Rick Lang
Forum Replies Created
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Alas there does not seem to be any simple mathematical formula that explains your two different test results for simple blading. Thanks for all of the detailed information. Since quitting the application only removes a small portion of the bloat, would you consider this a bug and report it to Apple via the feedback mechanism? You have provided Apple enough information to whet their appetite for determining what is happening in their database.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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Simon, excellent observations. One thing I am wondering about, what is the effect of using a much longer initial clip. Could you do another simple test of blading using a clip that is 20 minutes in duration? Thank you.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Omar Godinez] “I gave the incorrect link for the free tutorials.
This is the correct one.
https://www.classondemand.net/online/catalog.aspx?BrandID=168
“After creating an account to watch the ‘free’ video, it demands I install Silverlight on my iMac. Not going to happen. Even Microsoft is giving up on Silverlight.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Vincent D'Angelis] “is it possible that it will take that long if you are also playing around with the program (editing) while its doing this background transcoding”
If you’re very busy playing, then the background transcoding is stopped. Likely start-stop-start-stop etc. There’s a preference for how many seconds it waits after you stop your activity before the background task resumes to give your tasks top priority. So it should go faster if it’s the only thing running. I know Apple promotes the fact you can begin to edit immediately, but I’d naturally wait until it was finished ingesting the clips (or skip the optimized media and use AVCHD natively if it performs well enough for you). I don’t know what else is running concurrently on your system but if it was disk intensive, it could also slow your progress with the transcoding.
[Vincent D'Angelis] “I’m thinking you leave both “proxy” and “optimized” unchecked?”
Proxy will give you a much smaller version of your files (one-quarter the size?) and might be useful if you were taking the files with you to edit on a laptop. No need for you to ever use proxy on your iMac. If all boxes are unchecked, then it will just use the AVCHD format natively until it needs to use anything else for effects or transitions I believe.
[Vincent D'Angelis] “isn’t it smart to store the footage natively?”
Yes, because your originals are on a media card that will soon be wiped when you reuse them. I don’t use an archive because I’m using tape. When I do anything important (to me) with the iPhone 4S video, then I’ll need to archive those originals too.
[Vincent D'Angelis] “how do you then know when to tell fcpx to transcode it to prores?”
If you want to share your media outside FCP X, then you may want to share it as ProRes 4:2:2 since that is supported by most other programs you may want to use. For example, if you wanted to colour grade the video in DaVinci Resolve. When I said, “as needed”, I meant that sometimes FCP X will render a portion of your AVCHD video in the timeline as ProRes before it applies some effects you’ve requested. You don’t need to do anything specific then as FCP X takes care of it.
[Vincent D'Angelis] “if you initially “create optimized” when you first import, does this mean the footage is then saved in the hard drive as the prores form? -> what about “proxy” ?”
Yes. Proxy will make another version of your files that are about one-quartre the size I think (have not done it to verify). But you don’t need to bother with proxy files as discussed above.
[Vincent D'Angelis] “i believe i read somewhere that “prores” are mac only files”
ProRes is not “Mac only” but you should verify Avid’s input requirements with Avid (or in their forums). You appear to meet the recommended requirements for using AVCHD with Avid Studio. Remember ProRes can also be limited to use while you are editing in FCP X. When you want to go to another product, you can always convert your file to something compatible if needed. ProRes is designed to be the most efficient way to work within the FCP X product family, but you can go to another format for interfacing with another program. Avid runs on a Mac, so you could consider if that will make things simpler rather than using the Windows version if you’re moving beyond Avid Pinnacle.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Vincent D'Angelis] “I tried selecting “create optimized media” for 2 imports so far (and the time it takes is unbelievable for it to do the transcoding (i assume thats what its doing?) – the background task after initially importing was like almost 5 hours for a one hour clip of 720 footage!”
