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Final Cut Pro unusable for big projects?
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Hi, all,
Sorry. I am not trying to annoy people. I am trying to get answers. My understanding is that this is what forums like this are for. Perhaps they are exactly for helping educate people who do not have access to, let’s say, the urban areas where one can find users groups and folks who can come over and help with your difficulties. Perhaps they are exactly for people who try many things to solve their problems — such as searching these forums — but may have overlooked one parameter in the software that twitches everything. Perhaps they are exactly for people who trying to reach beyond their grasp and learn while doing.
I’m sorry I tried to describe why I can’t come up with $5,000 for an array right now, because it is not fair to compare wealth and poverty and that tends to rub people the wrong way, so my genuine apologies for that.
But I have to say that expressing annoyance that I may not know as much as you do seems exactly contrary to the purpose of all these forums, in which everyone is still learning one facet or another of an extremely complex and swiftly-evolving business. I am here exactly because I am hoping that you know more than I do. I respect that knowledge, and when I post here I try to do so in great detail, including the things I have tried and the way I operate, precisely because I am hoping that my problems are indeed user error, and someone else who has made it through the same mistake will have the generosity of his or her time to help me get past it.
And as far as the money goes — does no one in this business besides me have a person or a department in charge of budgeting in which someone regularly rolls his or her eyes when you come into the room, knowing that you’re going to ask for yet another piece of expensive hardware? Does no one recall or regularly experience that same individual or department simply saying, ‘You said the same thing last time, and this time you’re just going to have to make do?’ Does no one ever have the experience that when you ask for money the person with the money, or rather, what’s left of it, reads you the equipment requirements for certain software, and points out that what you already have far exceeds those requirements, but still you’re asking for more?
We are editing with video — HDV and DVCProHD — that does not require particularly fast disks, and we have an internal raid array that far exceeds the required speed. We do not suffer from significant numbers of dropped frames and if we do because of a cluttered timeline we have excellent workarounds to solve that by making single clips of what we need to play back. We routinely output to HDCAM which gets shown on the big screen with no problems. What we suffer from is regular, repeated crashing during editing and rendering. Now, can one of you go in to that department that has the money and tell those folks that it makes sense to spend $5,000 on faster disks primarily to prevent renders from crashing? Can any of you say with authority that rendering requires very fast disk read and write numbers? If you can, you know more than I do and you’re smarter than I am, which is probably the bitter truth anyway. But I haven’t been able to make that case.
Best wishes to all. I have learned a lot in these forums. Just not enough yet.
Thank you,
Mike
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Two observations about your hardware system that have not been addressed:
You may want to switch to the ATI Radeon X1900XT for better Core Image performance. The 8800GT is only better for gaming, not for Pro Apps.
If you plan on finishing on the FInal Cut system (especially if you’re going to grade in Color), you should strongly consider changing the graphics card to the recommended model (the ATI X1900XT) for better performance.
Regarding RAM: IS your system configured with Apple OEM RAM, or third party RAM? If third party, who? While there are several reputable third party RAM suppliers out there, many are pretty sketchy. Flaky RAM is known to cause problems in Mac Pro systems. Also, there is an optimal configuration of memory modules detailed in Apple’s Final Cut Pro support pages:
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305177
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304492
What is your final delivery format? Are you doing a film out, or finishing to HD video? I’m assuming film out, as you’re working at 24fps, not 23.98. If you’re doing a film out, why edit in HD at all? Why not adopt a traditional offline SD editing workflow to generate a negative cut list? Even if you are finishing in HD, you might have better luck offlining in SD and then conforming to HD at the end of the editing process, given your storage limitations.
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Hello Christoph,
I am with Walter on the media, also i am guessing that the audio in on the externals? That would create a large issue with the timing due to the seek speeds needed- the files may be smaller but the storage needs to be pretty fast to support seeking for the small files.
Your crashes may be the result of the sata drives spinning down when not in constant use, when FCP reaches for them it cannot find the media in a place it expects- hence the crash.More than a few major motion pictures have been cut on FCP, not to mention a much larger number of Episodic TV shows that are done with volumes of files larger than this. I have heard of a couple 1 hr TV shows that deal with this much data on a weekly basis.
[Christoph Strothjohann] “only leopard, quicktime, itunes, final cut studio2, and the aja software installed. “
Doubt that those are the only apps
What about Journalling for the media?
No Spaces or desktop switching– and I have always recommended NOT having itunes open and running while editing.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD -
[Mike Parfit] “working on large projects requires such a system in order for FCP to be stable, Apple should tell us in its system requirements, and then we could take that cost into consideration at purchase time. Instead, the stated requirements and ALL the advertising indicate otherwise”
Sorry, I am tossing up a bull*@^ flag.
Apple in every high level presentation and article about editing in film-style projects always mention and shows high-end storage solutions. I have not seen an Apple demo in the last 3 years that did not mention Xraids or Fibre connectivity.
And Apple and AJA only ever publish BASE MINIMUM SPECS to let you know what the basic needs will be. NO mfg’s I know up has ever posted the info you are requesting- it is not possible since every production has different needs. If you were working with a professional video integrator they would (or Should) have told you what was needed.
If you DIY it -its your fault for not doing the proper research.
[Mike Parfit] “Oddly, one of the other very effective things we’ve done is to take OUT 2 GB of ram, which takes our system down to just 2 GB total.”
Mike- are you sure on your software / hardware specs?
this is not an issue on the OctoCores running leopard- it was the previous machines / OS combo that had the 2 gig Ram issues- I have not seen this since 10.5 and QT 7.4 were released even on the older machines.gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD -
[Mike Parfit] “And as far as the money goes — does no one in this business besides me have a person or a department in charge of budgeting in which someone regularly rolls his or her eyes when you come into the room, knowing that you’re going to ask for yet another piece of expensive hardware?”
