Bill Dewald
Forum Replies Created
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Nonononononon….
By HD, you mean prores, right? Cos you went on to reccomend dvcprohd…
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I reread your top post and I missed something – the bottleneck for your system is your single drive.
Non HQ ProRes (1080i) is 145Mbit/s. which, I believe, requires at least a four disk RAID.
HDV (1080i) is 25Mbit/s, which still may require a two disk RAID to be rock solid.
Could someone else chime in on the specifics?
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[Brad Jenkins] “using QT movie-current settings- self contained movie”
And we’re talkin’ ProRes as those current settings? Have you tried or can you try native HDV?
Also, regarding the format/source of the tape, can you try shooting some footage with the Hdr-fx1 and ingesting that? I’ve found that Canon HDV does not play nicely with Sony camcorders.
But your hunch about the system specs vs. ProRes HD may be right.
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Does rendering fix the blurriness? Make sure you’re using “Render All” in order to fully render the previews.
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[Brad Jenkins] “Whats weird is when i play the clip in the viewer or canvas of final cut everything is perfect,”
So what’s the issue, then? Your system specs might be a bit low for ProRes – but if you’re getting playback in FCP, you’re in good shape, right?
How are you monitoring?
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Here it is!
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/99/856971
Thoughtful and well-written as always, Mark. Why bother with video, when you can communicate so well on paper?
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There’s a big difference – on a broadcast monitor, you are actually monitoring the video signal. Digital Cinema Preview is just that – a preview.
Same with the GFX cards with the vid outs – you need to see what’s at whats headed to your tape.
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Yep, that’s a biggie. Can’t be done in FCP.
Ok – this idea just came to me – bear with me, and lets see if it can work… (its more of a hack than a sound workflow)
This will require a FCP system, and then an extra copy of FCP on a laptop.
On the ingest machine, log the clip as its full duration. Before batch capturing, save the project and pass it along to the laptop.
Now start the batch capture on the ingest machine. While the tape is playing, open the corresponding offline clip on the laptop in the viewer. Set the ins and outs for your subclips based on what you see as the tape ingests. Then create the (offline) subclip, and move on to the next.
When the ingest is finished, pass the subclip project from the laptop to the ingest station. Recconnect the media to the subclips.
Voila! Subclips created while the tape ingests. You could even use media manager to get rid of the non-subclipped footage.
…
or, make a feature request to Apple. Whichever.
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If its for broadcast, is having your NTSC master tape hardware converted to PAL an option?
It would be quickest and easiest. All of those formats that you’re listing would cause a quality hit (not to mention their suspect compatibility with Avid).
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[Mary Beth Koplin] “I really need to know: the reason for ‘no media files’ on the storage partition of my system drive? .”
Ok – I’ll try to make this as coherent as possible (I’m self-taught in the realm of computer science).
Today’s lesson is about Virtual Memory.
Your Mac has two types of memory. RAM (random access memory) is solid state and stores data as electric pulses. RAM is very fast and is used for data that must be accessed quickly, such as the operating system, program instructions, and your current frame of video. However RAM has a relatively small capacity, especially in the digital video realm.
Your hard drives are mechanical and store data magnetically. They can store 1,000s of times more data than you can fit in RAM, but are much slower than RAM.
On modern operating systems, a technique called virtual memory is used to stretch the machine’s capacity. Virtual memory uses hard disk space as a scratch pad for the RAM. This technique allows the machine to perform operations (such as video editing) that would otherwise fail due to lack of RAM.
In order for virtual memory to do its job, it needs to have a monopoly on the read/write access to the system drive. When users place and access media files on the system drive, it causes the efficiency of the virtual memory system to be impeded (which can cause dropped frames).
So, back to your problem –
Even if your system drive is partitioned, writes are still being made to the same physical drive. When I refer to cutting on a single drive, I’m referring to your “Working Drive”. For Final Cut Pro purposes, you should forget that your “Storage Drive” partition even exists.
Be sure that you are not rendering to your system drive, either. Check the “Final Cut Pro>System Settings>Capture Scratch” and make sure that you’re pointing to your “Working Drive” for your renders. Renders are just like any other footage, and if its on the system drive, its no good. If you were rendering to the system drive, you should re-render (or move the render files) onto your “Working Drive”.
[Mary Beth Koplin] “when you say “DV” does that mean compression DV/DVC PRO NTSC?”
Yep. Different sequence settings have different codecs, which require different amounts of drive bandwidth. The “DV” codec, formally known as NTSC-DVCPRO/DV has a bitrate of 3.6Mb/s, which is easily accessed from a single media drive. Other formats, such as uncompressed, will require much more bandwidth, and can cause dropped frames.
Regarding your 1.25GB of RAM – I have learned anecdotally here on the COW that certain hardware problems have been remedied by installing 1GB of RAM per processor – which would mean 2GB for you. I have personally worked on G5s with more RAM than that, so it probably won’t hurt to go to 4GB if you want. Its as simple as having the RAM installed by a tech, or going to crucial.com (if you’re brave).
Hope this helps – Bill