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FCP very slow – Powerbook – long project — — SOS
Hi
I posted recently and you could read this as a follow-up and now rather desperate question to my previous post.
Long project with 35+ hrs footage (SD- DV Pal) captured in 1 hr and 1/2 hr chunks mostly. Working on a Powerbook G4 1.5 Ghz -1.5 Gb RAM, FCP 4.5.
Have just copied all the footage to a brand new 1TB Lacie external drive (built in raid 0) which is actually very fast and steady. It was spread in several disks before and that’s the reason I thought was causing FCP’s interactive performance like watching paint dry.
But that hasn’t changed much, simple operations like dragging a clip in the timeline makes the system stop and “think” all the time… how annoying
I worked in another project recently, same system, similar HD, it was all fine. The clips here were about 20 min the longest…
So my only guess is that my set-up is not powerful enough to deal with so much footage in long clips?
I am now using the media manager to make a copy of certain sequence, at low res, to test things
Do you think I can make FCP work fine withouth having to split my rushes in shorter clips ?
if so, which is the format specs I should downconvert my footage to in order to make FCP work fine?
Please help !!
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10 Replies
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This is a problem with fcp4.5 and been fixed in 5.1
You can try to to turn off Show through edits, show duplicate frames in ALL timelines in the project. (not only the one you are working on). You are correct in guessing that the problem stems from long clips in a project. I don’t think changing the codec will change anything.
The solution to the problem is to upgrade to 5.1
Anders
Xraid-Xserve-Xsan-Xeverything
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[emilio] “captured in 1 hr and 1/2 hr chunks mostly.”
That will definitely slow down your workflow. Very long captures mean long waveform re-draws and very slow performance, especially on a single processor Mac. Laptops are not what I would recommend for long form projects unless you’re cutting at very compressed off line resolutions.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Anders Haavie] “The solution to the problem is to upgrade to 5.1”
Over here I’m not seeing any speed jumps in the way FCP 5.1 opens and handles projects. I was told about these great speed gains at NAB in 5.1, but we’re just not seeing them. If anything, 5.1 is slower to open projects than 5.0.4. We’re just cutting 22 minute HD episodic television and it can take well over 2 minutes just to load a project.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Well.. I thought the speedgain was mostly in the area of editing when using long clips, not opening and saving
Anders
Xraid-Xserve-Xsan-Xeverything
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For long-form keep an eye on your project file size, the larger it gets the more sluggish it can be. Best to break it into at least two separate projects – Media & Edits – or even further down into acts/chapters/characters or whatever makes most sense. You can have several projects open simultaneously on FCP and copy/paste between them as you wish.
Regularly weed out redundant edits and archive old ones to keep your whole project lean, mean and snappy.
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You may want to check out my new article:
“Avoiding the SBBOD in Long Form projects.”
Yes, I do suggest to keep clips short and discrete.You want to avoid “Splitting Rushes into smaller clips”?
Why? That is what I call organizing your clips.
You can add log notes to the short clips and sort them easier.
The performance of your clips will be snappier as well.https://www.sfcutters.org/pages/articles.htm
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com -
Hey Walter
I have been getting slow startup times on my Projects also (DV),
and I am still running FCP 5.04.
Was wondering if it is being caused by Qt 7.1 or latest Security Release,
It seems to me it started back when I installed this pair.Thanx,
JimR -
[walter biscardi] “If anything, 5.1 is slower to open projects than 5.0.4. We’re just cutting 22 minute HD episodic television and it can take well over 2 minutes just to load a project.”
Walter, are these project files that were created fresh in 5.1, or files that were originally 5.0.4?
G5 Dual 2.7 GHz
2 GB RAM
OS 10.4.6
FCP 5.0.4
QT 7.0.4 -
Good advice and useful article, Kevin. It’s surprising how many folks seem to embark on long-form projects without doing their homework first and mapping out a workflow – and then post here when things start to go wrong.
Cheers
John
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Thank you all very much
Yes it all makes sense, re-organizing the project is in any case a good start.
About organization issues, is it really so surprinsing? I mean I’ve worked in large companies and never seen a great deal of organization. I won’t starting a rant about how the majority of producers and management staff have not the slightest clue about technical issues, but, anyway.
This is so far a truly independent and first doco project (paid out of our pockets) and yes, I will definitely try to plan a post- rout better next time. It’s a lot of work for 2 people, you know.
I was making camera tests 1 day before shooting. Won’t get into more details
I’d like to see how Avid XPress would perform in my powerbook, although I presume it would handle whole tapes as fine as on a desktop. Maybe my mistake being newish to FCP was to assume that it would do just as fine !
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