Yes we have all had that same issue. try it with $150,000.00 requests instead of $5,000.00.
Solving issues is about presentation of the problems at hand and how the purchase will save money in the long run. Post is about Time, you time, the editors time and guess what – crew costs at every stage of a production are greater than the hardware costs. You convince a money person that spending $5K for hardware will take 2 weeks off the Edit or reduce the OT because of these issues you will be able to reinforce your position that you are looking out for them.
IMHO your posts here are example of poor communication – You cannot come in “whining” that you need more, it doesn’t work, life sucks and get respect.
Look at the title of this thread, it does not ask for help, it declares that it does not work. Asking if others have had the same issues, without the declarations.Maybe try a different tack and you might have better results.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD -
[gary adcock] “I have not seen this since 10.5 and QT 7.4 were released even on the older machines.”
We have on our Mac Pro Quad 3.0. That’s the machine that really blew up and we had to remove 2GB RAM to make the machine work. Now we’re at 8GB and it’s happy.
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!
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[Mike Parfit] “Sorry. I am not trying to annoy people. I am trying to get answers.”
One answer I have give you and Christoph is the need for a large central media array. That IS the answer for a project with a LOT of media. You simply cannot string together multiple drives, throw 1000s of clip on to all of those drives and expect FCP to be stable. That is not me telling you to spend money. This is me telling you to have a stable system with 1000s of clips, the first step is to consolidate all of that media on to one array.
[Mike Parfit] “And as far as the money goes — does no one in this business besides me have a person or a department in charge of budgeting in which someone regularly rolls his or her eyes when you come into the room, knowing that you’re going to ask for yet another piece of expensive hardware?”
Yep, I worked for two corporate companies for about 3 years prior to starting my own business. The rule there was be absolutely sure you have EVERYTHING you will need for the next 12 months because you simply can’t come back and ask for more unless there are extenuating circumstances. That’s when I learned to ask a LOT of “what if” questions to the vendors. This ensured what I asked for would service me today and for the next 12 months. Generally we purchased much more than what was absolutely needed at that moment and storage was always something we overpurchased on.
Today I have a VERY good VAR here in Atlanta and I ask him a LOT of questions. I review the Cow postings, I look at the Cow Reviews, I especially read the reviews and posts from Bob Zelin.
Maybe because I’ve been cutting on NLE’s since 1993 I learned early on that Storage is the key to stability and performance on just about any NLE system. This is the one thing that I see most people on these forums just don’t get. They get the largest processor, the fastest graphics card, but then they skimp on what is really the most important part of your entire setup. Storage.
I always purchase as least double of what I think we’ll ever need. In the case of the 8TB units, they replaced 2TB units. I could have simply added another 2 or 4TB SATA array to the same card and just ran media off multiple arrays, but this is not as stable as the single large array. And we never have more than 3 or 4TB on either of the arrays, but by having all that overhead and empty space on the array, they run very efficiently and fast.
So yes, Final Cut Pro is absolutely usable for large projects, but step one is maximizing your media storage efficiency. Without that, you will have problems cutting very large projects.
[Mike Parfit] “Now, can one of you go in to that department that has the money and tell those folks that it makes sense to spend $5,000 on faster disks primarily to prevent renders from crashing? Can any of you say with authority that rendering requires very fast disk read and write numbers? If you can, you know more than I do and you’re smarter than I am, which is probably the bitter truth anyway. But I haven’t been able to make that case.”
Here’s the neat thing when you start asking questions about making very large purchases. You can ask for a demo. MaxxDigital will allow you to demo one of their products for 30 days. Don’t like it, return it. Whenever you, or anyone else reading this, is about ready to make a very large purchase, don’t just go to the cheapest online source. Go directly to the manufacturer or to a reputable VAR, like WH Platts here in Atlanta. Either the VAR will have demo units available for testing or some manufacturers, like Maxx will allow you to demo a product. And always mention you saw their products on the Cow either in a banner or in a post.
If you want to try it, you can get one of those high speed arrays in to your system for a week, a couple of weeks, whatever. If the stability issues go away, you’ve solved the problem. If they don’t, well then we are looking at some conflict in the system or some corrupted media along the way.
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!
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[Alan Okey] “You may want to switch to the ATI Radeon X1900XT for better Core Image performance. The 8800GT is only better for gaming, not for Pro Apps.”
This is true. I actually purchased a new Octo Core from the Apple Store that already had the 8800 in it. I pulled it out and put the 1900 in there. I’m waiting to see how that new ATI card is going to perform and might switch to that at some point.
[Alan Okey] “Regarding RAM: IS your system configured with Apple OEM RAM, or third party RAM? If third party, who?”
Good point, all the RAM should match too if possible. We purchase from Crucial.com for all our RAM. They have a fantastic system checker to ensure that you’re getting exactly the correct RAM for your system.
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!
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[gary adcock] “What about Journalling for the media?”
Journaling is actually a VERY good point, didn’t even think about that. Hopefully nobody reading this has their drives set up with Journaling enabled.
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!
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[walter biscardi] “We have on our Mac Pro Quad 3.0. That’s the machine that really blew up and we had to remove 2GB RAM to make the machine work. Now we’re at 8GB and it’s happy.”
That sounds more like the RAM issue rather than the memory buffer- if it was a buffer issue, adding extra ram would not resolve the problem.
Funny how many of these errors are fixed by just reseating the RAM in the MacPro’s
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD
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