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More efficient HD workflow
I’m looking for some advice about how to streamline my HD workflow. Here are some of the basic specs on my equipment:
-JVC GY-HD250, shooting at 720p60
-Capturing using HD-SDI out of the camera into an AJA Kona3 card using Apple’s ProRes 422 codec
-Editing on a MacPro tower with 8 GB of memory and two, 750 GB hard drives, still running Tiger
-Editing with Final Cut Studio 2
-Most of our work is green screen keying for virtual news sets and website characters that walk on and introduce the site
-I key using Conduit in Final Cut and compress the exported QT files using Sorenson SqueezeMy main problem is that I’m finding HD to just be a bear to work with. The render times are so long it’s ridiculous, and the export times are just as bad. As long as the video is untouched in the timeline, it plays great, but as soon as I add the key, or try to add a graphic, or pretty much do anything, it gets so bogged down.
Would I be better of to render out a low-res slate of each clip, then edit using the low-res version, and swap it out for a high-res slate at the end?
I understand the fact that I’m working with HD and have to accept that things are going to take a while, but I’m wanting to find out if there’s anything I can do to help the situation. Are there any specific training DVDs or manuals out there that address this specific issue? I’ve heard about the “Internet Killed the Video Star” training that you guys put out. Does that address this kind of stuff?
TJ
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4 Replies
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1080i HD is a bear. It’s the nature of the beast as is ProRes. Lots of render times there. I bet everything looks great though!
Jeremy
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Welcome to HD. You could gain some performance by working in uncompressed (ProRes is a processor intensive codec. It looks super, but takes more horsepower to sling around), as well as getting faster media drives like an external fibre RAID. If you keys will take it, 8 bit codecs will also be much faster (ProRes is 10 bit)
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Faster drives help. Two 750GB hard drives aren’t the best. Raid them as RAID 0, better. But an 8 drive raid would be even better. Faster processors help.
But you have to realize that working with high end HD and keying and all that isn’t going to be quick. You are working with, well, not uncompressed, but still high-ish data rate material. Things will be slow. HD is 4 to 10 times larger than SD.
Shane
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I don’t know how well Sorenson Squeeze utilizes all the cores, but you could try the Compressor 3 “trick” of basically launching multiple instances of the app in pseudo-render farm style to get all the cores cranking on the encoding job.
-A
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