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XDCAM EX (35Mb/s) rendering performance – best system ideas?
Hi, I’ve been looking around the forums trying to get information that’ll help me make a decision on which way to jump in getting some gear that’ll speed up my workflow.
I’m shooting and editing almost exclusively XDCAM EX 35MB/s using ProRes for renders and it’s just too slow with my current setup which is;
MBP 2.16 Core 2 Duo
3GB RAM
250GB Lacie 7200 External HDD – via FW800
1.5GB Western Digital Ext HDD in RAID 1 mode (for non-timecode media) – via FW800This setup worked fine when I was cutting mostly SD but since everything I do now is 1080p25, you can imagine it’s a bit slow.
Here’s what I need:
Less lag in the timeline
Faster renders
Faster exports
Safe data
ExpandabilityMy budget is AU$7000.
I’m thinking of going for this:
Refurbished Mac Pro (Quad 2.66): AU$3800
8GB RAM: AU$200
eSATA RAID (5) system AU$1500
Some kind of video I/O / accelerator (KONA/Blackmagic/Matrox) AU$ 1500Any suggestions on I/Os, other solutions? Better ideas?
Thanks in advance,
Sean
Sean McPhillips
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4 Replies
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Have you tried turning off “full” on the renders? I think that forces a conform.
In my minor EX experience, turning that setting off returned the system to normal operations I was used to with DV and SD renders.
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Your proposed system specs look good. I’d definitely vote for the Kona card above the other options you listed. You’re definitely doing the right thing by getting rid of the Firewire 800 drives and moving to eSATA. RAID 1 is also slowing down your disk I/O speed to a certain extent. An eSATA RAID 5 storage solution should be a big improvement in throughput speed over your current setup.
You might also want to consider transcoding your XDCAM EX footage to ProRes prior to creating a new FCP project, and then working ProRes sequences instead of XDCAM EX sequences with ProRes rendering. It might help with the timeline lag and slow export times you’re experiencing.
Uncompressed HD requires the least amount of CPU overhead for editing and rendering, but requires much beefier storage performance (around 350MB/sec. for editing HD comfortably) and a lot more storage space.
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Thanks guys,
Is there likely to be any advantage in going to a dual Quad-core 2.16 Mac Pro over the single quad? I’ve heard a bit about the future proofing value of 8 cores but is this likely to be a great advantage in FCP?
As for turning off full renders – doesn’t it need to be a full render before export? Easy enough to test I suppose.
Cheers,
Sean
Sean McPhillips
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I think it needs to be full for export, but why do that for every little edit change? Multiplies your rendering like 5 times. Very annoying.
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