screwey playback when clips are rendered with appleprores

[Richard Sanchez]

I would check your RAM, since 10 GB doesn’t sound evenly stacked. We recently had a MacPro with 10 GB of Ram. 4 2Gb modules, and 2 1 GB modules. Our problem was, the High Quality tab on RT Extreme was greyed out. When we removed the 2 1GB modules, we were able to play back at High Quality.

The other thing I’d like to know, is what is your raster size? Is is 1280×720 square pixels, or 1920×1080 square? Likewise, what is your sequence setting? Here’s another thing to try, we had playback issues with AE Pro Res quicktimes that were brought straight into Final Cut. When we pulled them into the Viewer and exported them straight as Pro Res quicktime movies and brought them back in, they played back fine when render. I don’t know why it worked, but it did.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Alex Elkins]

I’m assuming that most of what your using is DV video?? If you render out of AE as DV rather than ProRes you should find you aren’t getting jerky playback. I expect that the reason you are is that your 1tb drive is running slowly – is it quite full? Drives tend to slow down the fuller they get. It varies, but people seem to generally feel that over 75% capacity means it’s time to start archiving.

If I were you I’d want to set my sequence to ProRes, not DV, because any graphics and text you might be using will be affected quite badly by the DV compression. However, if that’s not an option, as I say, render DV from AE, and check how much space you have on your drive.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Richard Sanchez] “When we pulled them into the Viewer and exported them straight as Pro Res quicktime movies and brought them back in, they played back fine when render. I don’t know why it worked, but it did.”

What frame rate?

[Danny Perez-triana]

the ram was stacked in the only configuration that allowed the computer to read all 10gb. it took me a couple tries to get it past only reading 8gb.

my playback controls (unlimited, safe) are available but don’t seem to make a difference with the problem.

my sequence is set to 720x 486 square pixel, the pixel aspect ratio is ntsc-ccir 601/dv, aspect ratio is ntsc dv (3:2).

i could try exporting them as quicktime movies. my only reservation is that these shots have already been through the digital wringer so to speak, and i’d like to avoid compressing them again, even if it is at apple pro res. or does this really make a difference as far as generational loss goes?

also, did you export them straight from the viewer rather than dropping them in the timeline, to avoid this render issue? i’ve never done that. but i’ll give it a try.
thanks for your advice!

ignacio

dip

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Richard Sanchez] “23.976 at 1280×720.”

I’d hedge a small bet that the graphics were created @ 23.98 out of Ae instead of 23.976. It’s an easy and common mistake.

This could hold up for you too, Ignacio, if you are really working @ 24p and not 29.97.

jeremy

[Richard Sanchez]

23.976 at 1280×720. It was very strange, it only happened on one episode, even though the GFX where fine in previous and prior episodes. They were created using AE CS3 on a G5. For whatever reason, when they were exported from AE using ProRes(HQ), they stuttered, but when exported straight out of the viewer and brought back in, they worked fine.

It hasn’t happened at all this season, just last, so I hope I never have to see it again, but it was scary at the time!

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Danny Perez-triana]

so ultimately, you’re suggesting rendering out as dv, but have the sequence set to pro res?

is there a significant quality disparity between these two compressions?

i’m dealing with all dv footage (shot in 24p) and these ae clips are lots of composities and animations.

my tb drive has about 300gb left on it. i just recently started using it cause i previously had 5 external drives daisy chained together running into firewire 400. this was causing my playback to stop after a minute or two in the timeline cause “discs are too slow” error message. so i figured i would consolidate the drives and now have my old drives as a backup.

if it is a case of the drive being near capacity, would it be advantageous to keep all these final renders from ae, on my computer’s drive which has a lot of space and that way they wouldn’t be playing from the tb drive? i guess i would have to set the disc preferences to then include the mac hd as a scratch disc?

dip

[Tom Matthies]

Also check your sequence settings. A DV/DVCPro sequence will be 720×480, not 720×486. That could be causing some playback issues. If you want to use the sequence in the DV format, use the Easy Settings when setting your sequence. Also,your AE clips, when output as ProRes could be causinf issues when you try to play them back off of a single FW drive. If you are editing your video as DV, then export the clips from AE as DV also. That could help.
Tom

[Michael Gissing]

Sounds like a lot of mucking around with codec conversions for a simple workflow.

If I read you right you have DV footage @ 29.97 and you want to add in AE graphics and render in a nice codec for final. Here’s my basic workflow for that. Copy the DV sequence and drop into a 10 bit 29.97 uncompressed sequence. In AE output your graphics as Animation codec if you need the alpha channel or bog standard 10 bit uncompressed. Same frame rate as program if you want smooth graphics.

Drop AE material into FCP timeline, render and playout to tape. I do this all the time (in PAL so there might be an issue with 480 versus 486 pixels). I don’t see the need to use ProRes in SD as you are only using uncompressed for your final render and it runs on firewire 800.