try to do the cleanest setup
I can with what I am given and then do some testing.
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