FCP running slow… my specs to blame?

[Shane Ross]

[Jay Evs] ” FCP full HD clips”

Codec? Full HD is meaningless in this context. All that means is 1920×1080. But what? ProRes? H.264? Uncompressed HD?

[Jay Evs] “The HD also only has 32 GB free, out of a total 500 GB capacity. That surely is not helping things?”

What type of hard drive? Connected how? And yes, 32GB free is NOT helping things. Need to keep at least 50GB free for optimal performance.

Shane

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[Jay Evs]

thanks for the reply.

Codec: actually i tried both h.264 and prores clips, and they seemed to be lagging the same amount. I thought converting the h.264 clips to prores would improve things but it didnt.

The drive is an internal Intel ESB2 AHCI, 500GB. Im assuming 7200 rpm, definitely not solid state, its too old for that.

[David Roth weiss]

What Shane said, plus it sounds as if you have only one hard drive for everything, system files and media. If that’s so, that’s not going work no matter what, even with 50 or 150gb.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

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

[Dennis Radeke]

One of the ten commandments for video systems would be ‘thou shalt not have a single drive for OS, applications and media.’

Definitely pop in another hard drive, move all of your media over there and you will see a world of difference.

[Thomas Morter-laing]

Also did I read you tried H264? Dont edit in H264! Its NOT a codec designed for editing (or acquisition really, despite DSLRs…), Its an output format. Prores is by far the best for most stuff these days.

😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.uk

Sony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Thomas Morter-Laing] “Dont edit in H264!”

Ack! Never say that to an Adobe person! We can and do edit H.264 quite well with Premiere Pro, though I agree that temporally based codecs are designed more for acquisition or distribution than editing. Darn that editing – sandwiched between acquisition and distribution…

[Thomas Morter-laing]

“Never say that to an Adobe person! We can and do edit H.264 quite well with Premiere Pro, though I agree that temporally based codecs are designed more for acquisition or distribution than editing.”

FInal cut also edits H264 quite well. if you do it well enough you barely have to render. That doesn’t mean you should do it though. iMovie accepts more formats than FCP, but does that mean its a good idea? Its because Premier (dare I say it) is aimed at a consumer and student market, and is therefore designed to work better with awful acquisition formats.
ITV (in Britain) recently bought a whole bunch of Premiers for their producers and directors to do basic cuts to give to editors when the case called for it, because producers and directors normally don’t give two hoots, or even two snorts about codecs and formats and stuff. (Yes, “STUFF”, thats a technical term, if you haven’t come across it, you CLEARLY need to do more googling.

😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.uk

Sony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD.

[Dennis Radeke]

Well, we’ll agree to disagree on some things and leave it at that. 😉