Bill Lee
Forum Replies Created
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You need to open the Compressor App and open the Help menu to read the user manual, especially the Distributed Processing Setup section of the manual (click on the text on the first page of the user manual). There is a Qmaster 2 manual:
https://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Apple_Qmaster_2_User_Manual.pdf, but most of the information in it is more relevant to Shake and Maya clusters, and the Distributed Processing Setup manual now contains most (all?) of its contents and more stuff relevant to Qmaster use with Compressor.> But do each of the other computers need to have access to the video clips?
Yes, since they have to have access to transcode the video. You can get the job-submitting client to copy all the source video to the Cluster Storage, so freeing up the job-submitting client’s bandwidth. If your job-submitting client is also the Cluster Controller and Cluster Storage, then all computers will need access to that computer.>If so, does this only work when using an Xsan or fiber network of stored media,
> where all the networked computers are also able to look at the clips?
Well, it can work with any network, as long as “The network must support the Apple networking technology built in to Mac OS X.” (from the Compressor user manual). The manual mentions the possible use of 100-Base-T networking.The Cluster Storage is a central location which can contain the original video, temporary intermediate files, and the final output of the distributed storage. To do all three, the access needs to be set to Read & Write for each node in the cluster. You can also set the location for temporary files to be a different location, and this would be especially important when dealing with a slow file networking system.
Page 35 of the Compressor 2 user manual describes how you can set whether the source video get copied to the Cluster Storage. Note carefully page 44, 112 and 113 where it describes the limitations with segmented jobs (i.e. multiple computers handling the same piece of video, instead of multiple computers handling successive encoding jobs). This may have an effect on whether it is worthwhile rendering on a cluster if you are using mulltiple pass VBR.
Bill Lee
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You are watching this on a (broadcast) video monitor instead of in the Canvas window on your computer monitor, right? You should not be basing your editing (and especially color) decisions based on what is looks like in the Canvas window. Some things will not be seen at all, and that can depend on the scaling factor for the video in the window.
If you are using DV then you should be watching this out through FireWire to the DV deck/camera then via Component/S-Video/Composite & audio cables to a video monitor and sound system.
Bill Lee
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MacBook Pro: For maximum performance, upgrade memory in matched pairs
“if both slots are loaded with an equal amount of RAM (such as two 512MB DIMMs of the same type), you can take advantage of the system’s dual-channel memory architecture for an additional performance boost.”DO MATCHING MEMORY PAIRS MAKE IT GO FASTER?
“We tested the MacBook Pro with both matching pairs of 1GB SDRAM and non-matching pairs (one 1GB and one 256MB module). None of the GPU test results were affected but the matching pairs did provide a small gain in CPU intensive tests (2.5% in iMovie, 3.5% in Photoshop CS).”So, there you have it – although Barefeats didn’t test FCP, they found a small increase in speed with matched memory modules. This means that to take advantage of this memory configuration, you’d have to buy 2 x 2GB modules and waste the 1GB that is unusable due to memory-mapped device (and other) space. The question is: Is that worth the money, and that depends on how much you need those extra few percentage points of speed. If it isn’t then would 3GB give you more actual performance increase compared to 2 x 1GB matched pairs due to less paging in and out of RAM?
I run a 2GB PowerBook G4 with MenuMeters so that I can see when I’m running out of RAM: once it does it will start paging to disk, and performance will suffer severely from this point. So far, I have found very few occasions that 3GB would have been worthwhile over 2GB, considering that the performance will decline as you run more apps simultaneously (as each of them is given CPU time), so that you would perhaps be better off by running fewer simultaneous applications with matched RAM on a MacBook Pro. Turning off all unwanted software features may also give you a couple of percent more performance, but you have to ask yourself – should I be doing this on a portable computer if performance is so critical? Do I need a Mac Pro instead?
Bill Lee
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If you own a copy of Roxio Toast Titanium, then it is likely (can’t remember when this feature was added) that it will have the multi-disk feature where you just keep dragging files and folders to the list of stuff to be burnt and it will burn as many disks as it needs to archive your stuff. You really don’t want to break up the QT file since that can break your project if it was expecting to find a particular file and it has changed into two new files.
If you’ve got a copy of toast that will do this, then burn as much as you can onto DVD: the project, stills, audio, clips, since if you are going to use two DVD disks, they may as well be full since you won’t be able to add an additional session later on.
