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HPX300 AVC-100 Native Capture/Playback Issue In FCP 7
I recently began shooting footage for a short demo of my new HPX300. I’m shooting in both AVC100 60i and 30pn on two separate P2 Cards. My camera has the most recent firmware upgrade, 9.30 I believe. I’m using FCP 7.0 Log And Transfer for ingesting the MXF files like this:
P2 Card Contents folder and Lastclip Text file are transferred from P2 Card to my laptop. Those folders are then copied to my internal Raid Drive on my Mac Pro via Target Disk Start-Up and Firewire. Using Log And Transfer in FCP I log every shot, rename, and choose P2 Plugin/AVC-Intra/Native in the preference drop down menu. The “Remove Advance Pulldown and Duplicate Frames” box is unchecked.
Then I Add the clips to the Queue after setting the logging bin in FCP Project Browser and setting the Scratch Disk.
When the new clips show up in the FCP Browser the item properties compressor indicates Apple AVC-Intra100M 1080i60 for the 60i footage and Apple AVC-Intra100M1080p24/p30 for the 30pn footage.
Now comes the issue. When I play the clips in the viewer window or in the canvas window in FCP the clips frequently stutter, a sort of jugging start and stop and start. It’s happening to the 60i and the 30pn clips (each playing in their own sequence of course).
One thing I noticed in the sequence settings is that the compressor is AppleProResHQ, hmmm, shouldn’t it match the compressor settings of the clips: Apple AVC-Intra100M 1080i60 for the 60i footage and Apple AVC-Intra100M1080p24/p30 for the 30pn footage. But I don’t see Apple AVC-Intra100 as a choice for compressor settings in the sequence set up dialogue window.
I went back to the original clips on the P2 Cards and played them back in the camera, and NO STUTTERING, nice and smooth. So obviously something is corrupting the files during the process of ingesting through Log and Transfer I wold assume.
As a test I went back to some of the clips that were doing this and changed the setting in the Log and Transfer preferences from AVC-100 Native to AppleProResHQ. The same stuttering occurred anyway.
Also can someone explain to me the difference between the P2 Plugin/P2 AVC-Intra/ApplePrpRez/Native settings and the AVCHD Plugin/AVCHD/AppleProRez settings in the Preferences drop down menu in Log And Transfer?
I have some big shoots coming up and I have assured my clients that the P2 Workflow shooting AVC-Intra 100 and editing the Native AVC footage in FCP 7 is nothing to worry about so I really need to resolve this.
I’m not totally panicing yet, watching the problem clips play back perfectly from the P2 Cards in the camera tells me that at least the original files are fine, the problem has to be happening in the ingest process, any help figuring this out would be greatly appreciated.
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5 Replies
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[James Fortier] ”
I have some big shoots coming up and I have assured my clients that the P2 Workflow shooting AVC-Intra 100 and editing the Native AVC footage in FCP 7 is nothing to worry about so I really need to resolve this.”Hello,
Not sure why you cannot playback smoothly but there is no setting. I have posted this in another thread here and elsewhere:
If I read this correctly, you transcode to ProResHQ on ingest or when you render.
By the way you say “internal raid” . Real RAID 0 with a card? Have you run one of the test? The Aja one may still be on there site.
Good Luck,
Robert -
No not a RAID with a Card, it’s two Seagate Baracuda 750 GB Drives set up as a RAID with Disc Utility. I just ran Blackmagic’s drive speed test app and the RAID read time is clocking in at only 28 MBPS for 10 bit 4:4:4 1080/60i. That seems terribly slow considering that the FCP 7 manual suggests a speed of 220 MBPS for 1920×1080 29.97 using Apple Pro Res 422 HQ. I did another test selecting the DVCPRO HD codec from the “gear” drop down menu in the preferences settings in Log And Transfer, the result was better, actually got through the clip a couple of times without stuttering playback, but not consistently, it still hiccups once or twice on playback. Looks Like I need some faster drives, any recommendations short of a full blown external RAID which is out of my price range right now.
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[James Fortier] “Looks Like I need some faster drives, any recommendations short of a full blown external RAID which is out of my price range right now.”
If your Mac Pro is early 2009 then you could use the Apple raid card. Otherwise you are probably going to need to do a third party raid card and external box. I use a RocketRaid on my G5. Have not done any RAID yet on my Mac Pro.
Is your array RAID 0? You need RAID O for speed. RAID 0 speed generally increases with more drives so you may want to add another drive to the array. Your speed seems abnormally slow. What drives are in the array and is OS X on a separate drive?
Take it EZ,
Robert -
Correction, I was reading the Blackmagic Disk Drive Speed test results wrong, the READ Speed clocked in at 105 MBPS for 10 bit 4:4:4 1080/60i.
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The HD’s are two 750 GB Seagate SATA 2 Barracuda’s, The Raid is a software raid set up with Disk Utlity.OSX and FCP run off a different internal drive. I bought this MacPro used, so not sure about how the RAID was set up in terms of RAID 0 etc. I email the guy I bought it from and he said this about the problem.
“It’s not the drives. You’re going to need a dedicated hardware RAID card.The bottleneck is in the controller on the motherboard, The drives that are in there now are perfectly fine: same series and spec, but smaller.
A stock computer isn’t going to be able to handle the data throughput
of full HDTV. You’re going to need a dedicated RAID card (Currently
you’re using the HD controller on the motherboard which is a
bottleneck because it’s also accessing the main drive simultaneously).
It’s possible to install a raid peripheral card and run the data
cables to the internal drives in lieu of the internal data connectors.I have a Sonet Tempo E4P card and an external drive case with 2X 750
GB Seagates. HDTV 1080 8 bit YUV 422 readings are Read 178.7 Write
176.7 to give me read: 45 fps and write: 44 fpsThe RAID on internal: HDTV 1080 8 bit YUV 422 readings are Read 112.8
Write 76.5 to give me read: 28 fps and write: 19 fpsYou may also need to upgrade your video card to one with a newer GPU
to take the processing load off the CPU’s”
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