Punks and perfection — The instability debate

[Shane Ross]

One of the BIG issues here is that Final Cut Pro can be installed on any mac. But the configuration can very greatly. It can be a MacPro, a G5, a G4, a G4 powerbook. a macBook Pro, iMac….list goes on. And every system can have a vast variety of hardware: RAM manufacturer, graphics card, attached hard drives and possible RAID controllers, internal hard drive types.

Then comes Software. What besides FCP is installed? Many people use their FCP setups for more than just editing. Many if not most of us without issues have machines set up ONLY for FCP, and have separate machines for internet and mail and all sorts of widgets and small applications. Who knows what people have on their machines that conflict. Also, version of the OS and QT factor greatly.

Then the human element. Since FCP is so open, there are often several ways to accomplish things. The issues might arise from the steps you are doing to accomplish a certain task. And there really is no way to know for sure what you are doing without being there. You might type in your issue, but then leave something out. I know that I am surely guilty of that. I was given a suggestion to solve something, and I said I did it, when in fact, I DIDN’T. And I did leave out details that I didn’t feel were important.

I have been on Avid systems that were LOCKED…most avid systems were locked. SPECIFIC hardware, very specific OS version. And you are forbidden fro updating anything…because if you stray off the path of the working system, then you can suffer issues.

There are many factors, so when people say they are trying to do something and blame FCP and say that it is buggy and never worked, and we say it works fine for us…time to look at ALL these factors.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
My normally stable DV-PAL FCP 5.1.4 edit system has just yesterday suffered repeatedly from the General Error rendering failure after a couple of minutes rendering a long timeline.
Its a repeatable failure, so I’ll add the info here:-

It happens when I try to transcode WMV low res files off a website into PAL DV, on the timeline. I only have the free WMV player component, and using QuickTime Player or MPEG Streamclip’s Export function puts a watermark on the transcode, which doesn’t happen using FCP’s timeline.

The reason I’m doing this is I have access to the DigiBeta master tapes, but not at the weekend, but as the archive is all online at low res, I tried a quick transcode to DV-PAL to allow cutting in the WMV clips as a temporary offline, to be replaced on Monday.

These WMV clips don’t have a stable frame-rate, and and are variable-rate compressed audio.
So:
Either the codec, or the unstable frame-rate, or the compressed audio, or all three, is flipping FCP 5.1.4’s render-engine stability.

I would guess that the same factors may well be causing the problem for the people who are experiencing this failure with ‘proper’ clips.

[David Roth weiss]

[PaulD] “It happens when I try to transcode WMV low res files off a website into PAL DV, on the timeline. I only have the free WMV player component, and using QuickTime Player or MPEG Streamclip’s Export function puts a watermark on the transcode, which doesn’t happen using FCP’s timeline.”

Paul,

First, WMV is highly unusual media for most folks to be editing. FCP was not designed to edit media that is a web distribution format and it simply requires that you convert to an editable QT media format before editing on the timeline. That should not be viewed as a shortcomimg, bug, or design flaw in FCP, its simply not a feature.

Can you be more specific please, what is the watermark that QT Pro and Streamclip add to your clip?

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™

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

[Shane Ross]

[PaulD] “It happens when I try to transcode WMV low res files off a website into PAL DV, on the timeline. I only have the free WMV player component, and using QuickTime Player or MPEG Streamclip’s Export function puts a watermark on the transcode, which doesn’t happen using FCP’s timeline.”

PRIME example of people doing something that isn’t optimal on FCP. Especially WMV pulled off a website. That means that it was encoded for DELIVERY…for viewing on the web. WMV files are not typically editable, and especially on FCP AVI is the typical PC editing format…WMV is delivery format only, so of course you are having issues.. There might be PC software out there designed for this, but that is a very UN-TYPICAL use of FCP.

There is another post on this forum about capturing DV footage from an HVX-200 camera…the user attempted to capture it as DV-50, when it isn’t a DV50 format…is is a DV-25 or DV/NTSC format. USER ERROR.

