[Gabriele Sartori]

Yes, thanks. Sure I try 1,2,3,4,5 I always get my CPU usage around 25-27% using the same test file. I run tests with H264 output that is my typical format. For testing purposes, I tested with the preset 1080P available in compressor.

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

Many reasons why a DVD can be suboptimal. In general with consumer or prosumer cameras you will never get something similar to the DVDs you buy. Nobody can debug your case remotely without more information but if you are making DVDs just for yourself and you have a HDV camera you way want to go straight for blu-ray. The level of difficulty is very similar and some programs like Toast take care of the authoring part with a few clicks. The end result is usually MUCH better. There is more resolution, more chroma and you end up with a product that will make you happier. All this I can say without having more info on what you are doing. Also, you may want to check the other FCP forum, there are many answers already.

Regards
Gabriele

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

[walter biscardi] “This simply is not a solid, professional choice for a video editing system. For hobbyists, maybe, but not for someone earning money and charging clients for their work.”

OK, I can see that this “professional” thing is popping up again. I would like to know what is more professional in 1394 than USB but nobody can articulate that to me. Just prejudice is what I see because I don’t see a single table, data, formula, BW calculation, latency calculation, reliability and the needs for the application(s), nada. just “I say so so it is so, I’m a pro, I know better than you”.
I worked with high speed serial links for about 10 years of my professional life in microelectronics and I never saw so much prima donna attitude without bringing a gram of solid data. It must be that I’m an old engineer and work with data while you guys are more like “artists” and work with feelings.

Note, I never said that USB is better than 1394, just that is good enough for the job particularly if the 1394 link is shared with other peripherals. Particularly when used with an iMac that doesn’t seem a “Professional Workstation” to me.

Regards and happy new year, I’m sure the 1394 trade association loves you.

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

[Zane Barker] “As a video profesional I’m never going to recomend a solution that will not yeld profesional results. You just dabble with video so you might be willing to recomend a lesser solution.”

OK, when short of tangible arguments the best defense is to move to insult and dismissal. Please tell me what do you mean by “professional results” when editing with an imac that has no ports available. Enlighten us about what professional means in your opinion. In my opinion you either capture and edit HD without frame dropping or you don’t. Are you talking about better artistic output because you use 1394 instead of USB? I would like to know.
As I said I do have 5HD in striping on eSATA because I can. I do have PCI slots, an iMAC doesn’t have enough I/Os so it is question of having the best compromise, USB is one of the options and it works if done the right way. It has nothing to do with ability on doing transitions or anything else.
I have no doubt that you are a better editor than me although you never saw what I do. I’m just honest and admit my limitations.
Technology has nothing to do with that though.

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

I’m still waiting to see what are your credentials to be a self proclaimed USB guru. Have you ever been involved in designing a USB link layer? I have.
Burst? USB can even do isochronous transfer if you want to, do you know that? It all depends on the implementation and how good is the chip used, how much buffering it has, the drivers etc.
In the Mac community there is hostility and prejudice toward USB due to the long time history of mac with 1394. 10 years ago no doubts 1394 was a better bus for these applications than USB, but today there is no reason why a USB HD can’t sustain the transfer rate necessary for these applications. I normally do it on my Macbook and I do full HD exclusively.
Again, the thread started because there were no alternative left on the new imac. Daisy chaining 1394 is a solution but then there would be BW sharing and arbitration between multiple devices working concurrently. Not the most desirable solution.

In the past USB link layers were sitting on PCI 32bit even when they were integrated in chip sets. It was just easy to do so. THis alone was another major point of conflict and arbitration reducing efficiency. Today this happens very rarely. PCI32 still exists but it is an appendix and not the main I/O bus anymore. Internal connectivity is done with PCI-E, HyperTransport or other high speed low latency concurrent links. I even licensed HyperTransport to Apple for its I/O performance for one of their Macpro Tower (G5 I guess) about 18-10 years ago.
Today, gates are cheap. Adding relative big buffers was prohibitive only 6 years ago when silicon 8 times bigger. Now it is a no brainer. When everything is combined USB is literally transformed and finally deliveries the wire speed particularly if interfaced to a very fast Hard Disk.

Regards

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

[Neil Sadwelkar] ”
I too had this disdain for USB as a media drive. Depending on your needs, it might be a good choice.”

This is what I was saying. It is not the best medium but is not what it used to be. Silicon technology improved, recent controllers have much more buffering, HDs are more capable. I wouldn’t use a 2.5″ passport drive unless I was in an emergency situation but for most practical uses there is no reason why a fast, large (size increase linear density hence transfer rate) 7200RPM USB2 drive can’t do the job these days.

