Article about Performance in FCPX

[Larry Asbell]

I imagine the test quoted by the original poster used PIPs because they make an easy apples-to-apples comparison, but PIPs process quite a bit faster than the variety of effects we typically stack up. With a color correction, a move on a 2K or 4K still, a feathered edge crop, text with a drop shadow, a dissolve–I wish I could get FCP7 to smoothly play a stack of 3 of these effects on HD footage, unrendered.

Most effects take more processing than PIPs to play in real time. And they certainly take varying proportions of the different resources of CPU, GPU, bus and drive data rates, etc.

Just saying that a more complex combination of effects is needed to get at the real-world differences between 7 and X.

– Larry Asbell

[Bret Williams]

On the latest greatest machine for FCP 7, the iMac 3.4 ghz with 2gig Radeon 6770, and 16gigs of RAM and bumped 3.4ghz and a Thundbolt Pegasus R4 raid 5 setup, I get 6 streams of pip running every thing full quality 1080p30 pro res 422 in a native 1080p 422 sequence. Also monitoring via Matrox MXO2 mini via thunderbolt adapter. Add a 7th layer and it will play for a couple seconds but always drops frames. Add an 8th layer and it will drop frames almost instantly. But with 6 layers, it will keep on playing. Since FCP doesn’t use muti-processors or more than 4 gigs of RAM, or run on PCs, I think that’s a fast as it gets for FCP.

ON the same box with the same footage in FCP X, with all thumbnails and waveforms turned off, nothing going on in the background, etc. I get exactly one layer less, and it’s not outputting anything to anywhere.

On the same machine in Premiere Pro one layer of Pro Res starts to play, the apps appears to freeze, but no, it’s just playback that doesn’t work anymore, I try to see what the hell is going on and the app crashes as always and as expected. Just like every other version of premiere with Pro Res and a matrox on every other Mac I’ve ever tried.

There you have it.

[Walter Soyka]

[Rafael Amador] “Walter, Are you saying that FCPX do everything in 32bRGB? As I interpret FCPX papers, 32bRGB happens when there is some color management going on, but not for general or motion effects. At least that’s my impression.”

I think it does. The documentation is pretty light, but from the features page [link]:

Shared Render Engine
Final Cut Pro shares a render engine with Motion and Compressor for consistent speed and quality. The shared engine allows Motion templates to play back in Final Cut Pro without rendering. The engine renders in linear-light color space for exceptionally realistic results.

High-quality rendering
The high-quality rendering in Final Cut Pro makes it possible to compute realistic effects with extraordinary precision using floating-point, linear-light color space calculations. You get the same superb results for blurs, scales, and lighting effects as you would from high-end compositing software.

I’m out of the office so I can’t run a test to confirm.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Dennis Radeke]

[Bret Williams] “On the same machine in Premiere Pro one layer of Pro Res starts to play, the apps appears to freeze, but no, it’s just playback that doesn’t work anymore, I try to see what the hell is going on and the app crashes as always and as expected. Just like every other version of premiere with Pro Res and a matrox on every other Mac I’ve ever tried.”

I use ProRes all of the time with Premiere Pro. What version are you using? What kind of sequence settings, etc??

Also, while Matrox will work on FCP, Premiere Pro and Avid, I’d hesitate to say that the same driver will work the same with all three NLE’s. That might also be a part of your problem.

At NAB last year, Premiere Pro CS5.5 was playing 3 streams of uncompressed, 10-bit QT files through a Blackmagic I/o box to an external monitor. The data rate of each 10-bit file was 162 MBytes/s. Given that, I think Premiere Pro can more than handle 6 streams of ProRes.