I notice that easily over half of the questions posed are by people not familiar with the edit system or the capablities or doing something the system isn’t designed to do.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Colin Mcquillan]

[David Roth Weiss] “Can you be more specific please, what is the watermark that QT Pro and Streamclip add to your clip? “

I believe he is referring to the “Flip-For-Mac” quicktime plugin. It gives quicktime the ability to play WMV files, and export .mov’s, ect… from WMV files.

The playability component is free, you have to pay for the ability to export. Otherwise any .mov’s you export will have a flip-for-mac watermark on it.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver BC

[Cory Caplan]

Something that seems lost on many of those who say “I don’t have any problems” is that even with similarly configured machines, people use FCS VERY, VERY differently. I’m pretty sure if I was only doing A/B cuts with dissolves, everything would be perfect for me.

The fact is, most of my instability comes when doing something complex– the documented issues (Motion integration, etc.) push many facets of the software, multiple FCS apps working together, complex openGL/ cpu interaction, multi-threading or lack there of, hardware IO (kona etc.) all working in conjunction. And yes, all of this moving together with changing QT spec.

My earlier frustration (again, not aimed in anyone in particular, especially not you, the reader who is about to get offended) is that it can turn into a vicious cycle of the following dialog:

“I’m having a problem with XXXX.”
“I’m not having any problems at all with XXXX, it must be something you’re doing.”
“Well, specifically, I’m doing XXXX when YYY is happening, are you doing the same thing?”
“I don’t see why you would want to do XXXX with YYY at the same time, you shouldn’t want to do that, so therefore it’s your fault.”
“Screw you.”
[explosion of ZZZZ]

I really do appreciate those who contribute– I’m way to n00b here to help out, I realize I take more than I give, and I’m grateful to those who contribute so much and make this forum a great resource.

One of the reasons I (inadvertently, I swear!) touched off some recent discord was that I was soliciting opinions on OS upgrade, when a small aside derailed the conversation. As I stated then, if this were Windows/Avid I would wait a LONG time until the company came forward and said “It’s okay to upgrade now.” Because they’re different companies.

The reason that I’m so anxious for Leopard is that I’m hoping (praying) that FCS 2 was designed to be used with Leopard– as others have mentioned, Leopard was originally supposed to ship at the same time as FCS 2, so I think it’s reasonable to suspect that they may have been designed to work in concert from the beginning. I’m hoping that leopard will sooner, rather than later make FCS MORE STABLE, not less.

I am also very anxiously anticipating “Time Machine.” As others have stated, AVID has been very finicky on Windows with respect to the Quicktime version, OS upgrades, etc, etc, however the company PROVIDES you with that sort of information. (Which QT version, etc.) Also, on windows, it’s possible to uninstall updates without reinstalling the OS (risking a flamebait, I can’t believe that updates are one way on OS X– what hubris to assume the fixes will always work and won’t break things! breaking nudge in Motion, for example) I can’t wait until time machine lets me backrev an OS or QT update that wrecked my system in some unexpected way.

I asked what the opinions were, based on those who “lived through the last one” I searched, but was unable to find tiger-related (specific) discussion. I’m sure there were lots of related discussions happening at the time, but there were no major “upgrade results” threads I could find near the date of the release.

Based on those who responded to the actual question, I’m going to ‘bide my time’ and wait.

Apple is very slow to update its support information on the website with respect to FCP, and has a “radio silence” policy when it comes to any full-duplex interaction with the FCS dev team, and I think this is bunk. As many issues I had with AVID over the past few years, they have made very decent strides in giving users (especially power users, like those who are in this forum for FCP) access to Avid employees, and a somewhat direct line to company, even those who don’t pay for support.

Two years running at the AVID event at NAB, they flooded it with actual AVID engineers, technicians and designers.

I don’t think some interns anonymously videotaping you at the FCPUG meeting comes close. Frankly, it’s no different than the anonymous feedback form. Maybe they’ll pay attention, maybe they won’t. In any case, they’ll never tell.

