I this normal for HDV/Motion

[Gregory Leno]

Hi,
I am a Motion newbie and am tring to get a feel for what is to be expected from this program.
When I bring in a 90sec clip and just try to play it back, before doing anything to it, it will only play back at 6-10fps. I have read here on previous posts that Motion can be slow, but is this true without doing anything to it? (see system config below)

The clip plays back great on a FCS timeline.

Is this just par for Motion or is there another explanation?

Thanks for your help,

Greg

System=
G5 dual 2.0 –
3.5g Ram –
nVidia 6800 Ultra 256vram
160g internal hd –
250g internal hd –
Two 500g Lacie Big Disks via Firewire –
20in Apple cinema display

[Noah Kadner]

90 second is quite long for Motion- remember it works in RAM so you’re better off with much smaller chunks. Also you don’t have a super fast video card and HDV is a massive, massive processor hog. So there ya go.

Noah

[Gregory Leno]

Given the Dual 2gig G5 that I am working on, is there a faster card that I can put in it. I was under the impression from previous posts that the nVidia 6800 was one of the fastest cards for my machine.(since I can’t install a pci express card.)

At any rate, based previous posts I thought that Motion would at least play an unaltered HDV clip.
See https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=170&postid=856396

If I shorten the clip to 10 sec. it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Thanks

Greg

[Noah Kadner]

Problem with HDV is that it is not a discrete frame codec that means that it must be actually decoded on the fly as it plays back so your performance will always be slower than with discrete frame codecs like DV and DVCPROHD. Plus the HD resolution also is a signifigant roadblock too.

-Noah

[Gregory Leno]

Would I be better off converting to uncompressed and working from there?

Greg

System=
G5 dual 2.0 –
3.5g Ram –
nVidia 6800 Ultra 256vram
160g internal hd –
250g internal hd –
Two 500g Lacie Big Disks via Firewire –
20in Apple cinema display

[Noah Kadner]

I’d suggest experimenting with different codecs. Uncompressed may work better then again it will also tax your hard drives with its much higher data rates.

Noah