Julian Bowman
Forum Replies Created
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Hey Christian, thanks for this. I had briefly thought about Raiding my drives but the thought of decluttering my mac and reinstalling everything combined with general ignorance of the process pushed the thought out of my head. But buying a new iMac (ideally want a MacPro anyway) and external raid and back up storage is going to cost £4k and given I have already upgraded the ram and graphics card it seems like biting the bullet and spending only around £500 (SSD and new external drive for back up) is a sensible short term plan. Hoping it works 🙂
Some questions though.
1) I have googled and I see what you mean about the SSD in the second optical drive. Overclockers do a Intel 520 Series 240GB 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive for £240. Is that one you would recommend?
2) You said to ensure my 4 drives are all the same. Do you mean just the same size or the same size and brand etc.? I currently have 4 x 2TB drives in my mac and Disc Utility suggests that they are all Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 Media
3) When I Raid them all together, does it format them and delete everything on them? I’m guessing so and am transferring stuff I need to an external, but I don’t know so it may leave data on there.
4) I do a fresh install of OSX on my SSD and then set that as my boot drive. At that point I can delete the OSX on my current boot drive and RAID my 4 internals. Is that correct and it as simple as that?
Right, I think that is it unless it looks like i have missed the point on something. I am, shortly, going to be at a point of having completed jobs and not having to start the edit on other jobs, so this is a good time to give this a go.
Many thanks again for the suggestion and in advance for the answer to these questions above (or to anyone else who happens to answer them).
Cheers
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Cheers David, it is some solace knowing it is probably more an issue with my mac, especially as at some point (when Apple release a new MacPro) I will get myself a new machine and dedicate it solely to editing.
You machine sounds like mine on the whole though I am not using any raid setup with my internal drives. Interestingly I have never experienced these coloured frames issues others have, although I get unexpected closes, but then I get those with most software at some point or another, just something I expect to happen.
Someone has mailed me suggesting I defrag my drives, which I wil do when I have finished my current big job, and I will see if that helps. Steve has suggested rendering out my timelines to see if that helps which i am doing but i can’t imagine that is it.
I’ll keep trying stuff and hoping Apple release the new MacPros with expediency 🙂
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Indeed not. The issue is lag not playback though.
Do we have mac video tech type people in the uk we can hire to Coe in and mac my mac run properly for X? Is that a service done by people here and if so what do I google :)?
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Can’t say but will check mate. To be honest playback is never really an issue so I rarely render, unless I need to check lip sync for example. Especially as exporting doesn’t need rendering and someone did a time trial on render + export versus export only and export only was quick.
I will render out some of my timelines today though and have a look properly tomorrow as I have some more client tweaks to do.
Cheers, will report back soon.
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Sorry, I just hit reply, I wasn’t aiming my post at you per se, but at those whom it describes. As I tried to express there is some good debate on here and I have learnt from it… In fact without this forum and following the sensible threads I wouldn’t currently be using FCP10.0.7. But there are also some right frustrating fan boys on here too.
And yes, I am jealous of those with similar set ups having no lag issues. I want to see them running to see how much better they are than mine and I’d love for a tech person to fix my set up but I don’t know who to look for to try and hire someone to do it. So my experience is currently frustrating beyond belief.
In fact if I had that record your monitor software I would record me editing so others could see and comment on whether it is normal or insanely laggy.
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Pixel. Stopped buying their plugins. Always look good in the trailer but most of them are pretty flaccid. Plus the way their boss dealt with the mDust thieving was pretty dire.
And even free this one looks pretty pointless. I’m not sure how moving certain buttons to an iPad so I have another item on my desk to move to in order to just push a button is a good thing.
My tuppence on this anyway.
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And what frustrates me the most is responses suggesting people with similar machines are not getting the ridiculous lag I am getting. And when I say lag I don’t mean choppy real time playback, on the whole that is good, I mean I click something it takes 2 seconds to action it.
Aindreas took a quote from another thread I posted in but there is a thread with my macs specs, and my workflow, which is basically pro res converts on an external 2tb hard drive.
I can’t help that my mac is ‘outdated’ as Apple haven’t updated their MacPro (properly) in years. I also cannot run OSX or FCPX on a PC without using a hackintosh which I am uninterested in, thus I am stuck dancing to their corporate drum or spending £3k + on a macine which will be outdated a t ‘some awesome point’ in 2013.