We only hurt ourselves when we degenerate into fingerpointing (and yeah, I can be guilty of this too.) Maybe we can come up with a way of focusing our energies on getting a real dialog with the FCP dev team, rather than tearing each other to shreds so there’s no focus, and only the most glaring, obvious bugs get addressed.

I have a constructive idea. Maybe somebody at the COW could come up with a user-admined WIKI or KB where bugs are documented and users can comment on them and vote or something– a database of “bugs” that is much quicker than the very-slow to respond apple technotes. It would have menus asking OS/QT/FCS version info, descriptions on where to find that stuff, configuration info, other popular apps/ hardware etc.. Basically a user-driven, more detailed version of the FCP feedback system… Issues could be given “grades” based on number of users with the same issue, etc.. Any issue with 2 or more users reporting would be given a case number, and in some wiki fashion, users would be able to link similar issues. Anyone agree? I’ll even pledge $100 donation towards development of such a system.

Cory

[Mike Parfit]

Thanks for the reply.

These comments seem right on the money, but they are kind of directed at people who haven’t used FCP long or who are just dabbling in this. However, what I’m grappling with, and I think most of the professionals who have this problem are grappling with, is systems that we think are already optimized for FCP. Both my systems that have instability are completely dedicated FCP systems. NOTHING else on them, including additional plugins. (Colorista has been on the system briefly, but there were no changes either when it was installed, or removed, and the only other things I have are Onyx and FCP Rescue.) So my system is much cleaner than that of many of the people whose systems work fine.

The odd thing is that the one computer in my office that does do multiple tasks — our Macbook Pro, which even runs Windows with VMware Fusion — does NOT have the same instability problems.

To me the FCP program, certainly by version 6, should work flawlessly with other legitimate programs on the system, and should work well with any techniques that editors bring to it, UNLESS it forewarns us not to do certain things. In other words, if setting a parameter to, let’s say, play 36 audio tracks real time, is likely to lead to crashes, inform us of that. Or if using HDV in a 1-hour timeline (which I have done) is risky, say so.

What I’m looking for is something of this nature that I think may be causing these situations. I have tried to eliminate things like this by experiment by comparing the stability of our Macbook Pro to the others, and so far the only thing that highly reduces the crashing is the removal of the Kona 3. However, the crashing still does occur during renders, but at much reduced intervals, so it’s apparent that the hiccup in FCP or in my configuration that brings these things on is only made worse by the Kona, not CAUSED by it.

So the mystery continues. I, too, hope Leopard may improve things, but I’m sure not counting on that one. Leopards are quiet, ghostly creatures in the forest with many ideas in their heads that they seldom share, and a taste for the blood of the careless; best be wary.

Thanks,

Mike

[Cory Caplan]

[SHANE #1]PRIME example of people doing something that isn’t optimal on FCP.

[SHANE #2]There might be PC software out there designed for this, but that is a very UN-TYPICAL use of FCP.

[SHANE #3]There is another post on this forum about capturing DV footage from an HVX-200 camera…the user attempted to capture it as DV-50, when it isn’t a DV50 format…is is a DV-25 or DV/NTSC format. USER ERROR.

[SHANE #4]I notice that easily over half of the questions posed are by people not familiar with the edit system or the capablities or doing something the system isn’t designed to do.

(PaulD, I give a suggestion at the bottom for a fix/workflow/workaround for this)

Shane, this is exactly the sort of ‘punk’ behavior I was talking about. You didn’t help the guy, he made it very clear in his post that this was a stopgap measure, and you have exhibited that PRECISE cult-of-mac attitude which drives people like me insane.

You responded simply what– to make him feel bad?

Let me address, one by one, what is wrong with this attitude, and your post, since this seems to be lost on you.

Shane #1) You’re right, this is not an optimal practice on FCP. I agree with you 100% here. But did you give him a workaround? No, you proceeded to tear him down for several paragraphs.

