[Billy Moss]

No no, all of my editing and media storage takes place on external HDs and the OS is on the Mac HD. I’ve never moved it.

Ok I’ve just read another idea from a different forum. This makes me sound even newbier than I already am but I haven’t go the scratch disk set to the same HD as all my media and projects. The scratch disk is set to my Mac HD and all of my project and media files are in my external HD.

I would always just open FCP, bring in my media from my external HD and save the project to the same external HD. I know, I don’t have the best knowledge of the software. But I’m trying to learn more.

That was one of the first things I ever learnt to do back when I started using FCP, was to set the scratch disk. But I never stuck with the habit once I left school. Damn.

Ok, could this be a reason why FCP is so slow to render and export?

If I open an old project and change the scratch disk from my Mac HD will that do something to the video? Will it say something like, “this project is currently being used

I should really time the rendering and exporting of a short video. A colour graded one and a non colour graded one and compare times with people using the same specs to see if my times are really slow.

I’ll post about that later.

Thanks again everyone for your input.

[Billy Moss]

Hi Neil

I think I may have been misleading there. I meant that he wanted me to edit the video and export the video as a Pro Res file. Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding you. Creative Cow is my bible in terms of solving editing problems but this is the first time I’ve asked for help of any kind in any forum. I really appreciate everyone’s feedback.

This is my usual process my camera shoots MOV files, then I convert them to Pro Res 422 LT, then I bring those Pro Res clips into FCP. Then I make my edit and export my video as H.264.

I was told that is the best way to do things in Final Cut Pro according to a demonstration from Philip Bloom. But in the demonstration he was using a 5D Mk II. Could my 550D possibly be to blame here? I know that the 5D Mk II and the 550D are quite different but every step Bloom showed me has worked perfectly for me.

The reason he wanted me to export the project to Pro Res was because apparently that’s what AdStream says Final Cut Pro editors should be exporting to. AdStream are the governing body that tell you exactly how you need to make your video for it to be able to be broadcast on TV.

But yes I have encountered trouble when trying to edit clips that are straight from my camera.

I’ve exported to H.264 for all of my videos and never had one problem. When I venture out from that settings I get all kinds of problems. And that chews up so much time having to re-export the video.

My current drive set up is that I have a Seagate external HD and a Western Digital external HD. All of my project files and media files are on the Seagate. Both are formatted to use Macs and PCs, they’re FAT32. I’ve just recently started using the Western Digital to back up what’s on the Seagate because my latest work is not just my own.

And no I’m in Australia, not the UK. And yes as for the videos that may make it to TV they were shot 25P.

[Billy Moss]

Hi Moses.

I saw the trailer when it first came out and immediately tried to figure out how to do it. At that time I had just learnt how to reveal a video through a word. As you can see in the N****S in Paris video

https://vimeo.com/36492406

I learnt how to reveal video through text with this Creative Cow thread

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1089436

I had to mess around a little bit to find a way that gave the same effect of bars sliding across the screen to reveal the video. I did indeed use a plug in, a vector shape plug in. But what I created was no where near as slick as that trailer. The way I found was very heavy on memory as I had to have a video layer for every bar that I wanted to reveal video through. I’m certain there’s a better way out there.

I’m just about to leave on holiday for 8 days but when I get back if you’d like me upload the little clip I created so you can see it for yourself let me know. I’ll also post some screen grabs of what my timeline and viewer window looks like.

Hope I helped.

[Billy Moss]

Hi Rafael

You say you make movies up to one hour? Wow, can I ask what hardware you use? Sounds like you must have a very powerful and expensive machine. Unfortunately for me that is not feasible for my situation right now.

Yes you’re right about PP, I wasn’t saying that PP can edit more than FCP if you’re using the exact same hardware but Bloom is saying that FCP does not take advantage of all of your computer’s power. That obviously results in a much slower work flow.

Bloom makes a lot of good points about PP being better than FCP, the one you mentioned about how you can simply take your clips straight from your memory card and bring them into your time line really interest me a lot. So much time is spent converting my clips to Pro Res.

If anyone is at all interested in Philip Bloom’s opinion or perhaps wants to counter some of his points this is a link to the article, there’s an ethics statement at the top of the page that says he is NOT in any way being paid by Adobe.

https://philipbloom.net/2012/09/30/cs6/

I didn’t realise that even numbered RAM chipsets was a problem, thanks for opening my eyes to that. That may explain a few new bugs I’ve been having lately within my OS. But those particular bugs might be because my iMac is just getting old. I’ve considered getting another 4GB of RAM but I wasn’t sure if that would make a noticeable difference in FCP. It’s actually only a 3GB increase because I would have to take the 1GB stick out. So that would make it 8GB of RAM in total. And here 4GB of RAM costs $300 or so. Not a lot of money but it is if it makes no difference.

And yes I do use an external HD to store my media and renders.

Thanks so much for your help and quick response Rafael.