HDV render in Prores : Big NO NO?

[Chris Borjis]

[pelai] “Is this a FCP 6 bug or is someone succesfully rendering HDV to Prores and exporting successfully?”

Could it be your imac?

my g5 quad can do that very quickly.

Have you tried “quicktime conversion” just to see if it changes anything?

[Rafael Amador]

Pelai,
I think the same as Borjis. With a Mac a bit faster and another external HD you can achieve it.
There is something you must do to work better. Get your self at least another external HD. Let the main HD only for the System and applications and put all your footage, graphics, renders etc out of that one.
Rafael

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE

[Pelai Vancar]

Borijs,

I did try as quicktime conversion which didn’t change anything.
It’s quite interesting that you succeed in doing this.
If I may ask: do you put your HDV editing in a Prores sequence or in an HDV timeline with option for rendering in Prores.
My workflow was editing on an HDV timeline and on the rendering option chosing Prores.
Please let me know, maybe this is the issue all along. Maybe when rendering an HDV sequence in Prores and then exporting it, somehow recompresses once more to HDV which is why exporting has not been working out.
I am still puzzled though as to why a reference file would not work though.

And to Rafael,

I don’t understand why you fail to read my posts and reply the same thing over and over again.
I do not use my internal drive as scratchdrive nor do I render to it, this is the reason for me using an external fast FW800 drive.

Secondly, my iMac is the latest and most fast of the current iMac line, even though not a Macpro, so saying it it too slow is just absurd. Specially when there is apparently a difference when exporting HDV-rendered or Prores-rendered footage.

iMac 24″ 2.8 extreme, 3gb RAM, 500 gb internal disk + 500 gb FW800 external drive.
OSX 10.4.11, FCP 6.02, QT 7.3

[Pelai Vancar]

Good News!
It was as I suspected. I did a few tests and putting HDV material in a Prores sequence and then rendering makes the exporting times just fine.
This means that the Prores option in the rendering tab when editing an HDV sequence is only to bring down rendering time while editing. When outputting you have to decide either to move your edited clips to a new Prores sequence + rerender or keep them in your HDV sequence but reset rendering option to “same as codec”.

I hope this can help anyone else that was having the same troubles as I.

[Arohaj]

Hi

I think I’m having similar problems and I would like to clarify the workflow if thats OK

Capture and edit in native HDV. Do you change the render control tab in sequence setting to ProRes during the editing process to bring render times down?

When you have completed your edit, do you drop the HDV timeline into a new ProRes timeline or do you change the compressor in sequence settings to prores and re-render then export a QT file?

Thanks

[Pelai Vancar]

Hi Arohaj here’s my workflow:

[arohaj] “Capture and edit in native HDV. Do you change the render control tab in sequence setting to ProRes during the editing process to bring render times down? “

– Exactly

[arohaj] “When you have completed your edit, do you drop the HDV timeline into a new ProRes timeline or do you change the compressor in sequence settings to prores and re-render then export a QT file? “

I drop the edit in a fresh sequence just to be on the safe side but you could just as easily change your initial sequence settings after editing.
The Prores sequence-setting I chose is Prores HQ and 10 bit.

The one thing I make absolutely sure is that I use rendermanager after step one but before step 2 to get rid of all previous renders so there will be no confusion as to which Prores renderfiles the final movie refers to before outputting. And make sure when rendering final sequence that rendersettings are all ticked: even FULL.

This should do it. I’m glad I could help and get back to me if you have any problems.

iMac 24″ 2.8 extreme, 3gb RAM, 500 gb internal disk + 500 gb FW800 external drive.
OSX 10.4.11, FCP 6.02, QT 7.3

[Rafael Amador]

[Pelai] “I don’t understand why you fail to read my posts and reply the same thing over and over again”
Just one external HD is a bottle-neck in your workflow.
However, I’m very sorry if I have bother you trying to help. I swear I won’t read a post of you again.
Rafael

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE

[Pelai Vancar]

Rafael,

I did not mean to offend you, though I admit I was sounding a bit harsh. I do appreciate you trying to help and am glad for your advice I just don’t understand why you continue to asume that I use my internal drive for media when I have stated several times that I don’t.

How could having one external mediadrive be a bottleneck as opposed to several, on my system?

First of all my external drive is a dedicated drive for media and renderfiles. Secondly, I keep it as empty as I can to bring up speed = I never use more than 60% of the disc capacity.
Thirdly there is only one FW-bus on the iMac though one FW800 port and one FW400 port.
This means that daisychaining several FW disks can only bring speeds down if a disk is FW400 or keep it aligned if they are all FW800. But there is no way of increasing my speeds by getting several external disks and putting them into a raid as the true bottleneck is the FW800 connection to the computer. That said I do have a Raid0 enclosure for my external FW800 drive to make that drive a 1T (2 x 500gb drives) raid if I have a lot of media for a project.

Since FW800 is the fastest transfer I will get I edit HDV in it’s native form despite of it’s other inconveniances.

iMac 24″ 2.8 extreme, 3gb RAM, 500 gb internal disk + 500 gb FW800 external drive.
OSX 10.4.11, FCP 6.02, QT 7.3

[Arohaj]

Thanks heaps heaps, thats the clarification I needed

I’m going to do a few more tests to get the best possible quality to SD DVD

Cheers

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Pelai,
Sorry if I’ve got angry too.
[Pelai] “for media and renderfiles”
This is the matter. When you are rendering, you are reading and writing at the same time in the same disc. If you set your render files in a different HD from your media, the process can be faster.
Use the FW800 for your media. FW800 is very fast. Allows you to access few HDV clips at the same time. So you can work with more layers with RT.
Let the FW400 for the render files. With him you will be writing a render file, or reading a render file at a time. FW400 is enough for that.
Like that you will share the task in between the two FW connexion and, honestly, I think can improve your workflow
Rafael

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE