[Edwin Adkins]

Just adding my experience to the (growing) list:

I have a fairly long (one hour) sequence with lots of motion and color correction. But towards the end of the sequence, where I had a combination of “bloom” effects and some single color frames (essentially slugs, but white) I started to see problems with output. I got the same error maybe 9 times “Out of Memory”, so I pared down the project file as much as I could and removed all still images I could. But it still didn’t work. Only once, on about the tenth output failure, did I get an error that actually explained a bit about what was happening, and it was worded something like “the effect Bloom failed to render your hardware cannot render at the requested size and depth”. I was surprised to get an error that actually seemed useful. I made some other small changes in the sequence, and it returned to giving the “out of memory” error. But at least by that time I had enough of a clue of what to change. I adjusted the video processing settings to 8 bit (down from 10 bit) and it seems to be working (a few test runs including the bloom effect sections worked, and I’m now 4 hours into an output that shows no errors yet).

basically, working through a few different remedies given in this thread, the one that seemed to work for my situation was the change in video processing. I am a bit concerned that the resulting video output will be degraded to some degree, but the test runs didn’t show that much difference between 8 and 10 bit YUV.

I’ve spent a few days on this particular problem — not a tragedy, but I have better ways to use my time. Although I’m not sure this is an FCP bug, I’m not sure what else to call it: I add effects to clips in layers, and the computer gives no warnings that anything is wrong… until I try to output and then I get a simple and mysterious failure. by the stage my only remedy is to crawl the forums and hope for the best. It would have been nice to get more instructive error messages along the way.

most important, as this and other threads have emphasized, I can’t help but feel that FCP itself is really imperiling my workflow. Luckily, I’m not under a strict deadline right now, but I could have been. Regardless, I can’t really trouble shoot this for weeks on end.

I know all software has issues, but I’ve had many of these with FCP, and I have 95% decided to shift totally to Premiere (bought the software, and started doing simple projects with it). My experience with FCP has been frustrating. I admit I have older hardware, but it’s not bad, and the demands I’m putting on it don’t seem excessive.

From what I’ve seen of both Final Cut Pro 7, and now Final Cut X, it seems appropriate that they’ve simply dropped the “pro” from the name entirely, and are aiming for a rather different user base… They may be happy to leave users like me behind, and I’ll be happy to leave final cut behind.

[Edwin Adkins]

A big thanks to all of you for helping out with suggestions.

I’ve done a draft of the footage with the flashes, and mostly used the “bloom” effect with lots of key framing, so I can get a few frames of silhouette before filling the frame with (mostly) white, then ramping down. It looks okay so far, but I also appreciate the warning about the flash impact on the viewer. They’re not repetitive enough, I think, to cause neurological issues that some strobe effects do, but it’s good to be careful.

Edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

This is a reply more to Neal Carter than to the person who posted the request:

I have a problem with some footage of a performance: parts of the show were supposed to have very dramatic, powerful flashes. But the lighting designer didn’t really do a great job, and the flashes are way too mild. I spent a day or so messing with the dip to color (white) and as you mention in this post, it really doesn’t look like a true flash (unless it’s extremely brief, like just a few frames).

I have noticed also the bloom effect and may try to use that (which you recommended in this post from WAY back in 2008). But I have two other questions:

— not only are the flashes in my footage too mild, but they are ALSO too brief (only maybe 6-8 frames have the added flash, then becomes nearly black). my understanding is that the bloom effect needs to exaggerate these differences. can the bloom effect work on top of (mostly) black frames, as well?

— you recommended the bloom effect in 2008. has anything better come along (I have FCP 7)

thanks,

edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

Hi Shane,

Supercool. The one minute section of the clip that I ran through the trial version of Clipwrap is now viewable in my timeline. It looks like it will cost me $50 to buy the full version of Clipwrap to fix the entire clip, but I think in this case it’s probably worth it.

Do you happen to know a) what is likely wrong with the clip and what clipwrap is doing to make it work in Premiere and b) why it is that other applications (encoder most importantly) seem to just pass the clip through with whatever the problem is intact? It seems like Encoder should deal with things like this…

Thanks again,

edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

An update — with the solution: The files had to be divided between different DRIVES. Using a single RAID wasn’t working. Instead I had to move half of my video files onto a separate RAID, with a separate eSATA conncection. I still don’t know exactly why: whether it was that the drive heads weren’t able to find files fast enough, whether it was the eSATA card I’m using, whether it was something else… but taking 3 of my 6 video files and moving them onto a separate RAID enclosure with a separate eSATA is working. So I’ll have to buy another drive, but it’s better than buying a entirely new system…

Thanks to Jerry for the insights, and hopefully this can help others.

Edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

By “a LOT faster”, what do you mean?

Hopefully I can answer you well enough…

I have two… I’ll call them “boxes” (maybe “volumes” is a better word?):

one box is a G speed Q, 4TB, RAID5. It has 4 x 1 TB individual drives within a single box, and it appears in the Finder as a single drive. While using this one, I first started seeing the problems with the multiclip function. I re-did an AJA test on that, “sweep video frame sizes”, and got 95 -110 MB/s write, 120-130 MB/s read (using eSATA); the I re-did the AJA test, set to “Disk read existing file” and got about 120-130 MB/s

the other is a Glyph Portagig 62, 1 TB, RAID 0. It has two disks within a single box, and it appears in the Finder as a single drive. The Glyph Manager software that comes with the drive says it checks out okay. I used Media Manager to copy the project over to this drive, while reducing the total project size. I did the AJA test (sweep video frame sizes) and got pretty much the same results (105-110 write, 110-125 MB/s read). With the AJA test “disk read existing file” I got 105-115 MB/s.

