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XDCam footage in FCP
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I think it’s important for everyone who is tracking this issue to be fully aware that the issue is only occurring on Mac Pro towers. We have no problem cutting XDCAM on G5s and Mac Book Pros, but every single Mac Pro is a complete disaster. There are also plenty of posts from other people in similar threads who have no problem cutting XDCAM on MacBook Pros.
This appears to be confusing the issue, and has led to suggestions regarding disk and directory maintenance, which have so far helped noone who has reported the problem.
The issue is almost certainly Mac Pro hardware related, possibly has something to do with the ECC buffered memory. In the terminal a large number of memory allocation errors are reported directly before a crash.
I’m a bit surprised that such a serious issue is still occurring, as evidenced in various threads many people with serious fcp troubleshooting experience have tried and failed to fix this problem.
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The camera we used for this footage was a brand new EX-3. I don’t know if that makes much of a difference, but I am hearing from people who used the EX-1 media files with no issues whatsoever, and a handful of people using the EX-3 are having somewhat similar problems.
Roger
Roger C. Lansing
Multi-Media Production Coordinator
National Baseball Hall of FameCooperstown, NY
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To be precise there are four different XDCAM flavors;
– EX-1: 35 Mbps. Compressor: XDCAM EX.
– XDCAM HD CBR: 25 Mbps. Compressor: HDV
– XDCAM HD VBR: 35 Mbps. Compressor: XDCAM HD.
– XDCAM HD 422: 50 Mbps. Compressor: XDCAM HD 422.
I have a SONY EX-1 and so far I’ve only shoot in HQ so the files I get are XDCAM EX. I’ve never tried the SQ option. I guess that this one produce a kind of full raster HDV.An addition to my post above is this:
What we got out of the Sony EX-3 was
XDCAM HD CBR: 25 Mbps. compressor: HDVRoger
Roger C. Lansing
Multi-Media Production Coordinator
National Baseball Hall of FameCooperstown, NY
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We’ve been having almost the same exact issue on our MacPro system. It started when we tried to output our XDCAM HD timeline to a DVD file. Constant crashing. We’ve tried everything, from making the timeline ProRes (and two other codecs – crash crash, crash), to fixing permissions, and optimizing our system, etc., etc., etc. We can’t even get through a complete render of the project’s timeline without it crashing. Nothing is working. And we’re well past our ability to go back to the ingest stage.
Following some of the comments in this and other threads, we’ve tried this on a MacBook Pro, and it’s still happening. And now, I’m on yet a third computer (also a MacPro), and it’s still crashing.
I haven’t yet tried moving it to an internal SATA drive (relating to a possible speed-of-drive or connection cause), but I don;t think that will make much of a difference – we routinely edit ProRes HQ, which I believe is even more intensive a codec) on Firewire 800 drives.
The ONLY thing that has been “working” for us is a messy work-around: Isolate the smoothcam clips, render and save them as independent qicktime clips, and re-import there clips into the timeline. Yuck. And given this is for a final review DVD, it’s even less ideal – things may change, then some of this workaround will need to happen all over again.
This problem just started happening… we’ve been able to create DVD’s before directly from the XDCAM HD timeline (through Compressor, of course).
In investigating this further, including going back to previous versions of the edit, I am reasonably sure that for our situation it MAY have something to do with the addition of the smoothcam filter to several clips.
However, it could also be an XDCAM HD codec issue, or probably several other things that in combination cause this to happen.
Point is, it’s clear that this is not an isolated issue for us, and it’s not specifically indigenous to MacPro towers.
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[Piers McDonald] “The issue is almost certainly Mac Pro hardware related”
Why does it have to be hardware related? Why no finger pointing to the different software combinations out there that are probably just as varied as the hardware combos? I’ve being using a Mac Pro and my EX1 for almost a year now and have never had one crash while editing, rendering or exporting native EX files. Ever. I can’t believe that the EX3 stuff would be any different since it’s the exact same camera internally.
For the record my software versions are probably way behind the rest of you and it would seem that this is probably a good thing.
Mac Pro 3 Ghz dual core
Mac OS 10.4.11
QT v.7.3.1
Sony Transfer Tool v.2.5.1
Sony Clip Browser v.1.0
Final Cut Pro v.6.0.2 and no Pro Apps updates or any other FCS 2 updates since that time.I can edit using internal SATA drives or external RAID. Doesn’t seem to matter.
– Don
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[Tom Strodel] “we routinely edit ProRes HQ, which I believe is even more intensive a codec) on Firewire 800 drives. “
Correct. XDCAM EX is a 35 Mbits per sec. stream which is just above the lowest common denominator of DV25 (DV NTSC) which, as the name suggests, runs at 25 Mbits per sec. According to Apple’s White Paper on ProRes 422 the data streams for normal quality is 145 Mbits sec. and HQ is @ 220. The white paper goes on to say that more often than not the actual data streams for ProRes will be about 10% lower than advertised.
[Tom Strodel] “In investigating this further, including going back to previous versions of the edit, I am reasonably sure that for our situation it MAY have something to do with the addition of the smoothcam filter to several clips. “
The bug that causes smoothcam renders to be lost is a global thing and not restricted to editing XDCAM. I’m assuming that’s what you’re referring to about your troubles with the smoothcam filter.
– Don
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“The bug that causes smoothcam renders to be lost is a global thing and not restricted to editing XDCAM. I’m assuming that’s what you’re referring to about your troubles with the smoothcam filter.”
Don: No, I’m not specifically referring to the smoothcam renders being lost, but rather my suspicion that the smoothcam filter may be somehow related to my constant crashing problem. When I eliminate all other variables, the only thing I had added to my project was a bunch of smoothcam filters.
Tom
24fps Productions
New York City -
[Tom Strodel] “When I eliminate all other variables, the only thing I had added to my project was a bunch of smoothcam filters.”
Okay thanks for that, Tom. Yet another possible bug with Smoothcam I guess.
– Don
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After a weekend of endless crashes, I’m starting to work on a solution including:
– Media managing to a pro-res targeted sequence
– transcoding all media-managed media to ProRes
– Trying again.
This will at least remove the XDCAM HD as a variable.
I’ll report back.
Tom
24fps Productions
New York City -
Sorry that I have been absent from the board here lately, but there is a good reason. I am putting the finishing touches on the project that has been holding me up for two and a half weeks with various XDCam issues. After much discussion with Apple Tech Support, a solution was offered about installing internal HDs and editing off of those instead of off of the external RAID. This didn’t actually work until I disconnected the Mac Pro’s fiber channel card. Not sure why that solved my issue, but I have been editing now for 6 days straight, pushing the FC Studio system as hard as I can to get this project done under deadline, and not a single hiccup in the system. I moved all of the media off of the external RAID and onto the internal drives and I am going to get this done and delivered before the initial deadline, despite all of the setbacks. I can’t explain why this fixed it, but I would love some theories, if anyone has them.
Have a great holiday weekend, at least those that celebrate. I give thanks to this great board full of experts and people willing to share from their experiences.
Roger
Roger C. Lansing
Multi-Media Production Coordinator
National Baseball Hall of FameCooperstown, NY
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