As I have said in other threads, there is a lot to like about FCPX, as well as some niavity/stupidity/error in design decisions they have made. The magnetic timeline is just a different way of doing things that is neither earth shatteringly revolutionary or dead on arrival, but Apple have coded it with serious flaws that mean its performance on my mac is horrendous at the current stage of a large project, and no other editing software I have tried or have used extensively has offered up this lagging. This is a flaw, and in an environment where people give me money to make the films, FCPX doing this on my current set up, makes it far less viable a NLE than it could be. And this is a flaw.
I believe there would be a lot more civility between the two extremes of opinion on this forum if those who ‘love’ FCPx weren’t so doggedly blinded by their love that any comment, question or complaint about FCPX that wasn’t gushing praise didn’t act as a catalyst for battening down the hatches and, more recently, a plethora of smug sarcasm and irony about ‘how FCPX isn’t good enough for Pro use’.
Honestly, I am using it, it does a job, bits of it it does really well, bits of it are terrible, and I don’t care what anyone thinks of what software I use because in my world it is irrelevant. But I have to say there are a fair amount of pro FCPX commentators on this forum who make me generally shut up about using FCPX because I don’t want to be associated with them, rather than not wanting to be associated with the software. Andreas may be an agitator, a devil’s advocate, but he doesn’t argue against FCPX in absolute terms of derision, he states he sees value in it and bits are great, but what about this……… as well he should. FCPX 10.0.0 was horrible on the whole, 10.0.7 is far far better and it is now out of the realms of being horrible. It is still incredibly flawed though. Ad it is still littered with poor design decisions. Start acknowledging that whilst stating you also love it’s good points, start debating its pros and cons (which does occasionally happen in a manner that is a joy to areas until one of the jack boot brigade decide to waft in with their size 12s on) and this forum will be more useful than annoying, and people will be less antagonised by your dogmatic fundamentalism, which is always a flawed position to take anyway.
Now, if someone can tell me who to google (technician wise) to get them to look at my mac and figure out why mine is so shite compared to others that would be totally appreciated. I live in Hertfordshire these day, just outside of London.
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Fair enough. Does that mean you’d shout at me less if I was in your shop ?
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Makes me glad I’m my own boss really. Mind you, that was part of the reasoning behind the plan, avoiding self important ranty men dogmatically telling me I don’t know how to walk properly.
It’s a 2 year old Mac.
I will continue to use plugins as I did with FCP7 (some of the same ones in fact) and I do colour correct then add filters for effect. My clients like my work, they give me money, your shop can work your way, I will work mine.
Adding CC and filters at the end to circumnavigate the flaws of my editing software isn’t an issue with my workflow, but with the software. FFS, I get that FCPX has some things going for it but that degree of apologising for its shortcomings is just stupid. FCPX needs to be coded properly and work properly.
I am aware that my mac may be old, something I have written about up in another thread. I am also aware FCPX is the only NLE that is laggy on my mac and it is seriously so. My guess is partly that is because it needs modern computing power and partly because the code isn’t as good as it should be.
In addition, if I need a new Mac to run FCPX (remember, mine is 2 years old) then FCPX isn’t the cheap bit of software people like to say it is. I am self employed. I make a decent living. I also buy all my own gear, cameras and computers, with my own money, so chucking another £3k + at FCPX is a big deal to me. Perhaps in your world £3k is what you blow on your Christmas do. If so, good for you, but to me £3k still hol value, cheers.
But mostly, on my set up, which isn’t antiquated at all, the lag on actioning things on FCPX is horrendous at the current stage of my project (ie the end when everything is in place and client tweaks are necessary, so no avoiding filters at that point). And even if I was using a thunderbolt raid (which I can’t because apple haven’t built a MacPro with thunderbolt) on this current mac I’m not convinced it would stop the lag because it isn’t only about the drive, it is about the code.
I’m also not convinced the notion of not using 3rd party plugins on FCPX when Apple themselves want 3rd party plugins to compensate for the software’s shortcomings is one to be too proudly extolled. Or are apple just being numpties for telling us it is fine, 3rd party solutions will enable us to fill in the gaps.