Sorry if this is too much info. I’m new to these throughput problems, so I’m not sure what’s useful or not…

Thanks again,

edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

Hi again,

Still confused about this one. I’ve learned one thing: I had switched off the warning about drop frames. After switching that back on, I’m seeing: a) I am dropping frames, and b) RT Extreme attributes it to drive speed. But my AJA tests seemed to indicate that it was NOT drive speed/throughput. Am I misunderstanding what the numbers mean? 12.2 x 6 should be about 73 MB/sec. My AJA tests for my drives with eSATA show a *minimum* of 90 MB/sec, but it’s typically more like 110 to 120 MB/sec. Are the AJA tests not as meaningful as one might guess? Do you need a very fast system with a very large margin of error (a factor of 2 or 3)? Or, if as one post said, the fact that the drive is reading from multiple places on the platters to read 6 angles simultaneously, performance will be lower than throughput tests would indicate?

I even went to Tekserve here in NYC, and was told some typical things: 4 GB is the most FCP can use (so upgrading to 8 GB won’t affect performance); I should erase user preferences and see if that helps; and I may be looking at time to get a new machine (i.e., the processor’s too slow).

Since RT Extreme is telling me it’s the drives, I guess I need to take that line of troubleshooting as far as I can (at least before buying a new machine). I see a couple of options:

If I need a new drive, can someone suggest something that is very fast (faster than Glyph or G-tech) and can run on a MacBookPro?

If I need to recreate the project with media with a much lower data rate — I’ve never done this — can someone suggest a few key settings?

If all else fails, I can just limit my multiclip to 4 angles, and stack the other two on the timeline. Kind of brute force workaround, but I guess if that’s how it has to be…

thanks,

edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

Hello Jerry,

thanks for your attention to this. I’ve downloaded and run the AJA test tool on both of my drives, on various settings and found:

Using eSATA: write speeds are typically 90-95 MB/s; read speeds are typically 110-120 MB/s
(the numbers are more like 70 write, 80 read using FW800)

If my ProRes files are 12.2 MB/s, it would seem that the drive throughput should be okay (6 x 12.2 = 73.2 MB/s), particularly on eSATA.

I don’t know how to test the processor or graphics card…

edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

Update: I used media manager to reduce the project to about 750 GB, moved it to a Glyph 1TB drive (7200 RPM, RAID0, tried both FW800 and eSATA cables) and FCP multi-clip is still behaving *exactly* the same way: won’t switch to angles 5 or 6 of the multiclip.

If neither the connection (FW800 vs. eSATA) nor the drive (Glyph RAID0 vs G-tech RAID5) make a difference… I’m kind of lost. As I said, I’ve tweaked the Sequence settings (RT, playback quality, etc.) and still no luck. It’s interesting that I never get dropped frame warnings…

Hoping someone has insights…

edwin

[Edwin Adkins]

Hi Shane,

[Sorry for the long explanation, but to fix these things, a good diagnosis may help…]

I’ve read a few posts on this issue — Final Cut Pro renaming clips — and I see that you consistently recommend upgarding to FCP 7.0.3.

I am having an similar problem, but it only arises when I use the Multiclip function/tool. I think my situation is likely to arise for other editors. So in case it helps, or in case you/someone can pass this on to FCP programmers, here is how it works:

When I rename files that have *never been part of a multiclip,* the renaming works fine. I can change each clip name, one by one, no problem. But once I create a multiclip, that’s when the problem starts and it applies to all the clips that are currently, *or were in the past*, part of a multiclilp. To break it down:

First, I put 6 clips, A-F, in a multiclip. Then I notice that the clips appear in a pattern within the multiclip window that is inconvenient, so I try to change the names to reposition them. When I rename one clip (A), this goes fine, only one clip is changed. But then when I rename a second clip (B) the new name I have just applied to B gets applied to BOTH clips A and B. Then if I change the name of clip C this name gets applied to BOTH A and C, but leaves B as I input it. This pattern repeats, up to F. Again, this only affects clips that were part of a multi-clip, resulting in a set of clips where A and F are identical, but B – E are unique, as I named them.

Remedies that have not worked for me so far are: 1) I am already running 7.0.3 (and have been throughout this project) – so that’s not a fix. (That’s why I’m writing you.) 2) Moving the clips into other bins does not help. Even renaming clips in one bin changes names of clips in another bin (if these two clips have been part of the same multiclip). 3) deleting the multi-clip does not help. Somehow FCP seems to “remember” that they once were associated in this way, and the bug continues to affect them.

I can’t speak for problems other users are seeing, but in my case, my best guess is that the bug is part of the multiclip feature. *When working normally*, the multiclip feature renames *itself* repeatedly, based on which clip is “active” in the multiclip window. So I’m guessing that this “self-renaming” aspect of the multiclip tool is somehow buggy, and is adversely affecting other clip renaming.

The workaround I’m doing, if you want to call it that, is to revert to a saved project from before I ever created a single multiclip and restarting work from there. Now when I rename the clips it works, and I can combine them into multi-clips after that fact. I just hope that I never need to change them again.

Edwin