[Jeff Coleman]

[walter biscardi] “At this level? You mean you want a $1,200 Final Cut Studio to provide the exact same features as the Nitris DX which from what I can find, is priced at $36,000. Good luck with that.”

No. I expect, like Walter probably does, that Final Cut Pro will offer competitive, if not leading video editing features and functionality via bug fixes and updates.

The point had to do with the earlier poster’s frustration
“they add all these great bells and whistles and dont take care of simple things that everyone has been stammering for for [sic] years now”

Walter’s solution to denied feature requests was to just go out and buy the other product that works. But this is not our expectation. And Walter could not live with his solution either. He’s still using FCS and didn’t buy the other product. This is why 720p drop frame and hardware acceleration are comparable. Not that they have equal value. Both are features that have emerged as desirable in the marketplace. One (hardware acceleration), Walter thinks, should be solved by just going out and buying a whole new editing system. The other (720p drop-frame) he thinks ought to be solved by incessant lobbying to the manufacturer. I think both are better solved by the latter.

Now let’s get to Ron Lindeboom’s point as well as Walter’s about cost, because initially that’s probably why we all threw are hat in the FCP ring. But that was then and now is now.
The posters below reflect well the real world cost of setting up an edit suite.
I offer a more realistic comparison than I think Walter’s figures represent or Ron’s allude to:
The Avid Media Composer Mojo DX vs. Final Cut Studio with a Kona card is about $10,000 vs. $4,000.
Not $1,200 vs. $36,000. (Walter’s $36,000 price may have been for the Symphony Nitris with an 8-core Mac Pro.)
By the way a Media Composer Nitris DX is $15,000.
The storage solutions are about the same.
The monitoring solutions are about the same.
The furniture is about the same.
The VTRs and miscellaneous terminal equipment is about the same.
Over the course of a three year investment, that difference in price is about $10 per business day. A little over a buck an hour. Even if you buy the Nitris DX instead, the cost difference is only two bucks an hour. $6,000 is $6,000 or $9,000 is $9,000 and you could keep all that in your pocket if you bought the FCS instead of the Nitris. You could buy another MacPro, but you couldn’t build another edit suite for the difference.
[walter biscardi] “What I have learned is that all of the clients who come to our facility really don’t give a rats a– what tools we’re using. They come because we do really good work and they want to work with myself and the other artists in my facility.”
This is good for Walter’s situation, but not universal for all FCP users as several posters have indicated in this thread already. Some of my clients come to me for the same reason, especially when doing turnkey work. But for hourly production and short turnaround jobs it’s a different story.
So to Mr. Boghosian’s point below:
“I’d be willing to bet that if a company could make a board or box that would give FCP these true real-time abilities, that company would fair well in the marketplace. Whether it’s Apple, AJA, or some third party-I’ll bet you’d all be buying. And I’ll bet that company could charge upwards of $5K for that kind of feature. Sure there is no one solution to everyone’s work/price point. Those who say they’re satisfied with 5 or more layers in real time should try adding a drop shadow to those layers. And those of us who require green screen can forget anything resembling real time in FCP. But if I offered that to you, you’d be willing pay for the speed and convenience, not to mention the creativity that comes with that smooth workflow.”
AMEN! $5K is just about right. Keep lobbying for that one!
And while I’m on it, how about better media management.
And another thing, how about a better scaling option in FCP akin to Motion’s.

[Jeff Coleman]

[walter biscardi] “Don’t complain when you can’t get hardware acceleration from a product that won’t offer it when you can easily get it from another product.”

Really?
What if someone would substitute “hardware acceleration” for any other issue one might be having with a product. Like drop frame for 720p? One shouldn’t complain? So one should just buy the Avid then since one could easily get if from them? Is that what you did?

At this level, there is built into the purchase of the software product an expectation of (how should I say this?) accommodating present or emerging common real-life field circumstances either by patch or upgrade. The buyer expects the software over the long haul to be competitive with the best products in it’s class.
I wouldn’t consider hardware acceleration a common real-life circumstance anymore than CMX would have considered non-linear editing a common real-life circumstance. The point of the previous poster was to gain faster editing in FCP through hardware acceleration that he thinks he needs in order to do his common jobs more effectively. I too work on a very new very tricked out MacPro with a very fast SAN and while it is faster than that old 2GHz G5, it still takes some rendering. Which is probably why my client who works regularly with an Avid, has asked me, “Is this a fast computer they have here?”
It’s reasonable to desire faster editing capability and foundational editing capability from a product at this level. This is not open sourceware wherein the buyer doesn’t know if any updates or support will ever be coming.
I welcome his suggestion. There are many things about FCP that I prefer over Avid, but speed and media management aren’t on that list. Do you think they’ll ever be?

