How stable is FC Studio2? Honestly.

[Walter Biscardi]

Hi Jack. System stability is all about how you set it up and how you take care of it. We are almost exclusively a broadcast post facility now, which means constant deadlines that can’t be missed. All three of our systems are extremely stable and have been for years. The worst time of instability was during the changeover from OS 9 to OS 10.

Now, whenever there is a new release of FCP or a new OS, there are always hiccups. They have never affected a deadline because there have always been workaround in my experience.

The biggest mistake I see on every single forum I participate in is people who just immediately upgrade or update their systems without properly checking with all the third party vendors they are using. Such as AJA Video Systems, ATTO, Adobe, Boris, etc… Just because Apple releases a new FCP, Quicktime or OS update, does not mean you should run it right away. One or more of these third party vendors might not be ready for it and it could cause issues.

In fact, not all of the Apple updates should be installed right away. FCP 5.1.3 had so many issues when it was released, FCP 5.1.4 came out about two days later. They broke some major stuff.

If your system is running stable and you see updates come along, check on the forums of every piece of hardware and software you run before you update.

A second big issue I see is people who try to get away with the smallest and cheapest storage solutions. All hard drive arrays slow down as they fill up, usually when they hit about 75% full. By 90% full they usually take another serious hit in speed. We run 8TB SAS/SATA arrays with speeds at almost 500MB/s in RAID 5. I don’t need 500MB/s to edit in DVCPro HD or even Uncompressed HD. In fact, I probably don’t even need 8TB per system. But I have a tremendous amount of overhead in both speed and capacity to know that I should probably never experience an issue of dropped frames. So don’t plan for exactly what you need for storage, plan for double your needs if possible.

Also, maintain your storage by doing a complete erase as often as possible. Fragmentation can lead to a lot of issues. Don’t daisy chain drives unless absolutely necessary.

Color is an interesting situation. That was a product developed by Silicon Color called Final Touch for film grading that was ported over to the Mac and the Quicktime workflow. Apple purchased it pretty much right before NAB 2007. It’s quicktime compatibility is limited to about half a dozen formats right now. You have to prep the timelines before going into Color as it does not support Still Images, Speed Changes or Basic Motion changes. And right now, renders are rather slow for some reason.

On the other hand, it’s the most powerful color grading system you’ll use on the Mac. I’ve actually had it about two years now as we purchased it as Final Touch HD. Renders were much faster before Apple got it so hopefully they’re going to fix that soon. So for me, it’s worth the time spent to prep a timeline for most of our broadcast work. I have a few tutorials here on the Cow about Color and of course my DVD is now out which is a 2 hour walkthrough of the interface. The software is not for every project and it does need to get better. We do have an Apple Color forum here as well.

For color grading within FCP, I highly recommend Red Giant’s Colorista. They’ve now come out with Magic Bullet Looks which I do now have but have not tested yet.

So honestly, Final Cut Studio is very very stable in our environment. You can view some of our sample works at my website and see what we’re doing with it. “Apple Color Comparison” is a split screen of before / after using Color. Also, if you go to my blog, I have an article about Bob Zelin completely re-wiring our facility so you can see how we’re set up.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow!

Read my Blog!

[Jack Kelly]

Hi Walter,

Thanks so much for the detailed and thoughtful reply – that’s a great help. I certainly will check out your blog and your website.

Also, just to be clear: I’m as sure as I can be that the stability issues I’m having on PPro are attributable to PPro, not to my system being unhealthy. I’ve spent a lot of time, money and effort on making my PC as stable and as beefy as possible.

Many thanks,
Jack

====================
Jack Kelly
London
Dir / Prod / Camera
Jack-Kelly.com – my homepage
====================

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
As another PAL-land UK mainly-DV editor, working full time, sometimes in London, my answer to your stability question is:
Last crash – about a month ago.
Last crash that involved more than just an application reboot (ie some serious file-level troubleshooting) – when I took over someone else’s project in late 2005…
Last crash involving hardware maintenance – 2003 (the Mac’s FireWire channel failled, and a motherboard reset-button had to be actuated).
Last total computer failure – late 1997, on a two year old PowerMac 8100, fixed by a replacement motherboard.

For all the reason’s Walter oultines I don’t run the latest hardware or software revision, so I’m still using a G5 and FCP 5.1.4, because I share projects with other users – and we’re all waiting for an inter-project moment to upgrade…..

But I push my Mac very hard, editing in DV format until the final graphics/colour-grade session at a less compressed format before output to DigiBeta (using an AJA Io).

Currently I have 21 hard drives @ 7.5TB permenantly connected, with 16 of those in removable caddies to swap the drives as my projects require (and to hold backups). There are 15 SATA channels, 6 FW 800, and the rest daisy-chained FW400.
All this massive excressence of hardware purrs along day-in-day-out, for years-at-a-time…. Touch wood, but I don’t run RAID 0, as I’ve been burned by that in the old SCSI days…. 😉

Also, working with DV files, at that low data-rate, the drives can be a lot fuller without there being problems, so some get filled beyong 90% at times without causing problems. I move stuff around later to keep the space up, but it doesn’t ever cause problems.

