LARGE FCP Projects

[Jerry Hofmann]

FCP 5 did improve this a lot… But for now, break your sequence down a bit into “sub sequences” and work with them. Marry them in the end. It’s not the project file size causing this as much as a long complicated sequence.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D

[D]

Jerry,

Please tell me what you have noticed in FCP 5. I am dying to know, since this has become such a major issue for us. You are right in that we are dealing with complex timelines, however, in commercial post production there really isn’t the option to simplify things.

Also, I notice you have a Kona SD. What driver are you using? Blackmagic 4.8? AND do you have the effects handling setting for Uncompressed 4:2:2 on FCP to handle or Kona SD????

Thanks for the help.

Cheers,

Dave

[Jerry Hofmann]

Yeah, I have a Kona SD, and used the last of the Blackmagic drivers with it. However I’m using a Kona 2 card now almost all the time, with it’s latest drivers 1.1.1. The Kona SD card is set to have FCP handle effects. The Kona 2 card doesn’t give you the option. I think it’s acellerating RT Extreme all by itself as I recall.

I haven’t seen much of a slowdown at all with project files that are as large as 1200 edits in them… and the one I’m referring to is full of effects. 9 layers, piles of single frame edits nested, composite modes… pretty much the works… I think with an update to FCP 5, you should be very good to go with it. I think too that Tiger’s update and no doubt future updates will also be the way to go with the Suite.

Can’t have too much RAM BTW… this does improve things with complex sequences, however I think the limit that FCP 4.5 can use is 4 gigs, so a total of say, 5 or more (leaving some for the OS) might improve things where you are now. Might try it by robbing some chips from one system and installing in another?

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D

[Annaël Beauchemin]

I had this problem with a project that went up to about 20mb. I don’t really know how I solved it, but what I did is delete the prefs (and the PAO cache file), all audio waveform files and all the render files. I also increased the ram thumbnail cache to 8192kb.

One or a few of these things solved the issue.

[Chris Reynolds]

Hi Dave
We have a few large projects on the go 30-40mb 80min timelines with thousands of cuts and one of our project slowed down like you were saying. We found that we needed to turn off dupe detection in every sequence in the project.

Cheers Chris

[D]

Hey Chris & Everyone Else who has experienced the large project mayhem,

I want to get more feedback from FCP 5 USERS with LARGE PROJECTS (Above 15megs). What have you experienced with trim editing in the timeline? Is there still a delay? Is there a stutter when moving clips around? Is there still the bug that when you have several large projects open speed is decreased dramatically even if you are not using media in another project?

Has anyone used the Xserve RAID driver that just came out for Tiger and FCP 5?? Is there a speed difference? I am using a 1.8T RAID 5.

Thanks for all your help.

Cheers,

Dave