[Eric Monroe]

Hey Alex,

I do all of my editing in FCP on a macbook pro, hooked up to a 40″ samsung HDTV via mini-display out to HDMI. So its like having a desktop cuz it just sits off to the side most of the time. LOL So an upgrade in the graph card dept. is not gonna happen :o) I went with the laptop in June of 2009 because I had never even played on a mac up to that point….and the original reason was just to buy it and familiarize myself with mac osx (figured i could make myself more well rounded) At that time all of my work was filmed on SD cameras (DVX100B) so I didnt need crazy amounts of power. So I bought a new mac mini like 3 months ago when the new ones were released slapped 8gb of RAM into it and have been cruising right along all summer now in FCP on my macbook and my mini. Well a few months ago I also bought 3 new Panasonic HS700 AVCHD cameras. (UGGG) Cameras shoot BEAUTIFULLY…..but as everyone knows, and I quickly found out it is a nightmare to edit AVCHD. So once again Mac & FCP saved me by being able to “log and transfer” to the new Prores LT format. My mini and macbook will both edit 3 cameras of 1920×1080 Prores LT at full playback quality and full-frame rate. Only problem is down-converting on final export with the machines I have take about 6-7 hours. Which is just too long to wait when you have 19 3-camera productions on the board waiting to be edited. So that is what brought me back to looking at CS5. It will not run on my mini smoothly….I have done tons of tests with the same exact footage, on the same machine, same drives etc. and FCP runs it great and PPro runs it choppy. Obviously PPRO requires more resources than FCP.

Soooo……rather than spending 3-4 grand on a mac pro (which believe me i want) After seeing the results of my friends AMD 6-core I am going to take the PC that I have, upgrade the board, proc, and RAM setup a gigabit network, then take the .mov files that I render out of FCP across the network to the PC and let it do my final export / down-convert to sd dvd on the 6-core proc. Not the “perfect” workflow but it will work for right now till funds for 2 Mac pros become available.

Cheers :o)

Eric

[Eric Monroe]

…….and there you have it friends.

We have all had our share of frustrations with PPro/Adobe……and countless other softwares out there to be totally honest……but really?!? You could at least share with the rest of the Cow community “WHY” you feel that way.

I must say, when CS5 first hit the scene a few months back, I was less than pleased…….ok….I was downright upset. Now that it has been out for a bit, and I have given it a whirl on several different platforms, and machines…..it is actually bringing me back around. (i admit I have eaten some crow in the last few weeks)

A friend of mine just got prod. premium, and installed it on a PC that he built himself for about 800 bucks. Last night, we hooked up my Hitachi G-raid drives via eSata and loaded a qty. of 4 AVCHD clips each 35-38 min. in duration……setup the multicam, and it cut through it like butter. Needless to say I was pretty shocked/impressed.

Specs as follows:

AMD Phenom II 2.8 ghz six-core proc.
4 gb of 1333mhz ddr3 ram
5 year old Nvidia 8800 graph card

I went all Mac and FCP last fall……and I love it, but I also shoot live stage productions 2+ hours in duration using AVCHD cameras……being able to edit natively is causing me to take another look at CS5. AVCHD to Prores transcoding times into FCP are using up my valuable work time. Not to mention FCP doesnt handle native .PSD files nearly as well as PPRO.

I have used Adobe religiously from CS2 – CS4 only last fall did i venture away……however I am doing an abrupt 180 as of what I saw last evening on my friends machine. Looks like going back to my roots is in order.

cheers all.

[Eric Monroe]

is there a reason that you have to make a subclip out of the footage?

what about nesting the seq. that your synced video/audio is on?

I generally don’t do alot with subclips, but my guess is…..that to make a subclip you would have to have a piece of footage that is linked up natively. Just a guess though.

Anyone else?

[Eric Monroe]

Have you changed anything in the last few days? Installed a new program, removed an old one? Did you try reinstalling CS4?

Try those things if you have not. What are the specs of your system? What kind of footage are you trying to edit?

[Eric Monroe]

Marco,

I dont know why I didnt think of this before….I run PPro CS4 on my 13″ Macbook Pro. It doesn’t run slow. It is not nearly as stable/reliable as FCP but it doesn’t run slow by any means…..in fact I can stream 3 tracks of 1920×1080 ProRes 422 video that are 45-60 min. each in duration in the multicam editor without any trouble. The key is the Hitachi external Raid-0 drives.

2 questions:

1. how are your scratch disks setup, and on what drive?

2. what type of footage are you editing? AVCHD, DV, HDV?

Also what are the specs on your Mac laptop? If you have an Intel-based Macbook pro you should be all set.