If I had a Windows computer drive names C:-Z: wouldn’t be enough….. 🙂

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Jack,
Some times we do things that we shouldn’t do and a crash every three or four months can happen.
I think that the stability problem of PP is the Windows stability. MacOX is a really stable system and with some maintenance routines runs like silk.
I live in a country without Apple service. If I have problems I would have to send my Mac to repair abroad. This didn’t happens in five years. If I would have a PC, I have a lot of PC repairing shop available and probably I would be using their services quite often.
Rafael

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

[David Mcgiffert]

Walter
This is one of the smartest advisories I’ve seen in a long
time. Should be read by lots of us.

Thanks,

David

[Shane Ross]

I have had my system crash twice in 3 months. It is fairly stable. Unlike the Avid Adrenaline I was on recently (on a PC). That crashed about 3 to 8 times a day. Frustrating to say the least.

But, like Walter, I baby my system. I make sure that I have versions of software and OS and QT that work together. When I find that magic combination, I LEAVE IT ALONE. In fact, I clone my system drive too, just in case. A majority of the issues that arise are due to upgrading, using cheap or incompatible components, older hardware drivers, or pilot error.

Shane

Littlefrog Post

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[Alan Lacey]

Jack,

I did what you’re comtemplating about two years ago and am reasonably happy. I’ve never liked or have been a serious user of PPro but loved my (now Avid) Liquid system for many many years. I also edit in Sony Vegas. (mainly SD to uncompressed, but increasing HD now)

Walter’s bang on here with everything he says. The thing that does please me with the Mac system is the abilty to clone a working system drive before you take any liberties with it, like upgrading QT, apps etc. On the whole though it’s still a fight. (602 projects not compatible with 601,514, – constant problems keeping Boris Red working through the upgrades etc etc. I still seem to spend as much time faffing around with the systems as I do editing.

I fought the Windows3, Windows95, Windows98(all flavours), NT, XP (not Vista yet) wars, and as you’ll know it’s only recently that the Wintel boxes generally do what they say on the box.

I generally have many overlapping projects on the go simultaneously so one of my big concerns was disk fragmentation on the Mac system, and it’s nice to see a serious MacHead like Walter acknowledge the problem. Word on the block, when I did my research, was that it just didn’t happen in the Mac world. I’ve since discovered that it does and that defragging isn’t as easy. Most editors seem to dump their files over and reformat drives regularly, a laborious process.

Be prepared for little backward compatibility with Apple generally and FCS specifically, and take a long hard look at all the non-trival problem posts on this board. I don’t bother with the PPro cow board but guess it’s pretty similar though.

Basically few crashes in Mac land but a collosal number of work-arounds required to get through each day!

Alan in PALland

[Dave Jenkins]

When we have an editor come into of suites who comes from other systems like PPro, Final Cut that haven’t crashed in months will crash. I think it because they try to use FCP just like PPro or Avid. When I moved from Media 100 we had to rethink our whole work flow. We no longer do offline-Online. All footage is brought in at the resolution we finish at. Buy your system from someone who sells FCP systems and will support you.

Dave

Dajen Productions
Santa Barbara, CA
G5 Quad – AJA Kona LHe
Huge 1.2 Raid
FCP 6.0.2-OS X 10.4.11-QT 7.3

[Jack Kelly]

Hi,

Thanks for all the great replies. Sounds like FCP is more stable than PPro (PPro is crashing about 8 times a day at the moment on my system… sometimes it crashes every 15 minutes or so when I’m doing audio mixing on big projects. Not fun.)

A few of my friends cut on FCP so I’m going to spend a few days testing out FCP before I take the plunge. There are a few “Apple” ways of thinking that will take some time to get used to (like not being able to put the system into a larger enclosure or upgrade the motherboard at all… and having to spend 3x what the hardware would cost if I assembled it myself).

But, at the end of the day, I absolutely NEED a stable editing environment and PPro isn’t providing that so I’m going to have to test out the alternatives.

Many thanks for all the responses – do keep them coming,
Thanks,
Jack

====================
Jack Kelly
London
Dir / Prod / Camera
Jack-Kelly.com – my homepage
====================

[David Roth weiss]

[Jack Kelly] “There are a few “Apple” ways of thinking that will take some time to get used to (like not being able to put the system into a larger enclosure or upgrade the motherboard at all… and having to spend 3x what the hardware would cost if I assembled it myself).”

You will really come to appreciate the fact that MACs come almost completely equipped right out of the box, and with relatively few hardware choices compared to a PC workstation. I know I do. I was also used to configuring my PC workstations, and like me, I’m certain you will realize shortly after making the transition to the MAC, that all of the hardware choices and possible configurations in the PC world are not the panacea they seem, but really more like Pandora’s Box, opening the door to numerous potential hardware and software conflicts.

Sure, you’ll add RAM, a capture card, and upgrade the video card, but instead of having to select from twenty possible video cards each with certain issues, there’s really just two choices that work. That may seem limiting at first, but the fact that they actually work 100% of the time, more than makes up the difference.

Also, the fact that Apple makes the boxes, writes the OS and writes the editing software, makes a huge difference. In the PC world no single company could really give a damn if the other company’s product doesn’t work on your system. Apple on the other hand knows that the hardware, the OS and FCP must all work together, and that its their responsibility to insure that works together. That’s a huge difference…

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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