Joseph Hung
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However, this is enlightening and has some good info links.
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1179272
But this is getting off topic and requires it’s own or existing thread.
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Hey Oren,
I’ve been thinking about it, and with the new update to FCPX bringing in some much needed functionality, it’s looking more mature and I might be moving over to it from FCP7 soon. But that’s not why I’m writing. I’ve been reading up, especially this article, where the demo presented to the editors by Apple was with an iMac, AJA IOXT box for broadcast monitor output, a Promise RAID, all via Thunderbolt.
https://tinyurl.com/79al2o3
Add to this set up the real possibility that Apple will probably kill the Mac Pro this year, and force everyone to not only relearn their NLE, but to rebuild their systems as well in order to stay up on tech and hardware and speed. Can you imagine walking into an edit bay and seeing this set up? Eye opening for sure, and impressive, although I’m not a fan of a bunch of desktop peripherals. However, we are animals that evolve to our environments, so making those adjustments to my system is something I can get over.
With all that said, you might want to add to your considerations and equations, and look a little further into your work’s near future, since your computer will soon be outdated, too slow, and require hardware that is no longer supported (as is my computer is already there, coming onto 6 years old now). This is only going to make it tougher. I wonder if it is better to price out a new computer with Thunderbolt connectivity, and see where that lands you after you upgrade everything to handle the technology and be able to function on a professional level?
FCPX, Thunderbolt interface, and the peripherals, plugins, etc will continue to bolster themselves collectively. It’s gonna get better, and for me, since I am in need of a new tower, like right now, I think I should consider how to fold in Thunderbolt. I’m just waiting to see if Apple drops a new Mac Pro, and if my current hardware will be compatible with it. If it is, I will likely buy it or a refurb from last release like a 12 core, and I can hold out a few more years until all the new tech bugs and updates are worked out and it’s at a pro level that I require. If it is not, then I may have to make that move over to smaller but faster computers and Thunderbolt. My RAID 5 array may soon be a very expensive paperweight. 🙂
Sorry to get off topic, but thought this might be helpful in deciding what to do to fix future bandwidth issues.http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
Even at ProRes 422 you can be bottlenecking when you have too many streams of video, with filters, effects, etc. If your timeline is quite long and complicated, FW800 drives (raids or daisy chains) will still falter at 100% res.
You should render all to get rid of all colored bars and whatnot, and see if that helps. Streamlining your master clips to one place will help too. When I was having issues, I moved my audio clips and audio render to a different drive and that seemed to help a little.
To do complicated edits, you really do need good bandwidth with HD material. If you are thinking future proof for multiple edit stations networked to one place, I would look into turn key systems such as SANs and the likes. If you are thinking a single RAID array for one edit station, there are tons of options out there, but FW800 will still be your bottleneck. You could look into an eSATA card and try connecting with that, but I haven’t tried it and don’t know about its performance, in theory it’s better than FW800. Worth looking into.
Many turn key RAIDs plug and play are expensive, and the really good ones still require PCI-E RAID cards. I wrote a tutorial for building a DIY RAID array for single edit bay, for under $2K. If you want, send me your email and I’ll email it to you. My DIY RAID is beefy and I have not had any trouble with complicated feature length edits in ProRes 422 HQ.
This route doesn’t set you up for future networking and SANs. When you want to do that, you’ll have to invest in outfitting stations with the appropriate hardware to network multiple edit bays.http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
One other thing to check out is your RAM health. You can run a test with an app called Rember. See if your RAM is faulty and if it is, replace it and see if that helps.
http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
Hey Oren,
Sorry for the delay. Happy New Year to you. I am wondering if you found a solution? Have you tried monitoring your CPU usage during specific tasks? It sounds like you did a clean install of the OS, and you’ve tried other steps such as permissions repair and disk health tools, to no avail?I had a similar issue like this. I couldn’t playback my edits without dropping frames, and other system holdups and hiccups, making editing a real pain. Mornings were better than later in the day. I had internally striped RAID as well which was my capture scratch. I fixed my problem by updating my storage and IO feed.
One thing to think about is that an internal striped RAID (via internal HDDs and Disk Utility) is not the ideal way to have high speed throughput and CPU’s unencumbered. An internally striped RAID requires the computer’s CPUs to control them. It is much more ideal to have a RAID PCI-E card installed that has hardware based CPU RAID controller, thereby taking the processing off of your computer’s CPUs and handling it on the RAID card’s CPU instead. This will relieve the inherent bottleneck. Couple this with high speed cables and an external RAID chassis and you’ll be pulling in enough throughput to edit several streams of uncompressed HD.
HD video, depending on your choice of codec, will require high enough throughput. Especially when you want the best HD possible, either Uncompressed or ProRes 422 HQ. To help determine if it’s a throughput issue, are you keeping your files on the internal RAID or the external GTECH? Firewire 800 isn’t going to do it for you either, depending on what codec you are using. Also, what codec are you cutting with? FCP7? How many video streams? How do you have your material organized? Organization of your material and how the NLE links to them is just as important.
Building an external RAID with hardware is not cheap, and I know this is not what you want to hear. But it sounds like your system is getting bogged down when you need high throughput, so the answer that I can think of is creating better throughput.
http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
If there is sync sound, this might work to get the audio to sound right. Do a test clip and see if it helps.
https://philipbloom.net/2009/05/30/how-to-convert-canon-5dmk2-footage-from-30p-to-24p/
It worked for me when I shot on the 5D way back when before the firmware patch for 24p. It’s a bit convoluted, but worked.
http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
You can also use Console while it’s happening to see if any errors come about. And use Activity Monitor to see what’s hogging your CPU. Generally, I never update anything while in the middle of a project, this almost always creates problems. I suspect that it’s a driver/firmware incompatibility between something and something, from updating to Snow Leopard.
http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
To follow up on my last post, on the DVD, is the audio out of sync right off the bat or is it in sync then later in the program it’s slipping out of sync?
ARe you checking that the audio settings, in 90 min. best quality in Compressor, is set to the same as your sequence settings, ie. output from FCP?http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
Matt has some great suggestions, all of which I tried to help diagnose when I was having the same issues. I would also check the health of your RAM too, I think there’s freeware out there to do this. You could also use Activity Monitor to see what’s eating up alot of your CPU, especially when you hit play in FCP.
http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A -
Are you using the Quicktime H264 codec through Compressor? Are you outputting a self contained full resolution QT then bringing it into Compressor for the transcode? I personally avoid using the “Send To Compressor” setting.
http://www.tulpapictures.com
Twitter: @tulpapictures
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tulpapicturesMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
FCS2
CS5
8GB RAM
ProAvio 8TB RAID 5 Dual Mini-SAS
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
RocketRAID 4322 via dual MiniSAS
Panasonic Lumix GH2, Canon 5DMKII, 7D, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A