FCP RED BAR!!!

[David Roth weiss]

Exactly what variety of HD video are you cutting?

What type of media drives are you using?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Tom Matthies]

I’m cutting HD all day long without any of the problems you describe and it’s on an older Quad G5 running FCP 5.1.4. the same as you.
Renders are fast when necessary without any excessive waiting time. I’m generally cutting DVCPro HD.
I’d guess that somewhere something isn’t set up correctly on your system.
Double check everything again, especially your playback settings to make sure all your ducks are in a row. It should be working better than what you describe.
Tom

[Jeremy Garchow]

What are you trying to do exactly?

Have you set your sequence for unlimited rt?

[Joel Colthorpe]

Sorry here’s some more info:

It’s HDV 1080i50 shot on a sony fx1. However I was getting these bars with SD footage as well, just not as slow.
My real question is how come Premiere can do it, but Final Cut can’t?

Sorry David, what do you mean by media drives? I’m a bit non technical I’m afraid.

I’m doing DVD work mostly. Sometimes work for the web. Sometimes video clips which go to Beta for broadcast.
My sequence is set to safe RT, is that bad? I remember trying unlimited RT before but it jams up and won’t play it RT anyway. It tells me to turn unlimited RT off. Is there any part of my computer that is lacking that could fix this?
I also tried Unlimited with playback resolution set to quarter and this played through on some clips, but others which more effects/filters would still jam up. Poor resolution is fine for timing tracks, but sometimes when looking closer at appearance, I need the resolution to see how things are working in motion, so poor resolution just wouldn’t cut it when I need to have a good look.

Thanks for the help so far!

[David Roth weiss]

[Joel Colthorpe] “Sorry David, what do you mean by media drives? I’m a bit non technical I’m afraid.”

Joel,

What type of hard drive did you capture your HDV to? Firewire 400, firewire 800, etc.???

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Joel Colthorpe]

Umm?? I captured it to my computers on board hard drive, using a firewire cable. I’m not sure what firewire 400 or 800 means sorry. It was not an external drive anyway.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Joel Colthorpe] “Umm?? I captured it to my computers on board hard drive, using a firewire cable. I’m not sure what firewire 400 or 800 means sorry. It was not an external drive anyway.”

That’s your problem. You cannot work off a single drive and expect to edit video.

Your System Drive (Macintosh HD) should only have the OS and Applications on it.

Your Media Drive should be completely separate. Either more internal harddrives for your system or, what I recommend, external media arrays of at least two drives. The faster the media array, the more realtime you get.

In my case, we run LaCie S2S SATA arrays on a slow G5 Dual 2.0, but the drives get up to about 150MB/s so they can easily cut HD Documentaries all day long. In the main suites we run MaxxDigital EVO HD arrays that run 500MB/s so we can cut all the way up to 2K resolution with no issues.

You need a media array and if you don’t understand FW400, FW800 and SATA, then you need to do some research before purchasing your array. There have been plenty of discussions about this right here on the Cow.

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

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

[David Roth weiss]

[Joel Colthorpe] “Umm?? I captured it to my computers on board hard drive, using a firewire cable. I’m not sure what firewire 400 or 800 means sorry. It was not an external drive anyway.”

And Joel, let me add this to what Walter said, cuz I know he was thinking it…

Just for the record and so you know, you are not by any means the first new member to burst on the scene swinging a big bat, only to prove that he or she had violated the very basic tenets of the system requirements and setup as outlined clearly in the user manual. And, in doing so, you’ve exposed your lack of professionalism all across the Internet and you’ve insulted many thousands of trained professionals around the world who have chosen to use FCP and to actually take the time to learn it.

So, for the future, do yourself a favor and look around yourself the next time you feel like ranting and see who’s in the room. If people like Walter Murch are using something successfully and its not working for you, maybe you’re doing something wrong… And trust me when I say, if FCP didn’t work, we would all be editing with something else.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Walter Biscardi]

[David Roth Weiss] “So, for the future, do yourself a favor and look around yourself the next time you feel like ranting and see who’s in the room. If people like Walter Murch are using something successfully and its not working for you, maybe you’re doing something wrong… And trust me when I say, if FCP didn’t work, we would all be editing with something else.”

I never did read the first post, I just answered after the FW400/800 thing. Not knowing how to use a particular software and then ranting about it certainly does nothing to help your situation.

FCP absolutely works when the operator takes the time to educate themselves on how it works and the best possible way to use it. Saying Premiere Works and FCP Doesn’t is really quite infantile. Both apps work, Avid works, Quantel works, Media 100 works, all NLE’s work. The difference is how they fit your budget and your workflow.

If you take the time to educate yourself on how to properly use an NLE, then you can take the time to properly compare and contrast what you prefer about one vs. the other.

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

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

[Joel Colthorpe]

Wow, thank you so much! I suspected Final cut would work under the right conditions. It just sounds like you need a professional set up being a professional program. I guess that’s why I don’t hear many professionals complaining about it?

Does anyone know any other fast options as far as media drives go? The ones previously recommended are good from what I have read but it would be good to have some options in case budget comes into it. I will be doing more research myself but it would be good to hear it straight from the cows mouth…