Alan Okey
5
COW Coins
2
DaVinci Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[David Roth Weiss] “Oh so cruel… It must be the cold weather January and associated cabin fever? “
Your analysis is sound. Hey, we’re not all fortunate enough to live in sunny SoCal!
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Wherever it is, I’ll bet it’s right next to the star iris and kaleidoscope effects…
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[Craig Seeman] “If it all comes down to “flavor” of the day, I find 60 pictures a second tastier. Maybe I’m just part of a small group of people who prefer mustard instead of ketchup on my fries. “
You’re right, it’s all about “flavor” and the psychology of aesthetics. To my eye, 60p = “live” or “soap opera.” 24p looks more romanticized and detached, more filmic.
It’s probably just psychological conditioning, but a temporal resolution of 60fps appears cheesy and live to me – I would find it distracting to watch a big budget dramatic feature shot in 60p. I don’t want it to appear live.
Clearly, 60p is superior for sports events and a live look. For dramatic material, I don’t think a greater temporal resolution is necessarily an improvement. I think it’s precisely the detached, romanticized quality of a lower temporal resolution that gives film much of its aesthetic appeal.
Just my opinion.
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The ideal web delivery codec is h.264, the latest revision of the MPEG4 standard. It provides great image quality at small file sizes. Unfortunately, Windows Media player doesn’t support it.
I’ve given up trying to please Microsoft. I just encode all of my videos as Quicktime .mov files using h.264 and tell the client to install the freely downloadable Quicktime Player on their PC. I’ve never had anyone complain about doing this. Your results may vary.
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A word on Windows Media player and MPEG4, taken from Microsoft’s Windows Media Player support pages:
“Windows Media Player does not support the playback of the .mp4 file format. You can play back .mp4 media files in Windows Media Player when you install DirectShow-compatible MPEG-4 decoder packs. DirectShow-compatible MPEG-4 decoder packs include the Ligos LSX-MPEG Player and the EnvivioTV.”
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/316992
Microsoft only pays lip service to supporting open standards. In actuality, they want the whole world to use Windows Media formats. As long as you play by Microsoft’s rules, they’re happy.
Probably your best bet at this point is to encode everything to Flash video, as it is supported on both Windows and Mac OS. Unfortunately Flash is not an open standard either, but but’s the closest thing we have to a de facto open standard because so many people have never installed Quicktime on their PCs.
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[Michael Hancock] “Is Compressor multicore aware?”
Compressor is absolutely, positively multicore aware. That’s the main reason to use it versus exporting from FCP.
Search the forum for “cluster” or “virtual cluster” for all the juicy details.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Do not buy RAM or hard drives from Apple as the mark up is insane. “
Yes and no.
Looking at the recent specs, this seems to be somewhat improved, at least if you merely up the spec of the standard config.
For example, the stock Mac Pro ships with 6x1GB modules. To get to 12GB using 6x2GB modules, you’d have to spend over $400 for third party RAM, replacing the standard RAM (6x1GB) with larger DIMMS. If you order your Mac Pro with 12GB installed (6x2GB), it’s only an additional $300.
Upping the stock drive to 1TB adds $100, not so bad.
However, $300 for each additional 1TB drive is highway robbery.
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There are many opinions about the best way to encode FLV files. Some people say that you can simply encode an h.264 .mov and change the extension to .flv and it will play back in Flash player. I haven’t tried this myself.
Since I never encode Flash video, I’m really not familiar with all of the available options or plugins for encoding .flv files.
I do know that Telestream’s Episode Encoder does Flash:
https://www.telestream.net/episode/overview.htm
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I would recommend the AJA Kona LHi over any of the Blackmagic cards.
https://www.aja.com/products/kona/kona-lhi.php
Here’s a good primer on RAID:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
The point of using a RAID is to increase the speed at which data can be transferred to and from the storage volume. Why is this relevant? Because the speed of your storage directly impacts the performance you can expect in Final Cut Pro. The faster your storage is, the more realtime performance (ability to play back without the need to render first) you will experience from FCP. Having fast storage also allows you to play back more simultaneous streams of video or work with higher quality formats and codecs without fear of dropping frames. Fast storage is one of the factors most greatly impacting the overall smoothness and responsiveness of editing in Final Cut Pro.
When a RAID-0 volume is configured, data is written (or read) across 2 or more drives simultaneously, increasing the speed at which data can be transferred. If one drive should fail, all data on the volume would be irretrievably lost. The actual drives themselves (other than the drive that failed) would be fine. RAID-0 is an inexpensive way to add performance, but carries with it the need for regular backups or confidence that the media on it is duplicated elsewhere (master tapes, etc.).
A RAID-5 array offers several advantages. A RAID-5 volume must contain 3 or more drives. Just like in RAID-0, data is spread across all drives in the array, but in RAID-5 parity information (information that can help reconstruct the volume in case one drive fails) is also spread across all of the drives. In a RAID-5 volume, one drive can fail and no data loss will occur. The RAID will be able to continue operating at a reduced performance level but will be able to rebuild itself completely once a replacement drive is added. RAID-5 offers the best combination of speed and reliability. Data transfer will be faster than a single drive, and data will be better protected than if it were stored on a single drive or a RAID-0 volume.
RAID-5 arrays typically use hardware RAID controllers, which offload the RAID data and parity calculations that are normally performed by the CPU in software RAID setups. Apple’s Disk Utility can create RAID-0 (striping) and RAID-1 (mirroring) volumes, but not RAID-5.
A good entry level RAID-5 array would be the CalDigit HDElement, a 4-drive RAID-5 with a hardware RAID controller card.
https://www.caldigit.com/HDElement/
Good luck!
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[Timothy Gaer] “The last week I have been using FCP and my render times have been (for a 5 min clip)
1. Mpeg 1 hour+
2. FLV 20 min+
3. QuickTime (XDCAM) 1 hour + “Those export times are scandalously slow.
Are you exporting to these formats directly from within FCP? If so, don’t. Don’t even use the “send to Compressor” option. Just don’t.
Instead, first render your sequence in FCP. Then export either a self-contained or reference Quicktime movie from FCP (“Export Quicktime movie,” NOT “Export with Quicktime conversion”), then encode to the desired formats using Compressor.
If you’re not using Compressor, start using it. Also, search the forum on how to set up a virtual cluster to get the best performance out of Compressor.