• Apple Final Cut Pro

  Final Cut Pro X Multicam via 10Gb Network

  Posted by Michael Wells on February 17, 2012 at 7:32 pm

  I’m having problems getting similar performance out of multicam editing in FCP-X as we have in FCP7.

  Using FCP-7, we have been editing 9 streams of 1080i ProRes422 footage over a Small Tree 10Gb Ethernet Network using an enterprise grade HP ProCurve 10Gb Switch for about 9 months on a MacPro 3,1 8 Core machine.

  We set the playback at full frame rate and high quality and the multicam clip playback is flawless.

  Same setup on FCP-X on a new 12 core MacPro works for about 4 seconds over the network and then gets real jumpy and unstable-basically unusable for editing.

  I don’t believe the problem has anyting to do with the 12 core tuning as we get the same results with the older MacPro 3,1 8 core running FCPX-unstable and jumpy performance over the network.

  If we copy the clips to local storage, multicam playback in FCP X is responsive and usable with the 9 streams of 1080i ProRes422 coming off of a Caldigt HDPro2, even on an older 8 core machine.

  I don’t think overall Ethernet bandwidth is an issue. In Activity monitor, MC playback as I have described in FCP7 only uses about 1,200mbit of Ethernet bandwidth.

  Also, we can do multiple 100GB file copies to local storage from the Ethernet connected ISO computers and get well in excess of 5,000mbit (yes, 600 MegaBytes!) of Ethernet throughput, so network bandwidth is likely not the issue. Further, we have everything configured for jumbo frames which improved performance in FCP7 to a flawless level.

  Perhaps a different playback buffer scheme in X isn’t optimized to allow for the additional latency inherent in Ethernet networks?

  Anyone care to offer any other thoughts as to why it might not work over the network using FCPX?

  Michael Wells replied 14 years, 3 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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