Shane #2)So, you say it’s a “UN TYPICAL” use for FCP. Again, I agree with you 100% here. It’s un-typical, but that doesn’t make it wrong, or invalid. I’ll give you a perfect example of how this would be a great “typical” use. What if you had an application you were doing tutorials or demos for, and you wanted to do these in FCP. What if it was a windows application? WMV has a fantastic “screen” video encoder which is made for just this purpose, and FCP’s mixed-resolution timeline (should) be a perfect match for this– You’re doing your video, and anytime you want to show/zoom in to the application, you pop the video into your timeline and go. If you used the aforementioned WMV components for QT, this would be a perfectly valid (and great) use in FCP– Untypical, sure, but not INVALID. You are treating him as though he asked for something FCP should not do.

I posit that it should be able to do this. Do I blame apple if it doesn’t work properly? Of course not, it relies on 3rd party codecs which haven’t shown themselves to be particularly stable.

Frankly his ACTUAL use is a valid one– to use these offline web clips as standins to edit with… What he ACTUALLY wants to do is very valid.

Shane #3) Straw Man argument Shane. Somebody else had a setting wrong and you’re comparing him to this guy? Two entirely different things. One had his settings wrong, and this guy wants to do something you don’t consider typical. Not only did it not support your post, it makes you look just mean by implying this user is ignorant, just like another user who had his settings wrong.

[edited to reply directly] After I posted this, I saw the thread you referenced directly under this. If you read the thread in order, you’ll see that he originally tried DV25, and then switched to DV50 after finding the PDF on HVX200 workflow.

APPLE’S DOC DOES SAY THIS:

480i 60/480p 30 DV-NTSC or DV50-NTSC

and does not distinguish between recording data rates. Unless you are very familiar with the myriad of recording formats, you wouldn’t know the implication here. You can record 480i 60/480p 30 in EITHER DV25 or DV50 on that camera. Apple does not make the distinction in that document. If you knew that about the camera, yeah, you would logically assume to set it on the appropriate setting– in his case he recorded to tape, so it HAD to be DV-NTSC- and his 1st guess was right (I have no idea why he had dropped frames) In his continued troubleshooting, he found the document, and tried the DV50 preset, which, based on Apple’s chart was a reasonable assumption to make, if you don’t know all the underlying data rates.

From his first post “I thought it would just be a straight DV NTSC setup but when I hook up it complains about drop frames.” He got the right setting the first time.

But you didn’t take the time to find that out, you’d rather add it to your “Users are idiots” arsenal. Is it likely he has a problem with his configuration or process, rather than a bug? Almost assuredly, but’s not a “USER ERROR” of picking a wrong setting.

So, basically, instead of helping the guy in his own thread, you came here to use his so-called “USER ERROR” as a straw man argument. Classy.

(Shane #4)Yeah, lots of n00bs. Is that a surprise in a HELP forum? If they run into a perceived tehncial problem, they come here instead of the ‘beginners’ forum. Yeah, they may be doing it the wrong way– so if you’re going to reply, tell them the right way to do it– or a workaround, or whatever, don’t just jump in to tell them they’re idiots.

Finally, you, Shane, are not the gatekeeper on what FCP “is and isn’t supposed to do.” What this guy requests, in a very general way IS something that FCP is supposed to do, as far as I can tell– put a mixed-resolution clip of a type that can be handled in a QT wrapper into the timeline. Should he be able to edit it in RT? No, that’s an unreasonable request, but an “open resolution” timeline should (theoretically) be able to playback, or at the very least render a quicktime file that the OS plays back.

Here is my response to the OP, maybe you can take a note of one way to respond, providing some help, without just piling on to demean the guy.

PaulD, the WMV components plugin is a commercial app written by a 3rd party, and as such, might be a bit flaky when it comes to interacting with apps other than straight playback. Also, it has built in mechanisms to prevent using their free plugin from being used for purposes which they’ve designated as “pay” features (such as import/export)

I regularly use the AVID codec in my FCP timelines, and it works fine for rendered stuff, but not for RT performance. Whether this is purposely done by AVID or Apple, I have no idea. I’ve found that sometimes the best practice is to take these in through compressor (which I also use to transcode XVID AVIs with Perian) to a format FCP can deal with naitively in RT, DV or whatever. I don’t see any reason as to why this wouldn’t work with the WMV files. Obviously, you’d want to use whatever format your sequence was for best results.

