Why is FCP5 so sluggish???

[Bret Williams]

Runs nothing but better on my trusty dual 1ghz g4. I’m not running tiger yet though. Are these systems running tiger?

[Toby Angwin]

Yep, all running tiger, and 4.5 was all fine on my dual 1gig too. They’ve busted them back to 4.5 where they can but due to how the new components paly with each other you can’t do that for everything.

All system updates, permisions repaired, FSCK’ed, the works. All the systems have the Nvidia 6800 mega card. It’s definitely FCP, which is a pity. I think this adds to my feelings that they should split off a final cut for the the wedding/corperate video, low end broadcast crowd that are the majority of the market, and have a final cut for serious cutting and online, call it Final Cut Pro Pro. What do you think.

Toby Angwin
Director/ Editor
Soup Kitchen Films
Australia

[Andy Mees]

Hi Toby

sorry to hear you’re having some trouble there.
i don’t know if this makes it better or worse, but i can tell you that we have 33 FCP / G5 systems running both Panther+v4.5 and Tiger+v5 and none of them have the lag you describe.

does the lag appear only with specific codecs or only when dealing with high bitrates?

if you have any success in diagnosing the problem i’d love to hear … i’m freelancing today, and they have 4 G5 based Avid Adrenaline systems and they all have exactly the same lag as you describe, its a nightmare to work with. (in this instance i’m pretty sure they’re just poorly setup, i’ve never seen this on a PC based Adrenaline)

cheers
Andy

[Toby Angwin]

Hi Andy

I did only notice it when I worked in 10bit uncompressed, my first job on the new box had been dv and it didn’t seem to happen. But the work guys noticed immediately with 8 and 10 bit SD. They have also noticed that the new scaling options (what ever that option about preserving or ditching your old render files is) that you kind of have to chose when upgrading a project don’t look as good as 4.5, and in fact don’t meet our standards for broadcast work.

And Avids poorly set up? Never! LOL

Cheers,

TOby

Toby Angwin
Director/ Editor
Soup Kitchen Films
Australia

[Jeremy Garchow]

I have been noticing some slowness if my sequences are set to “best” motion scaling, and there’s a bunch of motion control or pip or layers upon effects upon layers upon transitions and perhaps some massive still files in there as well. I render and everything returns to normal and actually seems quite speedier than fcp 4.5. Try turning your sequences to fastest (linear) and see if that improves performance (remember to turn back to best for a final render). Also, fastest is the way the FCP 4.5 handled it’s rendering so if your “work guys” liked the looks of 4.5 better than 5 then change to that option in your sequence settings. Remember that the new render settings apply to anything applied to the motion tab of clips, and not f/x or filters.

Jeremy

———–
G5 Dual 2Ghz <> 4GB RAM <> FCP 4.5 <> Kona 2

ATTO 42XS <> Huge Systems 1.25 TB 4105 Fibre

[Annaël Beauchemin]

I noticed that the vectorscope window slows down scrubbing noticeabily, even if it’s hidden behind another window.

[Bret Williams]

And overlays too of course. But I hope this lengthly discussion isn’t just because someone had overlays turned on!

[Toby Angwin]

Hi Jeremy,

Best is what we think is no longer up to scratch, and the lag problem happens when you put a single clip in a sequence and hit play, but nice troubleshooting.

Bret,

There are two answers to that,

1 No, anyway overlays only ever affected the responsiveness of things like colour corrections going out to the monitor.

2 No, I know what I’m talking about.

What do people think about having some sort of identifier in their Names or Profiles that kind of says:
Experienced user who doesn’t need the basics spelled out to them, if something has gone wrong they know what they are talking about.

That’s not directed at you Bret but I do think that so many discussions get needlessly bogged down in going over the basics instead of actually being constructive. I don’t want to sound ungrateful about the boards because they are the best tech support there is, but could we start an advanced user sub-forum like 2-pop has.

Cheers,

Toby

Toby Angwin
Director/ Editor
Soup Kitchen Films
Australia

[Annaël Beauchemin]

[Toby Angwin] ” but I do think that so many discussions get needlessly bogged down in going over the basics instead of actually being constructive.

It’s normal that ppl start by stating the obvious when responding to a problem like yours, since it’s both uncommon, relative and broad. There are lots of things that can influence performance. So the first logical steps are always to start with the obvious and procede by elinimation. And you know, even “advanced” may miss something obvious.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful about the boards because they are the best tech support there is, but could we start an advanced user sub-forum like 2-pop has. “

And then how do cut between advanced and not adavanced. This is community support, not a paid service where you can have expectations. I’m not sure where an “advanced” forum would go…

——-

As for your problem:

-Which kind of RAID are you using ? (driver issue?)
-Did you try disabling video output ? (this would rule out video card problems)
-Spotlight in Tiger does slowdown the system alot when it’s indexing, and sometimes it will index and then re-index for obscure reasons (my experience). Load up Activity Monitor and see if “mcs” (or whatever process) is using CPU time.
-Any third party plugins?
-Are you experiencing this lag on clips that have no filter? (RT processing does induce a small lag)
-Are your Viewer/Canvas set to fit to window and not overlapping any other window? (sorry for stating the obvious)
-Like Andy Mees has asked, are you using the Apple uncompressed codecs or something third party like blackmagic ?

[Toby Angwin]

Raids: Experienced it with 2 and 4 drive SATA Software Raid0 Stripes (Driverless) both apple and softraid. Infortrend SATA-FC Hardware Raid, again fairly driverless. Also if it were a raid or driver issue, the problem would be system wide and happen in the Quicktime player, it doesn’t.

Video Output makes no difference, on or off.

Spotlight would cause a random, unrepeatable pattern of events, this is constant. Every time you hit play it pauses for a second.

As I said this is happening when you drag a clip into a new sequence which by definition meant that there were no filters on it, it should also mean that RT has nothing to do with it as it should be a straight pass through. I also imported the clip as an animation codec clip and re-rendered it within FCP with the same playback results.

The windows are set to the standard view, and the toolbench is off (had that problem before). Overlays make no difference.

And finally, the footage is all Apple Uncompressed. Only 12 bit and very old footage would be anything else these days (unless people are bashing away with old cinewaves). The Excellent Blackmagic card defaults to the apple codec anyway but good point.

I had originaly assumed that it was my system because I had just added a Seritek External Raid (which I can’t reccomend highly enough) and thought it was that. I mentioned it in passing at work to find it was happening on every system there, all of them tricked out with Ultra 6800s and 4 or 5 Gigs of ram and Fibre Raids. I have no latency in shake for loading images or caching, all going off the same drives, or with the shake disk flipbook.

There is a similar thread on the Apple discussion boards but without the technical know how of here.

Cheers,

Toby

Toby Angwin
Director/ Editor
Soup Kitchen Films
Australia