[Jesus Ali]

Yeah, but it\’ll make a great license plate! 😉

[Jesus Ali]

Hello Tom.

Well. If you’re outputting to Stand Definition DVD, you could be saving yourself a lot of processing time by simply EDITING in Standard Definition! 🙂

Make a new FCP project and under the FCP menu choose EASY SETUP and then Choose “DV NTSC Anamporphic 29.97”

When you pull your clips onto the Timeline, FCP will ask you if you want to change your Sequence settings to match the Clip. SAY NO.

This is the format of video on a standard definition television DVD. A high-definition Blu-Ray DVD uses a different format, but iDVD can’t burn a Blu-Ray DVD. It can ONLY make standard definition DVD’s.

* * *

I think the reason your Sequence codec is set to H.264 is because you probably said “Yes” when FCP asked you if it should change the Sequence Settings to match the clip.

If you want to keep working on your HD size file, you could try changing the Sequence Codec to Apple ProRes422. I think this might work better for you. It should definitely be more stable and crash less. See if you can output a ProRes master.

You can then use Compressor to convert the ProRes master to a DV NTSC Anamorphic for iDVD, or into MPEG2+AC3 for DVD Studio Pro (a better alternative to iDVD), and the MPG4 version you may want for the internet.

* * *

In summation, I think your OUT OF MEMORY Problems may be caused by working with the H.264 codec as your Sequence Codec.

Please let us know what happens! 🙂

[Jesus Ali]

I’ve heard that Black-Magic has very helpful people on the phone. You should give them a call.
They might be able to get you a different breakout cable.
Also, I think they have a Black-Magic forum here on The Cow. Ask people what you need to get 4 BNC’s / 8 Channels of AES input.

I haven’t had to try exactly what you’re doing, but the IoHD is pretty much rock solid and very easy to work with. You can connect a video signal to it in HD-SDI, HDMI, or Component and have that come in with the audio. The AJA Control Panel even offers Timing and Sync control to deal with moving through different components like your 572.

Good luck. Please let us know what happens!

[Jesus Ali]

You may be right, Pat. I just did some Googling and I find it posts going either way. Many demonstrate my understanding that “ProRes422” 8-bit and “ProRes422 (HQ)” is 10-bit, however, I did see a post that said that all ProRes variants are 10-bit, but that “ProRes422 (HQ)” possesses a higher bit rate.

This is news to me. And has is clear from Googling, I am/was not alone in my thinking.

* * *

To answer your 2nd question, I am referring to which format you choose for your Sequence/Timeline. FCP’s Open Format Timeline feature will conform whichever formats you pull onto the Timeline into the chosen Timeline format. i.e. by telling you that you need to Render the clip.

So when a Filter or Effect is applied, you will get slightly different results based on what your Sequence/Timeline format is. If you made your Sequence Codec “Grayscale” (just a hypothetical example), all of the effects could only come out in grayscale. So even if you color corrected color footage, the Render Space the results would come into would only display shades of gray.

DV NTSC can only produce a limited amount of colors, Uncompressed 8-Bit can produce more, and 10-Bit formats can produce even MORE colors.

* * *

I have edited projects with three rows of ProRes422 (HQ) and two tracks of stereo AIFF audio on a 2Ghz 2006 Core Duo Macbook Pro with the footage on an external FW drive, so I wouldn’t worry about over-taxing the computer.

If you are using FCP 7 on a Quad or Octo (or forthcoming Hexa or Dodeca) Core Mac Pro, processing is really not going to be a worry. FCP 6 was doing this all without real multiprocessor awareness.

The biggest challenge provided by ProRes422 in HD sizes is HardDisk Bitrate. Physically, being able to read the footage fast enough. ProRes422 (HQ) requires 220 Mb/s which equals 27.5 MB/s. A 400 Mb/s Firewire drive can provide 50 MB/s, a FW800 can provide 100 MB/s. Even higher rates can be attained by using eSATA drives through a PCI card. The next step up is RAIDs.

Remember that because ProRes422 uses Intraframe compression, it doesn’t require as much processing overhead as HDV footage. This leaves more cycles available for running filters and effects.

Hope that helps. 😉

[Jesus Ali]

The most straight forward thing to try first is to get AES (uncompressed) audio out of 572 and into FCP. It looks like you need something with 6 to 8 AES BNC inputs. The AJA IoHD has this.

Yes, as was mentioned, you need to identify exactly which Black Magic card you have and what breakout cable connectors it offers.

Here’s a chart for Deck Link:
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/downloads/connections/decklinkdiagram.pdf

Post It with Dolby E: A Post Production Primer
https://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/zz-_Shared_Assets/English_PDFs/Professional/47_Post_it_with_E.pdf

Found at:
https://www.dolby.com/professional/products/broadcast/dolby-e/dp572.html

Good luck! Please let us know if you get this working to your satisfaction!

[Jesus Ali]

In addition to the “Minimum Allowable Free SPace on Scratch Disc”, in the FCP User Prefs, there is a section where you can set a limit to the size/time of newly captured clips. Double check this.

* * *

In the It is my understanding that Journaling kind of “keeps notes” on which files are being written and at what time and where they’re being written.

This becomes more important the more layers there are between the processor and the disk volume. i.e. in RAIDs.

In a RAID, it could be very common for the CPU to lose power at a different moment than the 28 disks in 4 7-disk RAID volumes. Or for one RAID controller to lose power at different point than the CPU, which maybe never crashed. Or perhaps, one of the disks fails or is pulled out by a newbie, and this triggers a freeze, which triggers a crash.

Journaling, has been keeping track on each disk, of what file was being written at which time. Once the CPU is back up it can read this info and theoretically benefit by integrating usable remaining chunks of data and knowing exactly where things left off.

* * *

I have always understood that this was beneficial on the BOOT DISKS of a Macintosh, especially if you are hardware or software RAIDing a Mirror for the Server Boot disk, and that it’s primary benefit was that fewer cache files would have to be thrown away and rebuilt, so you would avoid a lengthy reboot blue screen while the Mac fixed itself.

I have felt that Journaling was less important on Scratch Disks, or even work disks, because if you copied a file to that disk and it didn’t work, you could just copy it again. If you crashed during a render you probably wouldn’t use that file anyway.

So my opinion is yes for Boot Disks and RAIDs (because so much can go wrong in a RAID, you’re better to have all the help you can get to recover), Couldn’t Hurt for Archive Disks, but probably not needed on singular Work, Scratch and Export disks (a LaCie Big Disk is actually a 2 disk RAID 0 Volume, so yes to Journaling).

[Jesus Ali]

I agree with the other responses.

Get a copy of Roxio Toast 9, 10 or higher and the Roxio Blu-Ray Plug-in.
(I believe that the Blu-Ray Consortium requires an extra charge for Blu-Ray authoring {reason Apple hasn’t built it in like many thought they would}, so Roxio adds it as a separate purchase so they don’t have to pay Blu-Ray consortium for every sale of Toast, just the plugin upgrade).

In Final Cut, work in ProRes422. It makes things easier in HD. Look here on the Cow and on Google, there are custom Workflows you can setup to Capture HDV tape DIRECTLY into ProRes footage to edit in a ProRes Timeline. This is the way to get great color and effects results. ProResHQ is 10-bit, 1024 shades of gray in each RGB channel instead of 256 in 8-bit. This makes HD green screen work really great because there is literally 4-times as much data!

Capture, Edit, and then even Export into ProRes. You can then take that ProRes file and drag it to Toast and Toast will convert it into a H.264 perfect for Blu-Ray.

Also, a thing about Toast, it can burn HD video for playback onto the same 4.7GB DVD-R’s you’ve been using for years. The ISO name for a 4.7GB disc is DVD-5, 9GB Dual Layer is DVD-9. The fancy trick I’m taking about is called BD-5. Blu-Ray on a DVD-5.

You know how a TV DVD looks when you put it in a computer? VIDEO-TS and AUDIO-TS folder, ect. That’s the STRUCTURE. Blu-Ray discs also have a specific structure that the players are expecting. But the STRUCTURE and the MEDIA are not inextricably tied together. This is why we can play disc images of DVD’s or just play VIDEO-TS folders.

Toast 9 and UP makes it super easy to do this, just choose to create a Blu-Ray Disc, then where it asks what size disc, say DVD-R, not BD-R. Boom. Done.

You only get 30-45 minutes of optimal quality, (which is 40mbp/s max, btw) but I think Toast may even be able to scale down quality to give you more time on a standard disc.

