EOS 1 Canon Plug in for FCP – Speed Tests

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Marcus,

I did some very unscientific tests which compared the Canon Plugin with MPEG Streamclip. For what I’m doing I need to transcode directly from the SDHC card to a laptop in the field. For this test I used a card reader in the ExpressCard slot. Camera is the Canon T2i.

50 clips totaling 8 minutes and 12 seconds
Transcode footage from SDHC to ProRes (LT)
MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
Patriot Class 6 16gb SDHC

EOS E1 Plugin – 19:34
MPEG Streamclip – 14:23

I’d done a similar test with Compressor and MPEG Streamclip was faster by a similar margin. From what I’d read I’d hoped the Canon plug in would be closer to MPEG Streamclip.

(When I’m editing in the field efficiency and speed are important so transcoding directly from the card works best. Because of that I also tested if there was any benefit to having a Class 10 card rather than a Class 6 card. No difference. The transfer rate is not a determining factor. Its all the CPU, so obviously I’m very much looking forward to an i5/i7 MacBook Pro announcement.)

Wedding Films
YouTube Channel

[Marcus Seeger]

Hi Joel,

thats very interesting – thank you.
your eos 1 speed looks pretty good for a MBP when compared to my MacPro being only about 2 minutes slower for a comparable test. Maybe ProRes(LT) is a quicker codec that 422. Hmm, not sure, running FCP 6 so n/a.

When I look at my CPU activity monitor it is running at around only 16%- and yours?

PS new MBP will be faster for sure but until then…hohum.

Couch Media
DSLR shooter MacPro 8 core 2.26, FCP 6.

[Joel Peregrine]

Hey,

Both cores are running at 80-85% when MPEG Streamclip is encoding.

Wedding Films
YouTube Channel

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Marcus,
FC or MPGStreamclip I don’t think should makes much difference.
Is a pure transcoding and, in my believe, both application use the same engine.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Rafael,

“FC or MPGStreamclip I don’t think should makes much difference.”

You’d think so, but MPEG Streamclip must be doing something differently. Its measurably faster.

Wedding Films
YouTube Channel

[Andy Mees]

>both application use the same engine

Nope, both applications are Quicktime native in essence but MPEG Streamclip has its own algorithms Rafa.

[Rafael Amador]

[Andy Mees] “Nope, both applications are Quicktime native in essence but MPEG Streamclip has its own algorithms Rafa.”
Good to know that.
I know MPGStreamclip has his own filter (re-size, ,de-interlace, etc), but I thought they shared the same trancoding.
Thanks for the note Andy.
And Happy Lao New Year
rafa

http://www.nagavideo.com

[John Fishback]

As you apply filters or increase quality settings in Compressor (or any encoder) the encode time will go up. So for tests to be meaningful each encoder should be doing the same thing. Of course the quality of the finished product should be the final measure.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Knapich]

Is the mpeg Streamclip encodes quality as good as Compressor? i usually use compressor to encode to Pro-res and works like a charm. the speed for dailies isnt that bad

FCP 6.06, OS 10.5.8 2x3GHZ Quad-Core Intel Xeon, Kona LHe, Dulce Duo-eSATA 8 Drive, 4TB Raid.

John Knapich
Creative Director/Partner
Assembypix.tv

[Stace Carter]

The Canon plug-in is also creating a timecode stream and reel number, which may add overhead to that encode, although I can’t imagine it would be significant. I guess this begs the question of, would you miss the “unique” TC if you didn’t have it? If you won’t be doing conforms, etc, then it may not be a big deal.

Cheers,
Stace

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