[Andrew Crow]

I found out what the problem was: Sequence settings were fine for the footage from my ‘B’ cam. (1920×1080), but obviously not for the other 2 cameras which were in HDV dimensions (1440×1080).

Once I set the sequence properly there was much less rendering required. FCP also does not now render unseen video, which helps!

Also got the firewire 800 drive set up to run faster with the 2 drives showing up as one (not mirroring as was before!).

[Andrew Crow]

I did use the multicam mode a while back but found it quite awkward getting all the clips lined up properly. To be fair that was footage from a looping event which I filmed many times from different angles but I do remember having to do a lot of working out of where clips should go.

Thanks for the reply – I have been using a usb drive, but have just set up a dual disk firewire 800 raid drive (which I was using for backup in raid 1!). Should have really thought of doing that before!!

So am I correct in thinking that Final Cut is a bit thick when it comes to handling renders then? I mean if it renders video which is not even seen then that is a bit stupid!

[Andrew Crow]

Thanks John,

I was planning on doing exactly what you suggest, using the blade tool to cut out the bad shots on cam 1, revealing cam 2’s footage, and cutting out cam 2 to reveal the safe shot also. This is the way multicam editing has been done for a long time.

I didn’t film the hymns (the safe camera picked up the audio in case that was needed) in order to minimise tape changes so there are a lot of stops and starts which makes the multicam editing a bit of a pain.

To refine my question a bit further: is it normal for Final Cut Pro to immediately throw away all the render files when you make a change to a video clip which does not change the actual display output and if so why on earth does it do this whilst calling itself a professional product!?

I have noticed that when I drag a clip roughly in place on the timeline it immediately junks all the render files where that clip has been placed and does not bring them back when it is moved. From memory other editing programs are a bit more flexible and keep the rendered video a bit longer.

There is just no way I can take a 4 hour break and not use my editing system during that time just because I have colour corrected a clip that we will only see 1 minute of!

I get what you are saying about cutting up the clips so only small parts need to be rendered but this is just a workaround for very poor software in my opinion. It’s a shame because I like FCP but I may have to start using Premiere CS4 if there is no way to cut down the pointless rendering times.

[Andrew Crow]

Thanks for the quick replies. It was my intention to make the cuts on the top track, working my way down.

I am editing a wedding which was filmed using 3 cameras. I have the static cam on the bottom track on the timeline, cam 2 above that and cam 1 on the top.

I colour corrected cam 2, of which only a few seconds was actually displaying on the edit. Final Cut decided it needed to render the whole 30 minutes or so of video even though the only visible changes affected a few seconds of video.

Alas, I do not have any raid drive setup yet – it’s just an external usb 7200rpm drive. I am editing on a MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz Duo, using FCP 6.0.4. The footage was HDV, captured as Apple ProRes.

Hope this info helps but if you need any more let me know.

Thanks