[Jeff Coleman]

Hardware acceleration doesn’t make sense? Really?
The new Nitris DX looks more promising to me for instant videos, i.e., effects on multiple layers no waiting. Throw a few effects on the old FCP timeline and it can’t render 3 layers of DV quickly much less play it back in realtime. If you and your clients are used to Final Cut Pro rendering then I’d guess acceleration isn’t high on your priority list. But if you and your clients are used to AVID playback and rendering, then your priorities are probably different.
If you could play your motion project back in realtime without rendering a few layers, what would that be worth to you over the course of a few years?
Isn’t AJA using hardware acceleration in their new IO box?
Or how about the very high end Redbox
https://www.pixellexis.com/
Hardware acceleration must make sense for at least somebody.
This is America. We don’t like to wait. We want it now. Hardware acceleration gives immediate feedback in the creative process which is invaluable. It’s not all about economy, but it’s about art as well.

more thoughts….

Furthermore, the other posters are probably right about Apple seeming to be unresponsive to foundational issues regarding media management and studio programs interoperability issues after upgrading Apple software. At last year’s NAB the Apple rep (from Apple) denied there were any media management problems. So where do you go when there are issues and the manufacturer says there are not? When that filter doesn’t work or that codec spits out anomalies? Efficacy affects my blood pressure, too.

The cumulative software costs for FCP over the last four years have approached or exceeded the costs of a new Media Composer today. The amount of time I’ve spent troubleshooting software issues with FCP and Apple OS over that time has been enormous. I can’t underestimate the heartache. The computer costs are the same today. But Media Composer offers hardware acceleration as well. I’m buying a new computer and analyzing the cost/benefit of each editing solution. Adobe CS is a must either way. Encore offers a Blu-Ray solution which seems to be a growth opportunity. FCS’s DVDSP hasn’t been able to keep up with Adobe and others even though they say they have 1 million plus users. AVID seems to handle the P2 thing a bit more easily than FCP does. Time is money. The economies of 2004 for FCP don’t seem comparable to those of 2008 and they deserve re-evaluating. There are more quality freelance AVID editors here than quality FCP editors. Apple’s absence from NAB without any apparent software fanfare seems to bolster the rumor they’re going to unload their proApps division. If so, do you invest in FCP today? Ahh, I hear the outrage over such blasphemy, but I’m not speaking to the religious.

[Jeff Coleman]

https://www.wiebetech.com/products/RTX200.php
https://www.wiebetech.com/products/specsheets/RTX_200H_QR_spec.php
RTX200H-QR by Wiebe Tech looks interesting to me. Plenty of interface choices. I thought people were using one of their RAID 1 products pretty regularly in field for Panasonic P2.

Run it at RAID 1. Pop out the bare drive and put it on the shelf in one of their $5 boxes. You don’t have to use their drives. You might call ’em and see if they have a better reco.

Let us know what works.

[Jeff Coleman]

Has anyone tried a plug-in in FCP that scales better?
Like BCC DVE or something?
Or do you have to completely leave the application in order to get a good scale effect?

[Jeff Coleman]

I think this behavior on capture is normal for DV. It is an interlaced recording, even though it is a progressive image.
I have the same issue using the Sony-450 camera shooting 30p widescreen. Capture DV anamorphic and afterward set all the clips in the browswer to “None” in the field dominance column.

[Jeff Coleman]

First, please keep us posted on your findings. I’m very interested in the outcome on this one.

Second, let me make sure I understood your earlier posts to mean that the sequences in projects 2 and 3 are made up of P2/HVX-200 material and WON’T output to tape on the Panasonic 1400, even if you put those sequences into project 1. Project 1’s sequence, made up of the same material, WILL output to tape. Furthermore, if you make projects 2 & 3 sequences into Quicktime movies and drop those movies into a new sequence (in what project is unclear to me– a new project or in projects 2 or 3?) then they will output to tape. You can’t copy all the clips from the defective sequence(s) and paste them into a new working sequence either and be able to output to tape. Lastly, the only “clue” the app provides is “General Error (88)”.

Just a few more ideas that you’ve likely thought through:
Have you trashed your render folder for projects 2 & 3 and forced FCP to re-render all the clips?
Have you overwrote the sequence into a new sequence in a working project (not just copied all the clips and pasted)?
You’re positive the sequence settings, especially the video processing tab, are the same for all the projects?
Those movies you dropped into a new sequence and were able to output to tape in what project did you output them– 1, 2, or 3?

[Jeff Coleman]

Have you tried saving Ep2 and Ep3 as something else, even somewhere else and then trying to output from those new projects?
Also are you using marks to output that are not on the last frame of the sequence?

[Jeff Coleman]

Is Sheer cross-platform?

[Jeff Coleman]

Dear Tom and Rafael,
The PhotoJPEG codec was quite satisfactory to all. When I played it back and paused in QT Player the frames looked as if they were already deinterlaced even though I didn’t make that choice. The client was quite happy and the size was good enough to put each 4+ minute 1080i video onto a DVD data disc. I thought each movie would be about the same size since they are each about the same length, but the sizes varied considerably. I guess it depends on the motion & color in the content, eh?

Thanks so much for your suggestions.