If you’re doing this on your 2011 iMac with 16 GB of RAM, that does seem too long. The experts hopefully will correct me if I have any errors in this response to you. When you create optimized media, FCPX is going to create ProRes 4:2:2 files I believe even though your input may be AVCHD from your camera or SDHC memory card. It does this because it can quickly process your frames when you are applying effects for example in your timeline. But you do not have to do that initial conversion when you ingest your media. You can leave it as AVCHD format if you wish. If FCPX needs to transcode it to ProRes or anything else you specify, that can occur later as needed. Still I would think that the optimize step on ingest is likely desirable and should occur pretty much in real time, an hour’s worth of video should take an hour or so to import.
There’s a chance it is taking a long time analyzing your video for tagging metacode in the Event library (where it can create smart entries for the type of shot and number of people in the shot), colour or image stabilization and so on. You can turn all the analysis steps off and do analysis later as needed such as it you see a particular clip would benefit from image stabilization). Try turning everything off when you import some few minutes of video as a test and see how quickly it goes.
Let us know what you find, good luck.
[Vincent D'Angelis] “i read somewhere that if you don’t check either “proxy” or “optimized” then the import is native (not really sure what that means either)…
best way to import/store footage?”
In your case “native” means AVCHD, the codec used by your camera; for me, it’s HDV (Canon HV20 tape) or H.264(iPhone 4S).
The best way to import is discussed above if by “best”, you mean quickest. Transcoding to ProRes may be “best” in terms of the speed of timeline edits and effects you’ll apply. I believe it will store your media in the event in whatever form you tell it to use upon ingest. That could be AVCHD or ProRes depending upon your choice.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Vincent D'Angelis] “I tried selecting “create optimized media” for 2 imports so far (and the time it takes is unbelievable for it to do the transcoding (i assume thats what its doing?) – the background task after initially importing was like almost 5 hours for a one hour clip of 720 footage!”
If you’re doing this on your 2011 iMac with 16 GB of RAM, that does seem too long. The experts hopefully will correct me if I have any errors in this response to you. When you create optimized media, FCPX is going to create ProRes 4:2:2 files I believe even though your input may be AVCHD from your camera or SDHC memory card. It does this because it can quickly process your frames when you are applying effects for example in your timeline. But you do not have to do that initial conversion when you ingest your media. You can leave it as AVCHD format if you wish. If FCPX needs to transcode it to ProRes or anything else you specify, that can occur later as needed. Still I would think that the optimize step on ingest is likely desirable and should occur pretty much in real time, an hour’s worth of video should take an hour or so to import.
There’s a chance it is taking a long time analyzing your video for tagging metacode in the Event library (where it can create smart entries for the type of shot and number of people in the shot), colour or image stabilization and so on. You can turn all the analysis steps off and do analysis later as needed such as it you see a particular clip would benefit from image stabilization). Try turning everything off when you import some few minutes of video as a test and see how quickly it goes.
Let us know what you find, good luck.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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Try Resolve Lite 8.1. It’s working for me now as I posted elsewhere. Perhaps upgrading to Lion 10.7.2 is the key or perhaps Blackmagic did some work behind the scenes for the benefit of those with IMacs with the ATI Radeon 4850 GPU. I still get a warning message but it works.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Rohit Gupta] “OSX 10.7.2 is the latest supported OS. It seems to work well so far – no known issues.”
Thanks so much! Finally tried DaVinci Resolve Lite v8.1 on my old iMac (late 2009) Lion 10.7.2 with the ATI Radeon 4850 GPU (not recommended fro Resolve but the card is supposed to support Open CL). Surprise, all is working now for the first time on my machine!!! Thank you Blackmagic.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[kim krause] “i got a warning the first time i launched to say my graphics card was not recommended…i ignored it and it worked fine…
“Kim, not sure which upgrade if any on my machine did the trick but the new DaVinci Resolve Lite 8.1 now appears to work flawlessly on my iMac 2009 with ATI Radeon 4850 GPU running Lion 10.7.2. Still get a warning to use the 5770 and higher GPUs but everything I tried works now.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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Have you tried iMovie for the iPad?
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB