Final Cut Pro RT or not?

[Kaspar Kallas]

There were no dropped frames, just one stream seemed outputing both fields the same, this happened when I had 4 streams + text layer over the whole thing – when text was on evrything was ok, when text was off on stream became soft (meaning single field replicated to other) I am in PAL country so its 50i and using decklink for output, dont have a DV device @ moment and monitoring off HDLink apple cinema display so I can see both fields separetly (because LCD cannot show interlaced)

It does smell like bug though
then again….

-Kaspar

[D]

Bill,

Please share your system setup. I am currently using FCP 4.5, Dual 2.0, 4 gigs RAM, Xserve RAID 5+0 1.8T, Kona SD card working strickly in 8-bit uncompressed and having REALLY BAD issues. Very slow edits etc. Are you using a Kona card? Are your settings set for FCP to handle effects or the card and what codec are you using? Have you jumped to FCP 5 and seen a difference?

Please help me out brother.

Cheers,

-D

[Bill]

[Davey_D_123] “Please share your system setup. I am currently using FCP 4.5, Dual 2.0, 4 gigs RAM, Xserve RAID 5+0 1.8T, Kona SD card working strickly in 8-bit uncompressed and having REALLY BAD issues. Very slow edits etc. Are you using a Kona card? Are your settings set for FCP to handle effects or the card and what codec are you using? Have you jumped to FCP 5 and seen a difference”

Davey, Before you look at these specs you have to understand I have two systems one that gets used as a test systema nd one as a work horse that I use the “if it is not broke, don’t fix it ” mentality. This is my everyday box. knock on wood it has not let me down.

that being said here it goes:
Dual 1.25 G4
OSX 10.2.8
1 gb sdram

Aja Kona SD-10
Medea Video Rack RTX 8/320
ATTO Dual SCSI Card.

FCP 4.1

I am using the apple uncompressed 8-bit codec in and out to digibeta using SIF.
All my effects in uncompressed 8-bit 422 are handled by Blackmagic.

Now that being said yes it has a few bugs being an older version of FCP. My other system is still being Tigerized. It is a dual 2.5 4gb SDRAM and AJA Kona 2. I am still contemplating a storage solution. I would love the extra umphhh out of this new box but I need reliability. My old silver g4 is rock solid.

I am not sure how much it will help. But, there you go.

[D]

Bill,

Much appreciated! I am surprised you are setting Blackmagic to handle the effects since what I have been told so far is that if you set FCP 4.5 to handle the effects for 8-bit uncompressed the RT is much better. Do you know something I don’t?? Please share. Perhaps you are using a different driver… I am currently using the Blackmagic 4.8 driver.

I am becoming increasingly interested in the DC30 codec that has been in discussion in one of the RT threads on the cow. I want to find someone who has used it with Kona cards. DC30 allows FULL FRAME PhotoJPEG 4:2:2 to access 100% RT instead of FCP’s 35% RT (Apple’s Offline RT codec). Check this out:

https://www.alfanet.it/squared5/dc30xact.html

The guys are saying no DC30 video card is necessary… I need to try it out.

How is the Kona 2 working with FCP 5 so far?

Cheers,

-D

[Edition_5]

bill and Kaspar Kallas,

If you are using the Kona card, Decklink card or just editing in RT on the VGA monitor then we can not compare apples to apples. No pun intended. A mere 155 MHZ Pentium could not record or play back DV-25 footage back in 1997. The Fast DV Master Card had a hardware encoder/decoder so that the Pentiums could. My little 160 MHZ Pentium could not play back MJPEG at 640 X 480 with out my cheap DC10 Plus card. It had hardware to do the encoding and decoding. I doubt a 200 MHZ G3 would play MPEG 2 at 720 X 480 with out droping frames. I admit a G4 at 800 MHZ should do it with ease.

I am not saying the Decklink or Kona cards have reel time acclerator chips but it would have a hardware encoder for capturing the footage and playing it back. I bet it also has some small buffer built into it to help out. It is easier to play back 4 layers of uncompressed to an analogue port then it is to squeeze 3 layers of DV-25 at 3.6MBPS back to to OHCI port as a single 3.6MBPS stream. Edius can convert MPEG 2 and uncompressed to the 3.6MBPS DV-25 format in RT. Sending 4 layers out to analogue is not a problem since nothing has to get re-encoded to squeeze back out to the analogue port as opossed to OHCI with DV-25 or DV-50.

bill and Kaspar Kallas, I need the two of you to out put back to any DV-25 or DV-50 deck in RT with CC and PIP effects. If the G5 can do it I will talk to the sles staff at the Apple Store. You folks are using hardware. I am talking DV-25 or DV-50 with OHCI only.

Is Apple RT with OHCI? I was told it is not.

[Edition_5]

It sound like you folks are using hardware to get the RT. If that is the case thne this has been a waste of time. I want to know what the G5 can do with the DV-25 or DV-50 codec and OHCI only.

Does anyone have a DV-25 camera and a G5 to test the RT of Final Cut Pro?

I know the Cinewave can do several layers of DV in RT and out put to SDI, DV and analogue in RT but the Cinewave is doing the work not the G5.