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sluggish response in final cut
using a lacie 1T external wth FW 800 and no other FW devices, using quad G5 with latest Final Cut
editing is sluggish and frustraiting, with 8bit footage, I’m storing the project and footage on the drive, is that an issue?
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2 Replies
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It depends on a lot of factors, such as codec, number of tracks in use, what you consider “Sluggish” (i.e. compared to what?), number of filters and the filters themselves.
Are you attempting to use 8-bit uncompressed off a single FireWire 800 disk? If so, you need to read the following web pages from Blackmagic’s web site: https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=61, even if you don’t use a Decklink card. Notice that it doesn’t even mention FireWire drives.
What is even more important to understand is https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=30. Notice that Uncompressed 8-bit NTSC requires a sustained read rate of at least 20MB/sec per stream. Which is about the speed I get from the FireWire 800 disk on my desk. So, to do a cross dissolve is going to require at least 40MB/sec and if you are compositing multiple tracks, then the requirements just keep stacking up.
Since you have a Quad G5, you should be able to add another internal 3.5″ disk to the existing one, or add a SATA PCI-e expansion card and use at least two or more external SATA drives RAIDed together for speed (and possibly reliability). Or you could buy a PCI-e SCSI card and attach some RAIDed SCSI disks instead.
It looks like you will have to spend some money to get adequate performance on your system if you want to use 8-bit uncompressed – are you sure you can’t do this with an compressed format?
Bill Lee
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Project should be on your system drive of course. But sounds to me like you’re overtaxing a FW800 drive.
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