I have purchased the WMV components (PRO HD) and In the latest version of FCP, I can drop WMV videos onto my timeline, and they’re scaled fine, requiring a (red bar) render.. Obviously you wouldn’t want to use these as a standard-practice for video, but if you need to get WMV into your timeline, this works for me.

Obviously, I’m not using the exact same compression settings you are, but I think the variable framerate etc, calls for transcoding, rather than using your timeline… with an older version of FCP with a newer WMV plugin, I think you’re asking for trouble here.

If you’re just using them as standins, I would think the watermarks wouldn’t make any difference, as you’ll be onlining them anyway. If you need them for production work, I would highly recommend paying for the plugin. The assumption is that this work would be paid, and your budget should reflect any costs associated with dealing with WMV format.

But, I would try compressor before making any purchasing decisions.

Gosh, Shane, that wasn’t too hard was it? Yeah, your post might have been more on-topic than Paul’s, but you are EXACTLY demonstrating my original “Punks” comment– right in this very thread that somebody else posted. (Or were you being ironic and I missed it?)

My point is not to continue the flamewars. All I’m asking for is a little introspection. There is something very unique to Apple culture that I’ve never experienced anywhere else with such a high % of users– A defensiveness/accusator tone, where every attack on XXX Apple product is taken personally, and the accuser is called an idiot, (politely or not) or is laughed at, berated, accused of trying to do something Apple never intended… Why?

I think I know one of the answers. The cult of Mac fell in love with Apple however long ago, and does’nt like being ‘the minority,’ especially when many Mac users feel their product is SO superior. I think it’s human nature to feel this way about being an outsider. One of the instinctive reactions of the Mac crowd is to become ultra-elitist… Trying to turn the (now fast-growing) small marketshare into a positive– “Only we smart people are mac users.” And those which threaten any facet of Mac superiority complex must be destroyed.

I don’t know if this is your issue here, Shane– I’m not accusing you of being this hardline, but it is AN issue that I’ve seen repeated over and over through the macosphere. And it’s typified by the conformist attitude of attacking the “UN TYPICAL” Don’t help them find a way to make it work– or find out what they’re trying to do– just attacking them for non-conforming.

Mac users often fail to see that Apple, and many Apple users, not Wintels, in 2007 much more represent that Dystopia in that 1984 Mac commercials. It’s “Think Different” But only if you think EXACTLY LIKE US.

And this is coming from someone who’s #1 daily visited website these days is tuaw.com. I’m not trying to knock you down Shane, I’m just trying, desperately, to make some cult-of-Mac’ers see the irony here.

[edited to specifically respond to HVX-200 thread reference]

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Hey David and Shane, I’m not having an ‘issue’ here, all I was commenting on is that ‘General Error’ rendering bug others are experiencing, well I can conjure it up anytime, as described.

So anyone getting ‘General Error’ for appropriate-media FCP editing might be able to benefit from my analysis that its caused (in my case) by out-of-kilter media-asset parameters, and not by the FCP itself.

Since MPEG Streamclip did the transcode fine, I’m in a go situation untiI get the DigiBeta masters tomorrow…
Cheers

[Dave Jenkins]

[Mike Parfit] “I have completely changed my hard drive storage systems. In addition, my problems are identical across both hardware (G-5 to MacPro) and software (FCP 5 to FCP 6) updates and upgrades. Also, ALL the other software on my systems, including Compressor, which does the same things with codecs that seem to cause FCP to crash, are absolutely stable.”

Mike, are you saying you have had the same problems in FCP 5 and FCP 6? I have looked back at your posts and I have a G5 Quad and a Macbook Pro 2.66 both with 4 gigs of ram. I don’t know why my system works fine and your doesn’t. But some problems can’t be solved in a forum. If you can’t get answers here then you need to bring someone into your facility to go through your systems. Not someone from the local Mac shop who says he knows FCP. You need someone who builds these systems to help you. We ran FCP 5.1.4, Kona LHe on OS X 10.4.8 with QT 7.12 with very very few problems.

Dave