Regards

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

[Zane Barker] ”
Sorry but while yes the hard drive itself can sustain speed the USB enclosure cannot.”

Enclosure speed? Dah !?

[Zane Barker] “So your going to disagree with science, with the industry standerd as to how USB works.”

I don’t want to start a flame chain (that it seems you want to start) but since you are talking with such authoritative statements, can you tell us from what background are you saying this? Are you part of the USB implementers forum? Are you working in any USB working group? About mine, you can just google my name.

Best Regards

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

[walter biscardi] “USB cannot provide the same sustained throughput of Firewire. USB is good for bursts of data,”

Walter
There are very good reasons for you to be right. Things though changed quite a bit and I believe that USB is surrounded by a lot of old prejudice. Let me explain my view :
A 2TB HD has a huge sequential transfer rate. More than USB and FW800. Both these links have about >30% inefficiency due to the protocol on the wires and their own protocol. It means though that about 35/40 MB/s are still available from USB. Disk speed must be considered as sustained random access and one of these new HD will saturate the USB even in this condition. For these reasons you can reach pretty much the theoretical limits of USB2 a thing pretty difficult in the past. About burst Vs. sustained for the USB itself we have to agree to disagree. In a modern, well implemented USB2 link there is no reason why it should not be capable to give a adequate sustained T/R if the source (the disk) can provide it. In my opinion MANY of the negatives of USB are due to his history but aren’t true anymore. Also I’d like to remember that until recently most of the people using FW on the mac (including myself) was relying on FW400 that isn’t any faster than USB2 with a good, fast HD, with 32MB of buffer available today. I’d suggest to give it a try.

Best regards (and it’s always a pleasure to learn from your big experience in video editing. I’m just a computer guy that spend his money trying to kill his weekends on FCP)

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

I know a lot of people will disagree, quick and dirty but no so bad, cheap too: Use a high capacity (2TB) USB Hard Disk. Make sure that is 7200RPM. USB is 480Mb/s Vs. 800Mb/s of Firewire 800 but both have protocol, 8b/10b encoding etc. One is better for certain aspects the other one for others. I would prefer this to a LAN HD. A LAN HD is fundamentally a server with the extra overhead. 1Gbit LAN also has its inefficiencies. I didn’t check the imac, I assume it doesn’t have a eSATA port. Too bad it would have been the best. I do run an external eSATA box with 5 hard disk striped and it is really fast & cheap.

Gabriele – California

[Gabriele Sartori]

[Jack King] ”
gabriele – thank you so much but which format works? this is 5d footage (1920 x 1080) so it needs to be pro res does it not? is it just pro res the smooth cam doesn’t like to export?”

Many formats works. I have two cameras, a Canon HDV camera and a tiny Sanyo H264 camera. When I use the Sanyo I now transcode the material (it is done very quickly) using mpeg streamclip. Most of us have this free SW, if you don’t have just DL it here:
https://www.squared5.com/
As ouput format it depends on my project. If I mix and match with HDV material that wasn’t transcoded I use Apple HDV as ouput. If it is a rare sanyo only piece I use prores LT. I use LT since I think that it would be an overkill to use more BW for the little sanyo. In both cases it works perfectly, the quality is great, I don’t see degradation and smoothcam works great. With mpeg streamclip you can do batch transcoding. I lanch my 20-30 clips and I go to watch some TV when I come back it is done. Sometime the material is on my macbook pro, I just transcode it right there and then transfer to my bigger machine. In my experience just pay attention at the frame rate. If you have a different transfer rate and want to transcode to 30P or 24P just make sure that you input the correct frame rate i.e. 23.976
For the 5D another step is to use Cineform Neoscene. I bought it and it does a pretty good 60i to 24P conversion. Unfortunately I can do a CF422 conversion very well but for some strange reason I can’t make a prores conversion (although I can use CF422 in my timeline). I tested in two macs, same thing. Now CF is helping me trying to see what is the issue, they were able to transcode one of my clips in their labs.
Finally, I’m surprise by the quality of the mpeg streamclip conversion including 24P conversion. It could be though that my TV is a factor. It is a great TV but it is 2-3 years old and it probably has some latency in the response creating a motion blur that make visualisation easier to the eyes. Neoscene has some bleding technique that make the 24P the best possible considering the low frame rate.

Regards
Gabriele

Gabriele – California