FCP 7 Balking

[Shane Ross]

Well…you mentioned a newer machine. Faster processors always help…and also, how was the drive connected to the computer? Mainly I’ll wager it’s the processors…plus the fast that FCX is newer and more capable of editing 2K than FCP 7 is.

Shane
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[Walter Soyka]

What codec was the video?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[John Rofrano]

[Ty Ford] “Is there a consensus that the shift from SD to 2K HD is normally too much data for a mac to handle, or do I need to get the wrenches out?”

“A Mac”… that’s not a lot of information to go by. 😉 This would be like us asking you, “Is there a consensus that you can’t record the sound of a jet engine clearly with a microphone”. You would probably ask us which microphone and instruct us to put our ribbon mic away and use a dynamic mic instead.

A mac is quite capable of editing 4K extremely smoothly. Whether “your mac” can or not is a different story. I just helped someone the other day who was using a G5 Mac which is 11 years old now, to edit HD so if you’re expecting some old outdated Mac to edit modern video formats that’s probably not going to work so well. Also, discontinued software like FCP 7 isn’t optimized for video formats that didn’t exist when it was being developed. New formats usually require software updates.

If you can tell us which Mac you have, and what video format you’re trying to edit, we can probably make a better recommendation to improve your performance although, as you have seen, and “newer” Mac with FCP X doesn’t have problems with 2K HD.

~jr

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[Ty Ford]

HI,

It’s a 2 x 2.6 GHz tower, no special video card.
Dual Core Xeon
12 GB RAM.

What codec?

I dropped the file onto the time line and got the usual, “do you want me to change the session to these specs?” and said yes.

Gotta say FCP7’s laundry list of resolutions and codecs is pretty impenetrable for me.

The files work fine on a newer mac with FCP X

Thanks for any advice.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Dave,

Thanks for the gentle nudge.

XDcam EX 1080p

Regards,

Ty

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[Ty Ford]

Dave,

thanks for shining a light into my problem.

and, of course, when I went down to the studio this afternoon, I hit the space bar and the files played just fine.

However, your insights were really valuable to me. Parts of that whole codec thing slip away from me if I don’t have my face in it regularly.

Thanks again,

Ty Ford

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