[Joseph Hung]

Yes, I monitored through Activity Monitor and it spikes a little for sure, which I think is normal when I hit play, but it doesn’t seem to coincide with anything obvious. Maybe I’m missing it…
No network here, and I just tried a few things, like cleaned the intake on the fan to my graphics card, turned off mirror on desktop when i need to watch on my broadcast monitor and not in the canvas, checked my pci-e utilities settings to make sure i’m not dumping too much bandwidth to my Blackmagic card (only needs x1), etc. All these things seems to help, esp. the mirror on desktop toggle. A PITA for sure when I have to constantly go back into A/V setings to switch it on and off.
I think this is a number of things, and I’m slowly widdling away at it. Checking out my graphics card and cleaning it and mirror on desktop helped alot, I can play for 10-15 minutes now, but still get the random dropped frames due to slow disks.
Yes, it is frustrating when you know your machine can handle it, because others with the same machine and set up and in similar situations don’t have issues like this. It’s a little ridiculous that I can’t play this timeline down without going through so many hoops just to get it to play without interruptions. I’m definitely missing something obvious…

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D

[Joseph Hung]

Any other thoughts anyone? I’m pretty stumped and can’t figure out what is bogging down my system. Can my graphics card be dying, and does that effect playback in FCP? Do I need to do a fresh install of FCP/OSX?
Any ideas are welcome and appreciated.
Joseph

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D

[Joseph Hung]

Hi Jerry,
These settings are what I’m usually on, because through experimentation, it gets worse using other options.
RT popup menu: I’m usually on safe, it runs smoother on it, video playback for just viewing usually medium, high when i’m doing CC, Full frame playback, multiclip playback on, record to tape full quality, there are settings for when the scopes are up.
i’m going to turn off multiclip and record to tape because i haven’t tried that yet.
Sequence settings: HDTV 1080i 16:9, square pixels, 23.98 fps, Apple ProRes 422 HQ, 48K 24bit,
Video Processing: Render 10bit in high precision YUV, max white is white, and motion filtering is normal.
Render Control: filters and frame blending checked, 100% frame rate render, 100% resolution render, codec same as sequence.
I haven’t changed much of the sequence settings, because I figure that’s what I want right? Especially during CC and finalizing.
Everything in the timeline has been transcoded to the Sequence settings codec. Shot on the 5DMKII, a 30p, transcoded, conformed, retimed. Lots of stills and video from Getty transcoded, conformed and retimed if necessary. the audio files are mixed down 2 track wavs on a different drive at this point. i’m going out to BluRay DVD, and eventually a post house will take my ProRes output and lay it to HDCAM.
Again, it’s sporadic and sometimes it’s worse other times it can play for a long time without interruption.
All unecessary apps and processes have been disabled. I have a feeling my capture scratch is too full of unnecessary stuff. May try to media manage as this is pretty much the final cut, bring that into a new project and go from there. However, this will have to happen after the opening, and i’m on a tight deadline so gotta just power through and get it done first. There will b e more work after the opening, so a kind of fresh start might be good.
Thanks for any insight…
Joseph

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D

[Joseph Hung]

Thanks Anthony, tried it, and other variations, and to no avail. I ran the Blackmagic disk speed tests:
Boot Disk: 62.3 MB/s Read, 49.4 MB/s Write
RAID 0: 190 MB/s Read, 182 MB/s Write

I think my boot disk is slow. In System Profile, it lists my boot drive with a link speed of 3Gbit, and a “Negotiated Link Speed” of 1.5 Gigabit. At first I thought my RAID drives were bad, but it seems they are holding up speed tests.

Could this be the culprit? I have plenty of space on all drives, I can’t imagine what is bogging down my system.

Help!

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D

[Joseph Hung]

Thanks for the response Jerry. There are really no effects except simple compositing and cross fades/opacity levels, still moves, etc. Super simple stuff that my computer should be able to handle.
I’m afraid it could be my drives, but if they are clocking in at just under 200 MB/s, I don’t see what the deal is there.
None of the volumes are even at 60% full.
I’ve also tried deleting any empty video and audio levels to keep real time rendering at a minumum.
I did realize one thing though, I have to take a look at my boot drive. I just realized that my boot drive is older, it’s 500 GB, I just recently swapped boot drives to this one before this project started. I think it’s 7200 RPM, but I could be wrong. It could certainly be dying on me.
Thanks,
Joseph

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D

[Joseph Hung]

Excellent, sold. This is my first time working with XDCAM EX footage, so your input is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.3
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A

[Joseph Hung]

Ah, I didn’t think of that. Just to make sure I fully understand you: Edit with XDCAM clips in ProRes timeline, out to Color as is, then render and output with Compressor to ProRes with the pulldown for the framerate conversion. Wouldn’t this add alot of rendering time while editing? Just curious.
Much appreciated Jeremy. Anyone else with thoughts on this situation?
Thanks in advance.

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.3
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A

[Joseph Hung]

thanks for the quick response. Upon further research on this esteemed site, I found that some people were editing with the native XDCAM (after Sony’s log and transfer plugin work), go to Color in XDCAM, then output as ProRes.
Any objections to this? Or is it better to just keep everything ProRes since I’m adding some minimal text graphics?
Thanks in advance.

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.3
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A

[Joseph Hung]

I’ve had trouble with FCP6 and AVCHD, so like Jerry says, transcode to ProRes.
@Jerry – I was wondering about FCP 7, is it still the same case? I heard from someone that FCP 7 can better handle AVCHD natively. But the tech specs don’t reflect it, saying transcode to ProRes again. Can you clarify, please?
Thanks so much,
Joseph

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.5.8
FCP 6.0.6
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A

[Joseph Hung]

Ah very good point. No my sequence setting is set to the animation codec. I figured since it was animation, then an animation sequence, and I would be transcoding to ProRes, so there would be no need to deal with an animation codec in a ProRes sequence. You could be right there.
I was afraid that it would be the differences in color spaces, going from animation to prores, and a possible change in the RGB limits. So you could be correct. My observations with the scopes have always been after rendering, so I don’t think that was the problem.
Hmm, still stumped on why filters aren’t being carried over in the export. Ah well, we ended up transcoding the ProRes again with slight CC, and all is good. There was a difference in the quality, but it was acceptable with a slight contrast boost, which was still within broadcast levels. Delivered and passed QC.
After further research, the new ProRes 444 is pretty right on, and that it supports both RGB and YUV and an alpha channel. More reasons to get FCP 7 into the workflow soon.
Goodbye Animation Codec!
Thanks everyone for your experience and patience in this query…

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.5.8
FCP 6.0.6
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A