[Ryan Holmes]

I think 5000 is a pretty safe data rate usually. It’s what Vimeo recommends on their Compression page ( https://vimeo.com/help/compression ). In my experience, sometimes you just have to throw a higher data rate at the video to get the results you want. The trade off being you’ll have a larger file (what I would call a deliverable – you’re delivering in its final form somewhere).

I just posted a video on YouTube last week with a data rate of 30,000kb/s. Yes, it was overkill. But at the same time the only penalty I incurred was a slightly longer upload time. If you’re willing to wait for the upload, YouTube can choke down up to 10GB files (maybe 20GB…haven’t checked in awhile). Vimeo is a bit of a different story as space there is much more limited. But @ 1080p I think you should be around 7500kb/s if not at 10000kb/s.

Just my $.02.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

What format are you transcoding to? What’s the deliverable? What’s the frame size (source/deliverable)? Is there a lot of hand held camera work, fast pans, fast motion, etc?

Why are you restricting the data rate to 5000kb/s? If uploading to YouTube or Vimeo (assuming h.264) and your length is only 3-4 minutes you can easily double that data rate (I’d probably at least triple it).

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

A 3 minute ProRes422 file will run around 2-2.5GB. Not impossible to upload, but can they even read it with their software/equipment?

Otherwise, h.264 will probably give you the best results.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

For a better comparison load FCP onto your laptop and export out the same file. That would show you the difference more accurately. Right now you’re comparing Apples to Bubble Gum. Because you’re running a G5 (PowerPC chip) I don’t think CS5 will install on that platform. So if you put FCP on your laptop it will allow you a side by side comparison.

FWIW-USB is a slow protocol to handle video (and what’s the speed of the drive that is hooked up via USB) as it operates in bursts of data, not a steady stream like Firewire.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

There’s several issues you’re running into:
(1) Processing power of a laptop
(2) GPU is likely ATI, Adobe’s Mercury Playback/Encoding Engine is built to fly with Nvidia CUDA technology.
(3) Were you exporting the file to your laptop’s internal drive? If so, that tends to take much longer as it’s being used to run your whole OS and then do double duty as the drive where the new .mov is built. If not and you were using an external hard drive how was it connected – USB, Firewire?
(4) The codec – did you try any other codecs? Apple ProRes? AIC tends to be a pretty non-optimized codec (compared to ProRes or DNxHD). I would dare it’s just about a legacy codec (something from the “good old days). That doesn’t mean people don’t use it. But there are better (compression algorithms and overall file space) options out there IMHO.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Agreed. The conversion to square pixels from non-square has to happen somewhere.

If only there was an “Easy” button, eh?! 😉

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Agreed. The math works out.

I’m just not sure why other NLE’s do it differently (correct?/incorrect?). For example, when you export out a Anamorphic DV NTSC sequence from FCP7 you’ll get a 16:9 image. It will use a 1.1862 PAR and leave you with an 854×480 Quicktime movie in your codec of choice.

You’re dead on about the “Stretch to Fill” working fine to get rid of any black borders when converting the image to a 16:9 ratio…no problems there. I’m just trying to figure out why each NLE maker seems to approach this a bit differently. In a perfect world 16:9 would always be 16:9! 😉

Thanks for the tips though. I appreciate it.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Vince thanks for the link….that was a good refresher.

I’m aware of the SD conundrum of Pixel Aspect Ratios (square vs. rectangular pixels, etc.). My hangup is that Adobe is doing it incorrectly. Avid and FCP don’t spit out files at a 16:8.8 ratio when the user is asking for a widescreen SD @ 16:9.

I guess I need to complain directly to Adobe….

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Are you playing the tapes on a tape deck with output to a reference monitor (i.e. not FCP)? You may need to investigate the user manual of your tape deck and see if there’s a menu setting for that info to be displayed.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Apple is doing “better” on their RAM prices. For years, they’ve been playing out in left field picking daisies and slapping ridiculous price markups on RAM. The 24GB option may not be a bad route at $450. Since these Mac Pros are so out-of-date the RAM costs have also plunged. If you got the lowest RAM from Apple (12GB) and bought 24GB of third party RAM you’re still saving $250 compared to buying directly from Apple! Put that towards a graphics card. Or if you’re bent on spending $500 on RAM then buy $500 worth of third party RAM – you can get 32GB-48GB depending on your configuration. More RAM always means a smoother running computer.

If you’re working with native DSLR footage then you can probably run that off of an internal drive. If you start transcoding it to a different codec you’ll likely run into problems as the internal drive (unless you’ve build a RAID inside your Mac Pro) won’t be able to keep up.

Adobe built their Mercury Playback Engine around CUDA technology. CUDA is only available on Nvidia graphics cards. The Quadro 4000 runs about $700 on Amazon. Adobe will work with ATI cards but you won’t get any of the CUDA benefits then (more layers of FX playback in realtime, realtime playback of native codecs, encoding, transcoding, etc.). Adobe has expanded their engine to work with Open GL and CL formats so ATI users get some benefits. However, the speed increases really come from Nvidia cards.
https://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe-cs6.html

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes