[John Christie]

Thanks for the news Walter. I’m adding a new edit suite and was unsure about the quad with the intel boxes coming out soon. The render benchmarks I’ve been seeing with FCP 5.1 show a Mac Book Pro 2.0 smoking an existing G5 Dual 2.0. But I can’t wait for the new intel boxes and I ordered the quad yesterday. I’m going to be running Final Touch on the new quad and it sounds like the speed benefits will justify the price.

Here’s a quote from a German FCP site (machine translation) comparing 5.1 to 5.04 on PowerPC and Intels:

One note at the begin: the update takes time. The software is shipping with 7 DVD’s. It takes about one and a half hour to install. If there is already an old Final Cut Studio you will not need to enter a new serial. If you install just a part of the Software you have to enter the shipped new serial. So owner of an older FCP studio will have 2 serial numbers.

The first launch show nothing new with the programms. To compare the speed, we have put a DV-clip in the timeline, setting the speed to 10% (apple key + j) and set on backwards. Then the we applied the wind filter with 100%. We measured the render times and compared them with different Macs. The results were more than asthonised!

Our test Macs were:

a) Apple G5 Dual 2Ghz, 1.5GB memory, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE 128MB
b) iMac G5 20″ 2.1 GHz, 1.5GB memory, 128MB graphic board
c) iMac Intel 20″ 2GHz Core Duo, 1.5GB memory, X1600 128MB graphic board
d) MacBook Pro 2GHz Core Duo, 1.5GB memory, X1600 128MB graphic board

The first surprise was that FCP 5.1 is rendering much faster than version 5.04. On a iMac G5 with FCP 5.04 = 4 min 48 sec, after the update only 3 min 52 sec. It was similar with the PowerMac G5. Here was the result 4 min 10 sec vs. 3 min 18 sec.

The big surprises came as we hit the apple – r key on the Intel iMac: 53 sec! We couldn’t belive that so we used the MacBook Pro. And 59 sec!

http://www.final-cut-pro.de/stage/_inhalte/berichte/019_fcp_ub_test.shtml?navid=1

Cheers

John Christie

[John Christie]

Sounds like you’ve got filters on everything in your time line, which means FCP has to render it for a reference file. Reference files can’t access render files on your system, just the original video and audio files.

Cheers

John Christie

[John Christie]

Make that 5 fibre cards, one for your controller as well. You don’t need a spare G4 as a backup controller. You can use any of your edit systems as a backup controller. If you have a stand alone backup controller, it will also need a fibre channel card and an Xsan license. Apple also recommmends a dedicated ethernet network, separate from your regular network to reduce data bottlenecks.

Head on over to the Xsan site and post your requirements there. There are a few dealers who I’m sure will respond to your questions.

Cheers

John Christie

[John Christie]

Xsan is the way to go. I don’t know why you say you need 3 servers. You only need one computer to act as the metadata controller. In my case I use an older G4 dual 800 computer as my controller, it just sits in the rack, doing nothing but running the Xsan and it works well. You can use one of your edit systems to function as a controller, but that’s not recommended anymore. In my facility, I have one of the edit system G5s set to be the backup controller in case there’s a problem with the main controller. It’s an expensive system buy into, but once you’re there, it runs beautifully.

Cheers

John Christie

[John Christie]

Hi Julian

I can lend you a Keyspan adapter if you want to try it out.

Cheers

John Christie

[John Christie]

Hi Pierre

I’m seeing the same problems with my Digibeta deck. I’m starting to think that it’s somehow related to the deck and not Final Cut Pro. I’ve done repeated tests to my new DVCPro 100 deck and it’s bang on every time. What kind of output card are you using? 7 frame offset seems like a lot, I use 4 frames with a Blackmagic card.

Cheers

John Christie

[John Christie]

Hi Bill

I’ve posted this before on the Blackmagic forum as well as reported it to Blackmagic directly. There was one other user who reported it on the Blackmagic forum a year ago, but I haven’t heard if he found a resoloution.

Interestingly, it only seems to affect users with Digibeta decks. I’m wondering if somehow it could be deck related. I did repeated tests to my new Panasonic HD1700 DVCProHD deck and it was frame accurate.

Email me off list and we can keep this discussion going.

john(at)keyframes.tv

[John Christie]

Hi Bill

I’ve had this same problem and can’t find any fix. I have an almost identical system to yours, with a Decklink card outputting to a Digibeta deck. Recently, I changed my pre-roll to 10 sec. from 6 sec. and that seems to have helped, but I haven’t tested it thoroughly. What is your playback offset set to? Mine is set to 5. I think the frame of black at the end is related to the ETT coming in one frame early.

Cheers

John Christie

[John Christie]

[John Christie]

My friend with the same issue called Apple, they’re solution was to take it in to a service depot. The clock battery **should** last longer than a year, but save yourself a trip and try jiggling the battery first.

Cheers

John Christie