Bill Lee
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There are at least two programs that make copies of your (working) FCP preferences and allow you to later zap the current ones and restore the saved ones. This can make dealing with the corruption of FCP Preferences much easier to troubleshoot and deal with.
The ones I know of are:
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The obvious answer is:
“Use a dual-layer DVD-R disk that will have about 8+GB capacity” (presuming you have a DVD-burner that will burn dual-layer DVD-Rs)The longer answer depends on what you want to do with this video:
1) Edit it further?
2) Save it to DVD for distribution1) Edit it further
Coming from a DV or Mini-DV tape means the video is already compressed – for quality purposes it is best not to recompress it since you will lose quality, and it is likely to be in a format not easily suited to further editing. DV is a nice comfortable format for a number of reasons.2) Save it to DVD for distribution
This presumes that you want your DVD to be a DVD Video disk, playable back in stand-alone DVD players. Your video needs to be converted into MPEG-2 video and a DVD disk authored with this converted video to make a suitable format, when it will easily fit onto a single sided DVD-R/DVD+R. One program that would be suitable to do with would be DVD Studio Pro, part of the Final Cut Studio package. The down side to this is that the video is further compressed in its conversion to MPEG-2, but also the MPEG-2 video is not as easy to edit with as DV due to its temporal compression (I, B and P frames) in addition to the spacial compression that DV has.If I were you, I’d burn it onto a dual-layer disk, since that is the easiest option if you need that video off a tape and onto another medium. It’s significantly more expensive than burning to a single layer DVD, but not significant compared to your time and effort trying to shoehorn too much video onto a single sided DVD.
Bill Lee
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https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=78
This probably is the best description of the various codecs that you are likely to have on your computer. Although you’d think your “8-bit Uncompressed” video is a immutable standard, in reality it contains data formatted in particular ways that may or not be compatible with capture or playback hardware and software.
The key reason everything just doesn’t ‘work’ is probably related to your statement “now that i have upgraded [from FCP4 to 5]”. From the above Decklink support article: “starting with Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 and the DeckLink 5.0 drivers, all DeckLink cards use the Apple uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit codecs for all standard definition and high definition uncompressed 4:2:2 video. The Blackmagic codecs are no longer installed for uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit 4:2:2 video”
Your projects were created and captured with the older Decklink codecs and that is what the FCP was telling you when it ‘changed’ the codec type (actually it didn’t change the type – it was already that type and was just labelling the codec as the older Blackmagic type). When you changed the codec for your timeline, it forced the system to translate from the Blackmagic to the Apple 8-bit Uncompressed codecs, and this may explain the green screen issue.
The problem of FCP not starting up is unlikely to be related to this codec issue on the face of it. FCP Preference corruption doesn’t need any special circumstances to make it happen.
Bill Lee
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My second apology for today.
My reply was not meant to sound like “You’re a dummy if you didn’t know that”, but obviously it did come across that way. I meant the drag and drop on the Canvas Overwrite with transition is a basic function in FCP, and the drag and dropping multiple clips is a simple extension of that. The original question said that the alternative to that was to click on every cut and apply a transition to it, which together with the questions about automatically applying transitions and the need to get a concert cut up and edited indicated that the original poster would truly get a lot out of some leader-led training or even the Pro Training Series books. It’s terrible to have to do a job where you have to learn while producing real work – believe me, I’d had to assist others who were expected to learn FCP on the job and produce without allowances for learning.
I find work very rewarding – I can sit and watch an editor work all day. 😉 Actually, I find I still learn a lot from watching editors work, since inevitably I’ll pick up something that in retrospect may be blindingly obvious, but I’d never thought of it. I partipate in the Creative Cow forums so I can try and learn about all the stuff that I don’t have access to, but maybe can learn from the experiences of others. For this I thank the contributors and editors.
I think I’ll stop digging now while I can still climb out of the hole.
Bill Lee
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Just re-reading my postings again – Bret Williams is right and there may be no need to deinterlace your exported still at all. I re-read my response to his reply and it looks like I’m trying to justify my posting saying that deinterlacing was necessary. Only if you have movement in your frame do you need to deinterlace, and then it should be done only in those areas that need it.
Bill Lee