[Ben Holmes]

If you import this footage as Pro Res, as you should, then it would depend on what filters etc. you apply to it. I still find my 3.0Ghz 8-Core nehalems as fast as modern 8-cores. I did notice a decent speed improvement in some instances using a brand new 12-core with 32Gb RAM. Hard to quantify if it was worth $4,000 more…

Always buy the best machine you can afford, don’t buy the top end processor (it’s always a massive price hike for 5% gain) and fit a good gfx card. I suspect the last item could end up being much more relevant in a few months time – gfx cards are much better suited to render calcs than CPUs anyway…

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

I’d also add that FCP does not offer all the control over compression settings that Compressor does – use Compressor to maximise quality, albeit at a massive time penalty.

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[Ben Holmes]

There is no existing hardware for this, and no one outside a small team of beta testers knows what’s in the next version of FCP. And it’s a pretty good bet they’re not telling.

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[Ben Holmes]

Forgive me for asking, but if you have no intention of doing it, why ask “Is it possible to make AVCHD discs of up to 90 minutes on DVD-5s?”

I gave you a sensible answer, that it MIGHT be possible but would be unacceptable quality. Hence the alternative – use DVD9s, which should be acceptable. The exact size of encoded footage varies even on a CBR scheme depending on the footage. As this falls within the ‘will it, won’t it’ range for fitting, why not try an encode and see if it’s more than 4.7Gbs?

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[Ben Holmes]

You would be much better off buying DVD-9s. Most burners can use them easily, and they are a lot cheaper than they used to be. Pushing HD sized frames to that sort of compression is barely acceptable for the web, let alone disk distribution.

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[Ben Holmes]

Interesting to see these replies – my second thought was bad RAM.

If you have a good vendor, try new RAM, or a replacement Mac Pro – see if you get the same issues in your exact same setup. Try the system without the UPS as suggested (we had an underpowered one here kill the only thing it was connected to in a very short power cut, everything else not on the UPS was fine – but it was a temp UPS bought in because the permanent one had failed…)

If your vendor is not willing to do this, get a better one.

Addressing two points above: I’m working right now with a mixture of HDCAM as ProRes, DVCProHD and XDCAM. I see no more instability with XDCAM than the others (ie. nothing really – although these systems have an inexplicable issue with unrendered text in timelines).

Lastly – large stills in FCP? Bad idea all round. Either convert them to a size approximate to your sequence frame size (allowing for some zooming) or use AE or even Motion to export them as video. FCP is VERY unstable with large stills – it cannot manage the memory required well at all. A music piece I cut recently had to have each still resized to something more suitable so I could work with them (it was sort of a collage effect). I ‘cheated’ and did this quickly in preview.

Let us know how you got on…

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[Ben Holmes]

If I had more than one crash a week, I’d take the system apart and re-install everything. What kind of storage is it connected to?

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[Ben Holmes]

Are they using the right control protocol in FCP? Are the decklink drivers up to date?

Are they using capture batch or just capture now?

Does the FCP say ‘locating timecode break’ when it prerolls?

If time is pressing, use capture now to get this material in – if this does not work with timecode, you could set the system to ‘non-controllable device’ – and re-stripe the clips or sync in FCP manually. Note – if setting to ‘non-control’ does solve the issue, it’s probably the deck control setting that’s wrong. But then – this is a post-house, right?

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[Ben Holmes]

I can’t offer you many examples, but a facility I’ve worked at (small broadcaster) had nothing but problems with FORK with 3 FCP suites. That was, however, a couple of years ago, and who knows where the problems lay.

FCS not well liked by anyone that’s used it. It only appears built (to me) for episodic TV – and not suitable for most uses. It also is a product not well supported by Apple or third parties AFAIK.

I’ve been steered recently towards CATdv by several people – it seems more customisable for specific uses, and offers versions suited to your scale.

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[Ben Holmes]

I would hope that if a new version of FCP DID support AVCHD natively, it would also offer quicker import to ProRes – let’s hope so, as there are many advantages to this workflow. To be clear to the OP about the benefits – ProRes is a 10-bit codec, and will handle changes (filters, CC etc.) better than putting the AVCHD into the timeline. AVCHD at ANY bitrate is 8-bit, limited to 256 levels of luma and chroma, whatever compression is used.

Although I suppose this can be overcome by rendering an AVCHD timeline in ProRes, I would prefer to have all my media in one codec, whatever the source – ProRes is also great for rendering gfx out of Motion or After Effects.

Personally, I’d prefer not to see so many cameras recording these long-GOP, heavily compressed formats, however good they can look at the increased bit-rates of the ‘pro’ AVCHD cameras – it will always pass a performance overhead to the edit system and keeps 8-bit video on the radar at a time when others are moving to 12-bit or 14-bit RAW workflows

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