Apple – please focus on FCP X stability!

[Oliver Peters]

[Andrew Richards] “That should still be quicker than a Pegasus for small I/O since it has more spindles. Did you say you do not see these issues when working off a Pegasus?”

I haven’t done any large projects with the Pegasus. Only some casual testing on a friend’s iMac. I didn’t see any issues there, but we were testing Thunderbolt video i/o devices more than FCP X per se.

As far as this project, I moved the Events/Projects to the internal hard drive (media still on the SAN) and I haven’t had any of the beach-balling today. This would seem to indicate that Events/Projects should not live on the SAN. Might get to do some more checking next week.

That poses a render concern, although the single internal seems to playback ProResHQ render files just fine. I’m going to see if this owner is interested in putting a couple of SSDs into drive bays 3 & 4 of the Mac Pro. Software RAID then as RAID-0 and only use them for FCP X Events and Projects.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Helmut Kobler]

Thanks, all, for the troubleshooting recommendations regarding still photos.

I know that the photos I’ve used have finished rendering/transcoding, but the graphics card may be an issue. I’m using the top-of-the-line ATI graphics card for the Mac Pro from 2009…I can’t remember its name at the moment but it has 512MB. Many months ago I installed the latest Mac Pro graphics card, and did some tests with FCP X and couldn’t find any improvement in UI responsiveness, rendering, etc. but I may not have had any still photos in my tests, and I was also testing with a much earlier version of X….like maybe 10.0.1, maybe .02.

The fact that you guys feel photo performance is good (especially with raw images from a 7D….that would kill my system) means I’ll do some investigating…at least testing a new better video card again, and who knows, maybe a new Mac Pro altogether, depending on what Monday has in store for us (I hope this weekend goes fast).

Thanks all…

——————-
Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com

[Tony West]

Thanks Bill.

I have not really had a bunch of crashes either since the last update.

I running it on an 8 core mac pro.

I have all the media off the main drive also.

[Bill Davis]

[Helmut Kobler] “he fact that you guys feel photo performance is good (especially with raw images from a 7D….that would kill my system) means I’ll do some investigating…at least testing a new better video card again, and who knows, maybe a new Mac Pro altogether, depending on what Monday has in store for us (I hope this weekend goes fast). “

Hold on. Did you say you’re using RAW files? Maybe that’s your fundamental issue. RAW files are typically huge, and while I know it’s popular with photo professionals to maintain RAW data for possible post processing, I can’t think of a good reason why you’d want to maintain a massive raw data construct in a video environment – where both the color space and resolution are severely limited in comparison.

To my thinking, RAW is for photo retouching and alteration for print. For video, a large Jpeg is much less data intensive for the machine to process and perfectly useful at common video pixel resolutions.

I’ve never worked with RAW photos in a video editor. It seems to me a huge waste of processing power and time.

That might be the issue right there. Trying to work with photos that are in a print format in a video environment.

I’m sure others will weigh in on this.

Anyone out there working with large RAW images in video successfully?

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Helmut Kobler]

Hi Bill,
You didn’t mention using RAW photos but T. Payton did in one of his earlier posts. And no, I never used RAW files in video either (for the reasons you mentioned) but the fact that someone says they’re having decent performance with raw while using a higher end video card is interesting to me.

At any rate, I’ve always used JPEG photos, but at resolutions typically much higher than 1080.

——————-
Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com

[Andrew Richards]

[Oliver Peters] “That poses a render concern, although the single internal seems to playback ProResHQ render files just fine. I’m going to see if this owner is interested in putting a couple of SSDs into drive bays 3 & 4 of the Mac Pro. Software RAID then as RAID-0 and only use them for FCP X Events and Projects.”

Unfortunately, that is probably the best workaround for now. I submitted a feedback a while ago asking for the ability to set separate render storage. The type of storage good at databases is very different from the type of storage best suited to storing and streaming media.

Best,
Andy

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Andrew Richards] “Unfortunately, that is probably the best workaround for now. I submitted a feedback a while ago asking for the ability to set separate render storage. The type of storage good at databases is very different from the type of storage best suited to storing and streaming media.”

Man, events/projects on raid0? Yeeps.

I think it would be best to unhinge the autosave system, or optimize it, or toggle it on or off … or something.

[Andrew Richards]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Man, events/projects on raid0? Yeeps.”

No riskier than having it all on a single disk. Remember to backup!

Best,
Andy

[T. Payton]

FYI. I am a still shooter too and shoot raw mainly for the increased dynamic range–taking advantage of that by processing in Lightroom. However I was pleasantly surprised and even shocked that FCP would take raw files (26mb each!). I agree that JPEGs, and smaller ones than 18 megapixel would be a better choice for FCP X, but since my system (2006 macpro 2.6 ghz radeon 5770) can handle it why not utilize it?

Btw. I haven’t done any dynamic range tests with raw images in fcp x, but it would be interesting to find how fcp x handles it.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque