Kona Capture Card to Increase Rendering Speed?

[Shane Ross]

[Amber Miller] “And it is taking TWO HOURS to render this. And of course I make a change and have render for another long period of time. “

For 3:30 min? Why is it taking two hours? What sort of filters or plugins do you have on those clips?

[Amber Miller] “I talked with an apple representative and they have suggested getting a capture card. Kona LHe to be exact. I am trying to get more educated on the fact. It’s a pricey piece of equipment. Would this actually be a solution for me to help speed the rendering process up? “

No, it won’t. That is a CAPTURE CARD, as the description suggests. It is for the input and output of video only. It does NOT speed up rendering. That Apple rep needs to be flogged.

Sorry, there is no hardware that speeds up rendering in FCP.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Amber Miller]

Yes, 2 hours to render 3 minutes of video. The only filters i’m using is an 8 point matte and 1 color corrector. And 1 track is a “Juicer” (pre-made animation). Something has to be wrong. I was using firewire and the apple guy suggested to upgrade to esata. I did that and haven’t notice any difference in rendering speed. And then he suggested the kona card. So, what might you suggest? I am very frustrated here.

Thanks!
Amber

[Shane Ross]

What a dork. Don’t talk to him anymore. Faster drive speeds allow you to work with higher data rate formats, and multiple streams of formats (a stream being one layer of video). It won’t speed up editing. Are they working on commission?

The JUICE file…did you use the Juicer and extract that as an editable file? Or is it a keyable element? If it is keyable, that will definately add to render times. Heavy graphics, text, particles, garbage mattes…all add to the render times (feathering).

The only thing that speeds it up is a faster processor. And unfortunately FCP only accesses ONE processor, even if your machine might have 2, or 4, or 8.

YOu have to have something heavy going on to get those render times.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Erik Lindahl]

If you can’t get the speed you need in FCP I’d experiment with other alternatives such as Motion or After Effects. Normally FCP isn’t slow when dealing with simple comps / FX / edits however.

What you might want to check is:

– Sequence settings
– Format of your media

Some types of media and settings will hog your system. Transcoding all HDV or h264 material to ProRes for example will decrease rendering-times a lot. Also rendering in 8-bit instead of 10-bit or greater will vastly improve performance.

As noted above a CAPTURE CARD such as a Kona LHe will not improve rendering-times at all. It’s not impossible different GRAPHICS CARDS affect your rendering but as for now in FCP I think that’s to a minimum. Motion and Color will radically change with a more powerful GPU however.

————————
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Amber Miller]

They must be working on commission. Unreal, eh? Glad I’m researching.
The juice file is .mov and not keyed. But, I do have a garbage matte on it and the regular video files.
And a color corrector. And that’s all.

6 tracks cuz it was a multi- camera shoot.
This is dragging me down. Augh!

So, other than a fast processor- any other suggestions?
My external drive? Wrong settings? I don’t know.
This is crazy considering I have a $5,000 machine here.

[Michael Sacci]

Before you start looking at equipment you need to give precise information.
List the clips info, Codec, resolution, frame-rate and so on. List the complete info an the Juice file as well as the sequence.

For the sequence what is the Compression set to. Do a Screen capture of the sequence settings for ease.

Are the clips is a multicam angles or do you have clips on 6 video tracks? How many tracks are viewable at the same time.

[Shane Ross]

[Amber Miller] “The juice file is .mov and not keyed.”

.mov must means that it is a Quicktime file. Saying you have a .Mov is like saying you drive a car. WHAT KIND of car? So, what KIND of .mov? What CODEC? Get Info on the clip and report what you got.

[Amber Miller] “So, other than a fast processor- any other suggestions? “

Nope. That’s all that comes into play in terms of rendering. If there was another option, I’d have said so.

[Amber Miller] “My external drive? Wrong settings?”

Not your drive. What are your settings? What CODEC is the footage? What are your sequence settings?

[Amber Miller] “This is crazy considering I have a $5,000 machine here.”

Well, when you lack some understanding of working with video, and what codecs you are working with, then it can be crazy. There are a lot of details that go into editing, and knowing stuff like what codecs are, and how they interact with other video codecs…sequence and clip settings, the fact that if you layer 6 tracks with garbage mattes, and how the mixed codecs might affect things are important to know.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Amber Miller]

Thank you for all the feedback guys. I need it.

Here are screen captures of my timeline and how it looks all together.

I shoot on a HDV Sony FX1
Capturing via firewire to an External HD
All clips are captured as Apple ProRes 422
1440 x 1080
29.97 fps
The juicer (american flag) AND sequence settings are both converted to Apple ProRess 422 1440 x 1080
The Render Control Codec is also set to ProRes 422
I’ve tried 8 bit, 10 bit, and RGB under the video processing settings.

[Mark Maness]

Exactly, Shane.

But this is where a capture card, such as an AJA Kona LHi, can come in handy. Technically, they are not GPU cards but they can speed rendering in the fact that all of you media that you digitize thru that card will be of the same codec, therefore, simple effects like a 3-way Color Corrector will work in real-time. As long as you sequence codec and your clip codecs are the same, its all real-time, if you have a good enough machine to handle it.

This is where confusion sets in. A capture card is just that – an input/output card, not a CPU. It can make editing faster by having everything in the same codec.

Amber, my suggestion to you is… Look up here on the net about the basics of editing and codecs. There are many wonderful tutorials and explanations on these subjects. There are several here on the COW for example. Take a look. It will make you a better editor and faster editor. We’ve all done it at some time.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

Now that answers your rendering times.

I can tell you for a fact capturing your HDV footage into the ProRes422 codec is your issue. I have the same issues you do when using this workflow. I feel that its messed up and Apple will not admit this issue but I feel that it solely lies with the ProRes422 being at 1440×1080.

This is a “bastard” resolution for ProRes. Yes, it can do it but its not its optimal resolution. By its nature. ProRes422 is a full raster 1920×1080 codec. Its beautiful when used this way. When do the HDV-ProRes422 conversion, the video stays at its native resolution, which is 1440×1080. This is where the rendering problems come from. You have to take a full raster codec and render it into a non-square resolution. That takes lots of time.

The way we get around this is to capture our HDV to ProRes422 for logging purposes only. After all of the logging is complete, we’ll re-capture the footage into a more friendly codec like DVCProHD, which places the footage into a natural state that is easier to edit.

If you’re thinking, I’ll just blow out the footage and recapture into the ProRes422, it won’t work. It will recapture everything back at 1440×1080 and you’ll be in the same situation again.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com