The specs on my macbook are as follows:

Purchased June of 2009
Macbook Pro 13″
2.26 Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 1067 mhz DDR3 RAM (upgraded from the 2GB that came factory – Crucial.com for $64)
Nvidia 9400M Integrated graphics card (no separate video memory)
Seagate Momentus 7200rpm 2.5″ 500GB (C: drive – running OS & Applications ONLY – $130 Best Buy)
Hitachi 1TB G-Raid external Raid-0 drive ($199 B&H Photo.com)

Cheers

Eric

[Eric Monroe]

Anybody……anybody at all?!?

[Eric Monroe]

I suppose it depends on the type of work you do. I just did the opposite. I have a Quad core PC with a 10k velociraptor C-drive, 2 TB raid zero setup for scratches and media, 8 GB of RAM, 1 GB graph card, running on WIN-7 64 bit. I switched over to a 13″ Macbook pro and the newest FCP…..and i am getting WAY better performance. FCP runs VERY smooth….I have been a PPro editor for about 5 years or so now, editing a many different systems, at work, and also with my own business, all have been above average machines, and still give the same result….mediocre, glitchy performance. PPro has alot of strong points, I will not bash it, but for what I am doing (long-form multicam stage productions) the mac and FCP have been an absolute God-send. I run Hitachi G-Raid (portable raid-0 harddrives) via FW800 for my scratches/media. Long as you have those, you are set.

My PC is now in my living room, hooked to a bigscreen TV and used for watching movies, and playing COD Modern Warfare 2.

[Eric Monroe]

Jonathon, it sounds like you have talked with a Final Cut Pro editor…..is this the case?

For the last 5 years I have done long form multi-cam editing using the Adobe CS software. To the best of my knowledge, you cannot do what you are trying to do…..not in PPro anyway.

In PPro, you HAVE to cut/switch your multicam seq, then go back through the seq. and remove any unwanted sections of footage, and apply whatever transitions you desire to make them flow together nicely.

(example: when a scene ends on stage, and there is a 3-4 minute set change, I dont want that in my final DVD, so after cutting the multicam I go back through the whole seq, and cut out those sections and apply transitions there to make a smooth fade from one scene to the next. Place Encore chapter markers etc.)

Alex is VERY CORRECT to say “make a duplicate of your nested/switched seq” just in case something goes wrong when you start deleting sections of footage……this way you can go back to the original multicam seq and try again if something goes wrong.

Now onto my first question….about talking to an FCP editor. You CAN do what you are asking in FCP. I would still HIGHLY recommend cutting/switching your entire seq. first, then going back and taking out the “bad footage”. If you are running a 3 camera shoot, you can “go live / switch to” camera 4’s window and have only black there (just like you were doing in PPro) but with FCP you can use the “Find All” command to go back after your multicam is cut, and tell FCP to find every instance of Camera 4 (all black) in your multicam seq. and rip those out. Done in seconds. Now if your cuts are pristine, you might not have to transition the spots where you removed the “bad shots”.

Also in FCP your multicam viewer window, your “LIVE” camera viewer, and your timeline are all “locked” together. In PPro your timeline becomes inactive in the background because PPro’s multicam viewer window has its own timeline, and “LIVE” camera viewer. So if you are editing along in PPro and you make a late cut, you have to stop “recording” go to your timeline, activate it, perform your rolling edit, and then reactivate your multicam window, hit play, begin recording again, get back to switching. UGGGGGH. In FCP since all of the windows work together, I watch the 3 cameras in the multicam viewer, watch the live at the same time in the other viewer, and it makes the cuts to my timeline LIVE. If I make a late cut in FCP, my timeline is ALWAYS active, I just hit the space bar to stop, make my rolling edit, and then hit the spacebar again to start cutting……simple…..easy…..(Apple) :o)

I hope this has helped you. Oh and as far as audio waveform in PPro (another thing that FCP does automatically) Alex was correct there as well, just copy and paste the audio from inside your nest over into your multicam seq. (just make sure it is lined up correctly)

I switched late last year to a Mac, and FCP…..I will never look back. A buddy of mine who does some editing work for me, still uses PPro on my other machine….so admittedly I still have projects in PPro, but I myself have move entirely to FCP. My $5,000 PC is now in my living room hooked to my bigscreen for watching movies, and playing COD Modern Warfare 2. I have 2 editing stations now, one is a macbook pro 13″ and the other I picked up last week….a brand new Mac mini. I edit full 1920×1080 3-4 camera multiclip edits in FCP on both these machines….no stuttering, no lagging….just smooth editing.

I hope this has helped you some.

Good Luck.

Eric

[Eric Monroe]

Try this:

Go into the Effects tab then Video Effects>Distort>Transform

the transform effect allows you to have individual control over a still image or video’s height and/or width.

Hope that helps…..fastest way i know to do it.

[Eric Monroe]

What format is the footage that you are wanting to edit? AVCHD, P2, ? Will you be editing short form videos, or long form production stuff using 3-4 cameras that will need to be multicam edited together?

I have both, and like both, but it ALL depends on what type of editing workflow you are going to be using.

Give us some more details about what you will be shooting and editing, be glad to give ya some input