FCP on 8 core – Real Sluggish – Has this ever happened to you before?

[Elijah Lynn]

Even though I have more than enough Ram and CPU, does having 20+ sequences open do anything?

It seems to be a bit better after closing a lot of the sequences.

Also why won’t the green bar render?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Elijah Lynn] “Even though I have more than enough Ram and CPU, does having 20+ sequences open do anything? “

Absolutely. There’s no reason to have that many sequences open at any given time. 2 maybe, but 20? nope.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

Read my Blog!

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[Elijah Lynn]

Ok, I had 24 of them open. It started out as me wanting to keep the original project open that was given to me. Then I duplicated the project and was working on that one.

I now have 8 total sequences open and it is pretty fast, like it used to be. However, ever since swicthing my render compressor from HDV to ProRes I am getting bright green bars above my timeline. Now I undertstand that this is supposed to be real time rendering but when I play it it is fuzzy and the transitions are as Blocky as a NES.

When I actually export a QT SC it looks good and it appears it does some more rendering then too. When I hit render it whips a screen up real fast and closes, like it’s done it’s job.

What is happening here with my green render bar?

[Nick Price]

Do you have any other hardware, like video cards or a firewire video box. Blackmagic cards are know to slow down systems periodically.

Also if your timeline isnt rendering, you might not have the render settings enabled properly. Go to sequence menu, and make sure the right colours are ticked for what you want to render.

Having lots of sequences open will slow you down, but of course you might have very good reasons to have so many open. I often need 5 or more open if i am copy/pasting between them. It is one of my favourite features of FCP over Avid

best wishes
nick

[Walter Biscardi]

[Elijah Lynn] “However, ever since swicthing my render compressor from HDV to ProRes I am getting bright green bars above my timeline. Now I undertstand that this is supposed to be real time rendering but when I play it it is fuzzy and the transitions are as Blocky as a NES.
“

Yep, this is all normal. You have the playback settings to Dynamic so FCP is dropping resolution in order to keep playing everything in realtime. This is how we have all our systems set up too.

The green render bar just means it will play the section in realtime with no issues. That doesn’t mean full quality playback.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

Read my Blog!

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!

[Elijah Lynn]

That was it. The bright green bar is “preview” and it was not checked.

Thanks.

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Elijah,
If you have TechTools is enough.
Off course that having 20 sequences open overcharges FC.
Having extra windows open, videoscope or even the preview set to an external device means more processes carried out by FC. Less resources dedicated to rendering.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Elijah Lynn]

Thanks for confirming that. Before when I had my 20 sequences open it wasn’t even close to real time, more like stuttering and then stopping.

I set my Cmd+R to render the preview now. I have a new computer again!

Thanks to you and Rafael and everyone here at The Cow I was able to get this figured out very very quickly!

[Jeffrey Di lullo]

Elijah,

you said:

“now have 8 total sequences open and it is pretty fast, like it used to be. However, ever since swicthing my render compressor from HDV to ProRes I am getting bright green bars above my timeline. Now I undertstand that this is supposed to be real time rendering but when I play it it is fuzzy and the transitions are as Blocky as a NES. ”

It sounds like your sequence settings don’t match your clip settings. FCP is processing your clip on the fly to match your sequence. With your sequence open and no clips selected type command+0. This will open up your sequence settings. Once you have checked what they are, close the sequence settings window. Now select one of your clips that has the green render bar over it and type in command+9. This will open up your clip settings window. Does your clip match the sequences setting exactly? I will guess that they don’t.

One way to fix this is to reopen your sequence settings and adjust then so that the match your clips. If you had to adjust your pixel aspect or fame size you will have to remove the automatic Distort and Scale adjustments that FCP made when you edited these clips into the sequence. You can do this by selecting all your clips, then right clicking and selecting “remove attributes” from the context menu. Then select “motion” and “Distort” from the menu that pops up and click ok. This should get rid of your render bar (assuming that you don’t have any filters or speed fx on the clips).

Also before you do this go ahead and make a safety copy of your sequence in case you mess things up. 🙂

Have a great day,

Jeffrey Di Lullo

Jeffrey Di Lullo
BBC&S Video Communicaitons

[Elijah Lynn]

My gosh I cannot wait until Snow Leopard comes out!!

I now realize that even though my system had tons of Ram left Final Cut can only use 2560 MB (2.5 GB) of it!!! When Snow Leopard comes out and the new final cut on top of it I will be able to have my 20 sequences open no problem and probably raise it another 20 too!

Gonna treat this beast to another 4 GB when I purchase that upgrade!