multicam dont believe the hype???

[Mark Raudonis]

Try this.

Forget multicam. Create six “pictures” in picture in a timeline. Playback. Does it work?

If not, your problems have more to do with through-put on your raid than anything with Multi-cam.

Six streams of 10 bit uncompressed is a pretty heavy load. I think this is more a drive issue than anything to do with multicam.

Mark

[Dave Jenkins]

I just did a test with 8 bit uncompressed NTSC and was able to get to 6 angles, no higher. We are running a huge raid that clocks at 250 mb’s read & write. I had the same problem when I went to 8 angles and above.

Dajen Productions
Santa Barbara, CA
G5 Dual 2 Gig – AJA IO & LA
Huge 1.2 Raid
FCP 5-OS X 10.4.1-QT 7

[Paul Nevison]

really???? i’m not in the edit suite at the moment but the throughput should be cranking – it’s a brand new raid. so how is it supposed to work with HD as in all the apple demo’s???

I have a nine camera live music gig to cut – the reason i upgraded was because i thought FCP 5 would be up to the job…seems not the case.

would it be worth offlining at dv rez for the multicam then recapture at full D1 rez after ive done the cuts?

G5 DP 2.0
2.0G RAM
OS 10.4.2
QT 7.0.3
FCP 5.0.3
BMD Decklink Extreme

[Slack Alice]

I ran many tests for a pilot project at a high profile manufacturer in order to test various different networks running with multistream thoughputs. We had a massively fast drive to rule that out of the equation.
There are many parameters affecting your throughput not just drive and pipeline, these are in no particular order:

CPU
RAM
Bus speeds
Processor caches

Also the set-up for multicam has several steps that you need to follow in order to get the greatest efficiency. The one that always gets me is forgetting the anamorphic sequence setting if the media is anamorphic – you should get a dark green or dark grey colour in the render bar in FCP if all is well. If not then you are pushing the Mac to its limit.

Best of luck

Alex Snelling
Apple Certified FCP Trainer
London

Alex Snelling
Slack Alice Films
London
http://www.slackalicefilms.co.uk

[Michael Alberts]

6 streams of 10bit PAL. That woudl be 25MB x 6 = 150MB sustained read speed. Add in some CPU overhead. What are your speed readings on your RAID? Remember, you need to look at the Sustained rate, not peak.

Apple was able to do nine steams of HD due to the fact that it was DVCProHD at 100mb/sec per steam. That’s only 9x8MB/sec coming off a Xserve RAID.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[Paul Nevison]

its all in the fine print!!! I will do the speed test on our raid to see what sustained rates we are getting – dissapointing that this feature is really only for DV work.

G5 DP 2.0
2.0G RAM
OS 10.4.2
QT 7.0.3
FCP 5.0.3
BMD Decklink Extreme

[Dan Riley]

Why do your multicam at full rez?
I do my 5 camera SD projects at DV level first.
I have no issues with playback speed.
When the offline is done, you uprez.
I’ve produced 3 half hours with FCP’s multicam
feature this way. These were projects with
over 30 hours of footage, 4 hours of which were a
5 camera studio shoot.

I’ve edited multicam for many years with AVID.
Apple’s implimentation of this feature in FCP
Is not perfect but it’s very good and will get better.
Even with AVID, you would not do a multicam workflow
like you are suggesting.

Dan

[Paul Nevison]

yeah im a bit of a full rez junkie – with advances in computer speed etc it has become possible to work in online quality from the start for many projects now – was looking forward to saying goodbye to offline ugliness – but may not be quite there yet!

have you found uprezing with the FCP Media Manager stable? I know there have been issues with the MM with clips that have had speed changes etc… just wondered how the experience has been uprezing multiclips etc…

G5 DP 2.0
2.0G RAM
OS 10.4.2
QT 7.0.3
FCP 5.0.3
BMD Decklink Extreme

[Paul Nevison]

according to the blackmagic disk speed test i am getting a read data rate of 168.9 mb/s and a write of 146.4 mb/s

in the 10 bit YUV 4:2:2 category for PAL I’m getting 160 mb/s read and 138 mb/s fir write

how does that sound to you guys?

G5 DP 2.0
2.0G RAM
OS 10.4.2
QT 7.0.3
FCP 5.0.3
BMD Decklink Extreme

[Dan Riley]

About Media Manager….
no, it does not do speed changes or reverses. So, do your offline with them,
then make a note to go put those shots back to normal before the uprez,
then go back and add back the speed changes. For me this is about
five or six shots per half hour show. For some people who use alot of
speed changes etc., of course it would be more trouble. Still frames
are a yes and no situation. Most of the time they come through
but sometimes they don’t. Of all the things I’d like to see fixed with FCP,
MM is at the top of my list. However I still have relatively painless uprez
because I know the limitations and work within them.

As for multicam shots and MM, no problem. There is a check box
you will see in the MM process that asks you if you want all the
angles of a multiclip or just what you used. I only uprez the shot I used, otherwise
you are talking a much larger uprez. This is the point of the offline.
That’s where you make those decisions. This is the same thing AVID does.

Finally, use this link as instructions for your uprez
and you will be fine.
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_onlining_jordan.html

Dan