[Jesper Kodahl andersen]

I can say that this is not a problem exclusive to the 23.98 crowd. I just graded a sequence that I thought was in 25fps. It came in as the same stupid 24fps and I looked inside the XML file to see if Premiere screwed something up. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the XML as far as I could ascertain. every time there was something about frame rate the XML said 25fps.
Not only that but I tried to import the seq as an EDL instead because there it let me choose the frame rate when importing. Only to have it come up with an error saying that it cannot change the sequence frame rate from 24 to 25!! Aaaargh!
Sooo…. I would love to hear BMD’s solution to this one. I’m sure it must be some banal error on our part.

cheers
Jesper Kodahl Andersen

[Jesper Kodahl andersen]

Hi Edward

That did it!! Thanks so much for your help you have no idea how many hours of jaw grinding agony you just saved me for.
It seems that it’s the whole x/axis that gets warped, and although it makes sense I had seen that one coming!

Cheers
Jesper

[Jesper Kodahl andersen]

HI All

Still having issues with multiclip sequences here! I’m running on an “old” 3.0 Ghz eightcore system with 12GB’s of RAM. OSX 10.6.3. Eight SonnetTech 500P boxes with 40 1TB hardrives connected to a RocketRAID 2522 card running RAID 5. Appr.: Read: 700MB/s Write: 650 MB/s

So what I’m asking my computer to do is run 9 streams of XDCAM EX in a multiclip sequence. And before everyone jumps at me with the obvious and by now quite tired “but that’s a lot of processing you’re asking of your CPUs!” and “You should convert to prores!” (the holy grail of codecs sure to fix everything from the common flu to the demise of your ex) , let me just say I have been there and it still doesn’t work with ProRes proxy.
The good news is… It works fine…. until it doesn’t. That’s basically my frustration. My old MacPro just eats it’s way through my 9 streams and I can sit and edit just fine for half a day… and then all of a sudden, boom! FCP is gone! There’s no warning, no slowdown, I’m doing nothing other than what I have done the rest of the day when it was working fine. This is what is really bugging me. If the machine is too slow, well then it should just grind to a halt, not crash! I do not believe that when you design an app, you say: “Hey what if we make the app just crash if you put a big load on it.”

Me actually being able to work half a day on the system without a crash and the nine clips of XDCAM EX just playing without any hickups, tells me that it has nothing directly to do with performance. Of course if I enable “External Video” and try to play through my Multibridge Pro II the system crashes immediately! So apparently it doesn’t like to output nine steams to the graphics card AND output to the PCI bridge card at the same time.
That in my opinion also is a bug, most likely from Decklink’s side. A look at the crash log seems to strengthen this theory as well.

I had a friend who was an ace on the early Avid systems, back in the day they were called PowerMac 8100 and was running on a 601 PPC CPU. He was always three or four commands ahead of the system when he was editing (Yes he was that fast, or the machines that slow!) But whenever he took a breather the machine caught up to him. And this was even on Mac OS 8.5! This is how software should be written!

So I think my reasoning still stands as valid: There’s some shifty code inside FCP! How about it, Apple??

[Jesper Kodahl andersen]

Well I guess the Avid word was going to come up sooner or later. Avid sure has it’s idiosyncrasies, but as you point out, it’s limited in it’s approach to media input and therefore more prone to work once you actually get to the editing. But hey I’m always working in FCP. Mostly because it’s not limiting me.

But having edited film on Steenbeck flatbed tables and U-Matic machines I have been around the block for a while. I didn’t break into this biz yesterday and you couldn’t know, but when I said it doesn’t work well, I’m saying it with some experience under my belt. I have indeed rooted all the banal errors out of the process. But when four streams of ProRes (proxy) approx. 4,7MB per stream per sec still crashes 6-10 times a day on two different systems that can deliver over 650 Megs per second, there’s something shifty inside the code.

Now it could be a PAL issue, I can’t talk about NTSC users since I’ve never gone there, but that still doesn’t excuse Apple from some sort of solution. It could be hardware related that it works on “some” laptops, and maybe on some MP’s but this is not a bingo game where I hope that the hardware I’m buying is the hardware that just happens to work with multicam editing.

Sorry, I don’t want to sound like a sourpuss, I love Apple like the next guy, but hey if you’re family you have to be able to call it like you see it
;O)
Jesper

[Jesper Kodahl andersen]

hi Simon

Don’t know if you fixed this problem by converting to prores, but I seriously doubt it! Let me just tell you about my own experience:

I’ve tried in two different edit suites to make multicam happen. Different setups, different versions of final cut (6.0.3 -> 7.0.1) different codecs (ProRes HQ, ProRes proxy, DV PAL, XDCAM EX 1080i25) with IO hardware (Decklink Pro ver1, Decklink Pro Ver2) without anyhardware. One suite had disk throughput of above 350MB per second the other one more than 650MB per second.

I tell you…….(counting to ten here) it sucks! When you have less hardware attached it crashes less, but there is no way in H… that FCP is not going to crash when you work on serious multicam editing with a big system.

The different combinations I’ve been through are too countless to mention, just trust me, it’s not even close to perfected yet!

Just though I’d share your pain a bit here, should know that you’re not alone! Just wish Apple would take the pro community serious for once and put out a FCP that is rock solid instead of pouring more programming into it that isn’t.

Cheers
Jesper

[Jesper Kodahl andersen]

Actually The HVR-1500 is a good bit faster when batching, so if you’re doing a lot of Offline-Online work where you’re re-batching loads of material nothing beats the HVR-1500. Only problem is that You can’t as of Sep. 7th. use the RS-422 control together with FCS2 because there’s a bug that makes it fail when trying to locate a clip. (read my other post on the subject).

It’s a great machine if you need the speed. The HD 422 Uncompressed upscaling chip as far as I’ve been told, stems from the vastly more expensive HDSR Machine. It just sucks that there’s a bug with the 422 control.

cheers
Jesper

[Jesper Kodahl andersen]

Thank god I’m not the only one!

I had a suspicion that this was the case, I’m also using the 422 Control! And I haven’t encountered the same problem through firewire. So it seems that since I’m using the Multibridge Pro that it falls back on Apple once again. Since the Deck is new I had the sixth sense that there would be trouble when I bought it. I also have a machine room and don’t even consider having the tape deck firewire’d up!

Thanks for the response
J