Erik Lindahl
Forum Replies Created
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Modern 3D applications tend to scale very linier on multi-core systems. A “slower” 8×2.26 Ghz system (total of 18Ghz) vs a “faster” 4×2.92 system (11,7 Ghz total) would probably win in most cases in 3D rendering. In 2D / Video it’s harder to say. Barefeats did some tests he found:
– In After Effects an 8 Core 2.26 system beats a 4 Core 2.92 system and a 2008 8 Core 2.8 system (RAM is however not identical on the systems)
– Cinebench is also faster on an 8 Core 2.26 system compared to a 4 Core 2.92 system
– On the same system with 4 or 8 cores active the gains are between 0 and 72% depending on application or clinical test.I could imagine in pure rendering of an FCP timeline the 4 Core 2.92 system would beat the 8 Core 2.26 system in most cases. However, as you say, a lot of workflows benefit a lot from being able to do background renderings. Just don’t go cheap on the RAM 😉
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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How does Color interperate the 3-way color corrector, as you primary in?
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Have they actually changed anything in regards to the UI? From what I’ve read it’s the same thing given they have improved the send to / from and the rendering in Color. Would be interesting to hear cause this can be a point of “why to upgrade” for some people.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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I can’t say that much about FCP7 since I haven’t tested it at all my self. Scares reports state that some features do actually use all the available cores of an 8-core system (importing AVC content). In general however the rule of thumbs before have been something in the lines of what you’re saying. A lot of apps have had a hard time throttling the use of more than 2-3 cores of a multi-core system.
It however depends on what you do and how you work also.
– With 8 Cores you can have 2-3 of them used for your FCP render while you run say a compressor cluster jobb in the background at nearly full speed.
– With 4 Cores you can have 2-3 of them used for your FCP renders while you won’t have that much head-room for background operators (given there will likely be some head-room).
– Applications like After Effects utilize multi-core quite well today even if it’s projects and content sensitive (some filters just don’t scale over multi-core). But in general I see my 8-core machine quite throttled here.
– Note that with the added cores you add the RAM requirements also. A minimum of 2GB of RAM per Core should be in the machine (4 Core – 8GB to 16GB, 8 Core – 16GB to 32GB).
– From my experience Motion is shockingly poor at using multi-core for final renders. This might have changed in version 4.0 given I can’t testify to that. Motion is also very GPU-dependant so what ever machine you do get, upgrade to the Radeon 4870 card.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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I very much understand Rob’s discontent with the Final Cut Studio Update. I’m also quite surprised Final Cut Pro hasn’t yet received it’s much needed overhaul. I don’t think we’ll see a “native OSX video editor” from Apple any time soon though – seeing this update took over 2 years. Final Cut Pro isn’t even a Cocoa app yet! I thought that transition would happen years ago but as other developers have stated, the transition to the “native” OSX future (i.e. Cocoa) isn’t an easy game always with behemoth apps such as Final Cut.
Personally I thought the delay between FCS2 and FCS3 would push us into say a new era but evidently it did not. I think it was a tactical decision to release FCS3 before Snow Leopard and keeping Leopard support. FCS3 wasn’t meant to be a “huge” update at all. The facts that there still is PowerPC executable code in the packages supports this, given it’s very odd Apple doesn’t official support G5’s when they clearly kept support in the applications. I have a very hard time seeing a 7.01 update coming giving full 64-bit support in Snow Leopard seeing, as stated, Final Cut Pro isn’t even a native Cocoa app and as far as I know it, that’s the only native 64-bit API Apple want’s apps to talk.
Maybe 2 years down the line, when MacOSX 10.7 is on the horizon, will we see the Final Cut-package “move into the 21st century”. Some parts of it might move a-head faster than others thought – I actually think Final Cut Pro is the only non-cocoa app left and it’s sadly the most used also.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Speaking of DPX, and sorry if this is off-topic, but how is it to work with this in a Final Cut Pro / After Effects scenario today for online of TVC’s (i.e. we’re talking limited amounts of media)?
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Well there is still hopes. A compositor built for the future is what was stated back when Shake was put on ice. Snow Leopard does bring a lot of “the future” very much closer.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Yeah, I know they announced 2007 in the spring it was EOL but you could buy a “site licence” with access to the code or something in the lines of it. Shake was at the time supposed to be replaced by a modern compositor coming with-in 2 or so years.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Ouch, if Apple think something like Motion can replace Shake someone at the dev- or management teams have been smoking the funny pipe. Motion for sure has it’s place in a production suite, no question about it, but Shake is a COMPOSITOR compared to Motion that’s more of an animation / motion (After Effects) suite with some compositing capabilities. At the moment it’s more of a complement to Final Cut Pro than anything. A cheap-mans After Effects tool if you may…
Is there an official statement somewhere? I just see apple.com/shake leads to the production suite.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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I’ve had “ghost” issues like this before with FCP projects and 95% of them all had speed-effects somewhere in the process. I could even get an Apple ProApp Tech Support guy semi-reproduce the issue. I’ve even seen Final Cut link to media that doesn’t even exist – i.e. you can have say a 10 second klipp on the time line that might consist of 12 second media with heads and tails but FCP wants to play it at some really odd rate (948% speed up) but it fills the full 10s. This would in realtiy require 94,8s of media but that doesn’t excist in the file. FCP solves it somehow (giving erratic messages or media playback).
But yeah, mostly going back to basics, straight cuts, no “fancy” nothing, no in-active items, speed-FX, reverse FX and so forth and it in general works in the end. It’s a pain having to recreate everything though even when on- / off-lineing on the same system.
Someone said Final Cut Pro projects can get corrupt and hence save odd information about media or sequences. Either using “Save as…” or just starting a new project re-importing everything MIGHT work.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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