I’ve successfully played BD-5 discs (museum repeaters, actually) in a Sony PS3, and Sony BD-350 and a Samsung model I don’t remember.
At first, the Samsung would not play the BD-5, but would play a Sony 25GB BD-R burned from Toast on a early (2nd generation? 2x) Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner. But then 6 months later I connected connected the Samsung to the internet through the ethernet jack and it checked for a Firmware update. It found one, downloaded and installed it, and THEN it was actually able to play the same BD-5 I tried earlier.

So if you test a BD-5 on a Blu-Ray player, always look for a Firmware Update first. It will likely improve or enable BD-5 playback.

Good luck.

[Jesus Ali]

The issue is PRECISELY because your computer cannot read the file fast enough.

The Animation Codec is HUGE!!! It is basically 4:4:4, totally uncompressed footage. Your laptop harddrive literally cannot grab the footage fast enough, especially because it is HD. You may even have trouble reading SD Animation codec.

Open the file in QT, and hit COMMAND+I to Get Info and check the DATA RATE required to playback in realtime. It’ll probably be up near 189MB/s or such. A FW800 drive can only do about 100MB/s.

So the Frame Rate of 10fps could be that QT can only Play it back that fast, that’s as fast as it can achieve. But more likely, I’d wager that Adobe Flash just wrote the file a little hokey and probably off offical spec and it’s causing problems.

My recommendation is to use Compressor to Convert the file into the ProRes422 codec (HQ if you encounter any banding) at full size, 24fps, and then work with that in FCP.

Whenever I encounter weirdly submitted files or even PC video files, I usually try to get them into a ProRes format. I’ve found PR to make really solid and super stable video files. Gigantic, but super stable. And they seem to export into H.264 and other formats very smoothly.

Good luck!

[Jesus Ali]

I believe FCP 6 was originally released on Mac OS 10.4 so that should be no problem at all.
Are you certain you’re not thinking about FCP 7 (the latest. FCStudio 2009, i.e. 3)?

I believe that FCP 7 is NOT compatible with 10.4, and requires 10.5.6 or thereabouts.

* * *

If you have an Intel machine why not jump right to FCP 7 and Snow Leopard? The multi-processor benefits will be HUGE! 🙂

Good luck.

[Jesus Ali]

You should edit in ProRes422, (HQ if you use a lot of effects and processing).

When your Timeline Renders, it is actually converting your source video into ProRes422. It doesn’t replace your source video, it renders it’s ProRes copy into the Render folder in the Project folder.
This obliterates the IntraFrame MPEG4 compression, so eventually resaving it to H.264 is not really an issue. You’re converting beautiful ProRes422 into MPEG4, not ugly MPEG4 into uglier MPEG4 (which would be the case if FCP allowed editing H.264 without Rendering).

If you wanted to be super safe, you could Export your ProRes Timeline to a ProRes file and then Convert that to H.264 in Compressor. But I don’t think that will be necessary.

I believe FCP 7 (FCS 2009 {3}) has an Export Preset for YouTube. You should use that.
I am surprised that the WordPress converter accepted DV format video. If you don’t care about HD size, you could also export to DV Anamorphic. The Anamorphic format will cause the video to be Wide Screen like HD.

* * *

Setting your Timeline format to 1280 x 720 ProRes422 with or without (HQ) can produce better results than DV or even the original source video.

This is because the 4:2:2 (grayscale, color red/green, color blue/yellow) color space has twice as much color data at the DV Format’s 4:1:1 color space. This can improve the quality of your Titles, Effects and Color Correction. Since color correction and Effects are the result of mathematical calculations, having larger “spaces” to work in can produce results with better fidelity and smoothness.

This benefit can be compounded by using ProRes422 HQ, because the HQ means that the footage is 10-bit instead of the standard 8-bit. 8-bit footage has 256 levels or gray in R, G and B. 10-bit footage has 1,024 levels in each channel!

Yes, your original footage was captured in a very compressed, MPEG format, but remember, we’re not working with your original footage. When your Timeline is ProRes and you Render, you’ve made new ProRes footage. Once that new footage is Processed with an Effect or Color Correction, BRAND NEW PIXELS are produced. These pixels are the result of equations that were processed with the higher 4:2:2 fidelity and/or 1024 (instead of 256) gradations provided by 10-bit footage.

This higher quality footage still looks observably better, even when converted back down to H.264.

Good luck!