Optimising FCP System

[David Roth weiss]

[Christopher Nunn] “My system can handle up to 8 streams of DV easily, but really struggles with MPeg4 and DVC Pro HD footage. FCP requires render as soon as the footage is put into a timeline (even with the correct format/compression setting) before preview is possible.”

Are you trying to edit MPEG4 on the timeline? That’s not an editing format.

If your timeline requires a render before previewing DVCProHD then your settings do not properly match your footage. To test this, open a new timeline and before doing anything else open Sequence — Settings and click on Load Sequence Preset and change to the proper DVCProHD setting. Now drop a peice of DVCProHD voideo on the timeline. Does it allow you to playback without rendering?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Bob Zelin]

your drives are not fast enough. You may have already noticed that a good portion of the advertisers on Creative Cow are storage companies. Know why – because everyone – including you, needs to spend A LOT of money on big, fast storage. Just look around right on this forum – there are SO MANY companies advertising their disk drives, that will resolve ALL of your problems.

So what should you buy – you should buy the largest, fastest disk drive that you can afford. If you are doing DVCProHD, you can “get away” with a G-Tech FW800 drive, but you should be using something faster. Perhaps a SATA or SAS/SATA solution, or a Fibre solution (which will cost a lot of money). You can click on all the banner ads, and see all of these companies products (including G-Tech’s) and see what is available, and then go onto the web, and check out prices from different mail order companies.

You can get an Intel MAC Pro, with FCP6, tons of RAM, and run every utility in the world, but until you get NEW DISK DRIVE STORAGE, you will continue to fail. You have a perfectly fine computer. Start shopping for some disk drives. Want some recommendations – they are right in front of you on this page.

Bob Zelin

[Christopher Nunn]

Both very helpful responses, thank you so much!

David, the ‘load sequence preset’ has solved all my DVC Pro HD problems-excellent. Do you have any recommendations on how to deal with my MPeg4 footage. (It’s in this format as I’ve had to rip it from DVD (using Handbrake),since it’s my only source of some documentary footage I’m editing).

Bob, the instruction to go and buy myself a decent storage system has been invaluable to me, many thanks! If you have the time to explain why the hard drive is the over-riding answer to my problems I’d be very grateful. I understand that in simple terms it’s all about shifting high data rates quickly – hence the need for a super fast drive – but where does processor power come in to the equation?

Thanks again
Chris

[David Roth weiss]

The key to your post was that you couldn’t preview even a single layer of DVCProHD without rendering. That’s invariably caused by a settings/footage mismatch. That’s a no-brainer, so evidently Bob has is head too deeply buried in user manuals today to spot the obvious.

So, you can disregard his bit about the hard drives. Althought as Bob knows, I do share his belief that firewire is best relegated only to backups and transporting files between facilities, nonetheless, firewire 800 can handle a few streams of DVCProHD.

As far as handbrake is concerned, put it in the trash heap… Ge yourself MPEG Streamclip, its free, and use it to rip DVDs to nay QT file type you need for your project.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Christopher Nunn]

Thanks David,

That’s very useful. What format do recommend converting the MPeg4/DVD footage to? I’d like to convert it to an equal format in terms of picture quality and avoid degrading the footage if I can).

Many thanks and apologies for the multiple posts,

Chris

[Bob Zelin]

of course the processor comes into play, but you only have so much money. People have been using existing older G5’s for even uncompressed HD for a long time, so there is no rush to go out an buy a new computer (but it can’t hurt – but it costs money).

Slow drive speeds are the majority of the problems when people start to work with compression codecs that have higher data rates (like DVCProHD, ProRes422HQ), and of course uncompressed HD. The higher the data rate, the faster your drives must move. Even the fastest single drives are not fast enough for most applications, and this is why you see all these RAID arrays being advertised. Even people with zero money can “get away” with sticking 2 internal drives in their MAC’s, and stripping them together, to get faster thruput.

I can go on a rant about “buy this, buy that” – but you already know good brands, and you can see other good brands right here on this page. Buying good, fast storage will instantly solve so many problems for you. People that want to continue using their small, slow single drives always suffer.

Last week, I got asked by a local TV station to come take a look at some issues they were having on their MAC/AJA I/O HD system (they wanted to simply capture off air 720p material at DVCProHD). They were just using applications like Virtual VTR, and AJA VTR Xchange (no FCP). But the comptuer was an iMAC (not a tower) with the internal drive. And when I started to tell them that they were crazy, and they needed a faster drive array they responed that “Joe T#$%@#$ from Apple told them that the iMAC would be fast enough for this application” !!!!!!! And this is a station that owns 5 normal FCP system towers with Apple XServe RAID storage, and XSAN. So even the “experts” at Apple are idiots.

Buy some drives.

Bob Zelin

[David Roth weiss]

[Christopher Nunn] “What format do recommend converting the MPeg4/DVD footage to?”

It all depends on the other footage I’m cutting it in with. The gerat thing about MPEG Streamclip is that it does a darned good job at ripping at whatever you tell it to rip to. It doesn’t degrade at all. In your case, you are limited because of your hard drive throuhghput, so DV50 is a good choice.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Kevin Monahan]

Bob,
Someone at the Apple Store or someone on the iPod team probably gave that advice. Anyone in ProApps would have never recommended an iMac for serious production.

Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Bob Zelin]

did you see how I wrote Joe T#$%@#$ from Apple in my response ? It is someone from the pro apps group, and I know who it is. I am sure that cow management doesn’t want to get into a pissing match, and if I were to name names (it is Joe T), all that would happen would be a “pointing match” where someone would say “I didn’t say that”. This is what my client – DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS of the local network affiliate was told by Apple.

Bob Zelin

[Kevin Monahan]

Wow. Really? I am surprised. My bad.

Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro