[Gary Adcock]

[Gabe Thorburn] “However, I am curious about what the AJA does exactly in terms of actual hardware acceleration.”

Absolutely nothing. Apple does not allow hardware acceleration for rendering or effects in Final Cut. Apple sells hardware and they want you to buy their stuff to keep you current.

The Aja cards do support hardware based scaling of HDV and DVCProHD and the other “thin raster” codecs, but not for filters, effects or transitions.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[Gabe Thorburn] “What are you refering to with the “accurate” for TC setting? If my frame rate is set to full, how could it be lagging behind with external video turned off?”

Sorry about the naming- I was working from my phone. but I was talking about this in the UserPref

Its not the video that is lagging behind- the holes in the timeline are causing the audio to play faster as it is rendered – as I said in the first post – conforming the Video does not conform the audio. If the Audio is not 48K it can be a problem, I do not believe that the canon cameras use 48k audio.

“If my frame rate is set to full, how could it be lagging behind with external video turned off?”
that is not what you said. I quote you from the first post under #1 “With External Video turned off, I am able to play ProRes 422 in the timeline perfectly with no dropped frames”

Again- the Aja (BMD or Matrox) hardware forces FCP to act professionally, even more than just the settings- its why hardware is needed to do really highend output and delivery- go back and re-read what I wrote.

” I’ve known ProRes to always be CPU / RAM based, but how are the hard drives an issue? Hard drives deal with data rates only, no?”

Storage is part of the mix for the RT extreme engine, The faster the storage the better the computer can handle the scratch or temp memory space- my comment in my last post was commenting that while Uncompressed is much more data throughput to handle- yet it is far easier for the CPU to playback- ProRes is harder for the CPU to handle since it is more highly compressed.

DVCProHD was designed 8-10 years ago or 3 versions of the CPU chip designs ago, so of course it has a much lighter compression schema than the much newer ProRes which can really only capture correctly on intel proc’s.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[Gabe Thorburn] “Yes, one would suspect the hard drive, but it plays fine when external video is turned off.”

Sorry gabe, but that EXACTLY is the issue.
See when you turn the V-Out off, you are telling Final Cut that you are not trying to output accurate SMPTE standard content- so playback become “lazy” and allows for things like timing to drift.
( bet your RT timeline does not say “Accurate” for TC and your Prefs are not set to “Force all frames”

“The ProRes proxy codec is giving just as much trouble as ProRes 422. DVCPro HD 1080 plays fine, and DVCPro HD is at a much higher data rate than ProRes proxy. It must be something with either Final Cut or the io Express. “

Not Really that would be a CPU and RAM issue according to your machine specs.
ProRes Playback is a CPU/ RAM hog, DVCProHD is not. Funny as it may seem to people Uncompressed is the easiest codec for the CPU to handle- it is always the drives that cannot keep up- sorry but this is the nature of compressed codecs.

You are at the bare minimum for playback using the IoExpress according to the specs, while adding additional Ram might help you can completely render the timeline to solve some of these issues, but in reality you are right on the edge a cliff.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[David Margolis] “I can absolutely confirm that the ProRes 444 output from Shake was identical to to the original TIFFs. I did an A/B check on them within Shake. No difference. “

So you only checked on your computer monitor? See Shake would do this correctly- it was when you output that it becomes an issue.

“REC709 TIFFs from DI facility “
those would be RGB files.

“The only thing I changed in the sequence setting was to render using YUV which I think is what caused the problem.”
GONG!!!! you get a prize- you should have let the deck do the YUV conversion UNLESS you are on a CLEAN INSTALL of Snow Leopard (10.6.2)

“Can incorrect gamma cause this? “
the Gamma issue can cause differing results depending on the workflow, and where the conversions are invoked –
My guess is the deck saw black below 0 and attempted to compensate – you never mention which SR deck we are talking about – the first gen of SRW5000 series that have not been undated/ serviced could experience issues similar to this.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[taz zer] “1080Psf 25, after further investigation we discovered that 1080Psf 25 is actually 1080 50i and that Kona has mislabeled the FCP easy setup for 1080 50i as 1080i. “

I believe that to be incorrect Taz, the Kona setting for this workflow is AJA KONA 1080 25i with the deck set to record PsF.

do it all the time – twice this week to HDCamSR

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[Gabe Thorburn] “Sometimes it will drop frames every second with all the ProRes codecs and other times I will be able to play up to 1 minute 30 seconds without dropped frames.”

Drop frame issues are almost always a result of your disk drives not being fast enough.

“when playing through a section of black (nothing in the timeline) the video output stays on black when picture resumes in the FCP timeline. The picture eventually comes back on the video output, but it is way out of sync and playing faster than real-time. “

are you using a SLUG for the black? or is the track empty. Slug’s are always NDF or having holes in the timeline can cause FCP to Skip those areas in RT so that it can cause the Video to play out of sync with the audio. This can also happen with audio that is not at the proper bit depth (like Mp4’s used in VO)

“3.) Import a ProRes 422 1080i 29.97 clip that originated as a 30 fps clip (from the Canon 5D Mk 2 camera), and was conformed in Cinema Tools to 29.97. “

A conform does not correct the audio sample as encoded in the H.264 only the video.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[David Margolis] “This project was output from FCP as Prores 444 to HDCAM SR 444 SQ 24PsF. We used the Kona card linking to a Sony SRW 5000. “

OK

you think it is a gamma issue, Why?
at what point did you go from RGB to YUV?

you have to walk thru the entire workflow to confirm that.

What was the original content?
How was is handled?
What other apps touched it.

I think you don;t think of Gamma issues and much as you may have inadvertently added “setup” or had the dual link connection to the deck was incorrectly handled.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[Jay Moffat] “So does this means the LHi can play ProRes 2k but not uncompressed, or is FCP doing this in RealTime? “

No,according to AJA 2K output is not supported on the LHI card, that and the crop function I mention earlier are only supported on the K3 card.

As Russell said it is FCP that is doing the scaling, not the Kona, so your system is fast enough for FCP to handle ProRes but not the much more hardware intensive Uncompressed format.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[Jay Moffat] “The sequence is set to custom 16:9 2048 x 1152, my output is set to 10bit 1920×1080, so there is probably some scaling going on, but through the FSI monitor I get the full frame at 1:1 and I can set it to see the 2k file too. “

What does it say in the Crop Panel of the Kona Control Panel?

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[peter tours] “Final Cut recognizes the Lhi is there – but I have no analog component or HDMI output and analog audio is only a constant buzz on the right channel – either in FCP or out.”

First Check the hardware- are you using the breakout box and if so is it properly connected to your equipment.

Get out of FCP. Final Cut cannot properly control the Card without proper set up.

Open the Kona Control Panel.
Make sure that all of your settings are correct.

if all else still fails

Call tech support, there are people on the phones starting at 9am est.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640