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RAM Preview – Not realtime playback with BlackMagic Intesity Pro to monitor
I upgraded my computer recently, my old machine was about 5 years in age, it could only handle SD video, HD stressed it out.
I also have an iMac, about a year old. It handles HD video well, I have an attached Thunderbolt HDMI plasma monitor. Works well, but one of my co-workers uses it most of the time.
I recently purchased a new Dual Xeon Hexacore with 32 gigs of DDR3 ram, GeForce® GTX 650 Ti 2 gig video card, RAID drives.
My new machine has proven bothersome. Quicktime will not create h.264 files, possibly a limitation of the extra threads. Ram previews take 10+ seconds to start rendering (Yes multi processor is turned off, preView and cache files are on the raid, as well I have tried without disk cache).
The most bothersome is that my Intensity Pro video out card does not work realtime. I can RAM preview just fine only on the monitor, but I cannot RAM preview for clients on my Plasma. I was somewhat able to do this on my old machine, just in small bursts. My mac handles HD video well and it is an i7 with less ram and a smaller video card. I will happily replace the Intensity Pro if I can find a viable solution. I wrote Blackmagic and asked for another card or solution, they told me that “AE is not an editing program, so I should not expect realtime playback”. I call BS.
It is real hard for me to convince my clients that I can no longer provide what I ahve been providing now that I bought a larger faster machine. Does anyone have an alternate solution.
Or any additional thoughts on long ram preview delays (Multiproc is turned off)
Or a Quicktime h.264 solution. I have tried Adobe Video Encoder, Quicktime pro, AE, All crash on first frame of h.264 compression. All other compressions work fine (Avid, RED, windows, animation, etc) I am really pissed they are discontinuing this, as WMO cannot frame by frame advance like QT, and h264 is usually small enough and universally compatible enough to mail to my less tech savvy clients.
Thanks
Vince
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4 Replies
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[vince sidwell] “The most bothersome is that my Intensity Pro video out card does not work realtime. I can RAM preview just fine only on the monitor, but I cannot RAM preview for clients on my Plasma”
What are your video output settings? Do they match your composition? Have you selected “faster” or “more accurate?”
[vince sidwell] “Or a Quicktime h.264 solution. I have tried Adobe Video Encoder, Quicktime pro, AE, All crash on first frame of h.264 compression. All other compressions work fine (Avid, RED, windows, animation, etc) I am really pissed they are discontinuing this, as WMO cannot frame by frame advance like QT, and h264 is usually small enough and universally compatible enough to mail to my less tech savvy clients.”
Does it have to be via QuickTime? Adobe encodes much better h.264 in MP4 than QuickTime does in MOV, and the MP4 wrapper plays nicely cross-platform.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Thanks Walter,
Yeah, I have faster/Less accurate selected. And as for the output, I have tried all 3 options for the HD1080 (23.976->60) (8, 16 and RGB outputs.) My comp is 24P, 8 bit. This is typically how I work. None of the setting play realtime. In the control panel I have BM settings as hd1080p 30 and no output processing. This is similar to my old machine.
As for Quicktime, unfortunately, the .mp4 does not play on some clients machines. I have tried with and without changing the ending to be .mov and they still cannot play the files. This includes my sound guy, who should be better equipped.
The .mp4 is a smaller file, I would use it happily if I could.
Thanks
Vince -
Thanks Dave but… The new machine is a PC. FCPX does not run on PC’s..
I have FCPX and an iMac, but I have a coworker using it. I have a small company, startup and initial growth is killing me. Really hating these growing pains. I thought I was upgrading and getting more efficient.
I have to kick him off the iMac just to compress files. Actually, I still have my old machine as a render box, Now I am remoting into it, and using my Old version of cs5 Video Encoder to encode. But this is a MAJOR hassle. The old workstation makes alot of noise and heat, I prefer to only fire it up when rendering from Maya.
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[vince sidwell] “Yeah, I have faster/Less accurate selected. And as for the output, I have tried all 3 options for the HD1080 (23.976->60) (8, 16 and RGB outputs.) My comp is 24P, 8 bit. This is typically how I work. None of the setting play realtime. In the control panel I have BM settings as hd1080p 30 and no output processing. This is similar to my old machine.”
Does it go faster if you disable previews to the desktop while previewing to the video device?
Are you using color management?
[vince sidwell] “As for Quicktime, unfortunately, the .mp4 does not play on some clients machines. I have tried with and without changing the ending to be .mov and they still cannot play the files. This includes my sound guy, who should be better equipped. The .mp4 is a smaller file, I would use it happily if I could.”
Does QuickTime itself work if you use it to encode from a lossless intermediate to H.264 MOV? Or maybe MPEG Streamclip (which has batch capabilities)?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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