Ryan Holmes
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Kalvin Taylor] “My questions are as follows…
– Would I see a big difference in performance from an upgraded (2.66GHz or 3.06GHz) processor over the base 2.4GHz?
– I’ve done research on the ideal memory slots, setup, etc and it seems 6x4gb is the best option unless I go up to 6x8gb
– I understand the concept of keeping the operating system and applications on a separate drive… but how should I go about storage, working from that drive, should I keep a drive for scratch files/cache?
– What will the performance difference be from the ATI Radeon 5770 vs upgraded 5870?”– You’ll notice a slight speed difference between each processor. It’s not going to change the speed of a render so drastically that your brain melts! 😉 It’ll shave off some time, but the added cost may not be worth it (unless your business is tight to-air deadlines then…). For all my Mac Pro, I usually buy in the middle. Not the slowest, not the fastest. RAM is also cheaper to buy second hand rather than from Apple. Check https://www.macsales.com or Kingston or Crucial for other options. I buy all my RAM from Mac Sales.
– Storage is what will determine how well files playback. Obviously, keeping your system drive (OS, apps, etc) separate from your media files is a great move. What type of media do you need to playback? DPX files? ProRes? DV? DNxHD? Animation? Uncompressed? Each of these codecs demand a different data rate. So while your internal hard drive can keep up with ProRes or DNxHD, it’ll probably stutter when playing back Animation, Uncompressed, or DPX files. The best storage is some type of RAID (which can be internal on your Mac) that allows for fast access and throughput for media. Having a dedicated OS/apps drive is good. The other slots in your Mac Pro can be your storage drives but you may look into some RAID options as well:
https://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid-thunderbolt.cfm
https://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10061&adw=RAID&gclid=CLOjqpvQsrECFclgTAodcj0A9g– If you’re running PPro you’ll notice the best GPU acceleration from a Nvidia card. While CS6 can harness some of the ATI architecture, it really sings under Nvidia’s CUDA. If you want CUDA technology you’ll need an Nvidia card. What I’d do is get the cheapest card from Apple and then swap out for a Quadro 4000 or Quadro FX 4800 (the 4000 is actually cheaper and faster than the 4800….deny’s logic I know, but that’s the way it is! 😉
Caveat: The current Mac Pro is very long in the tooth (upwards of 2 years old). Everyone hoped to see a new Mac Pro at this year’s WWDC in June. That didn’t happen. So many fear it will be killed off as a platform. Others have pointed to evidence which seems to support a new Mac Pro coming out sometime next year. All that to say, I don’t know what’s true. I have about 10 Mac Pros at my shop, so I’m hoping for a refresh next year. But if you gotta have a computer now get what you can afford. Or maybe buy a used or refurbished Mac Pro…
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
If you pop that tape into a Canon deck/camera the time/date is embedded in there (provided the day/time where set correctly in the camera settings the day it was shot).
I’m not sure if you can see that information in a Log & Capture window in FCP, but it might be worth a look. But for sure it’ll be there when played back through a Canon tape deck or camera.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
Can you open the tiff file in any other app? You might be able to resave it, see if it corrects the problem.
Maybe it’s just corrupt file?
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
Use the “Easy Setup…” in FCP to set your project and sequences up. Chose Format: PAL. Use: DV-PAL.
You’ll be setup and ready to rock ‘n roll.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
Sorry for the late reply. You’re in a bit of a quandary…I’ll admit! Your camera does not shoot a true progressive image. Canon used a system for awhile whereby it flagged an interlaced image as progressive so the NLE could interpret it as such. In the strictest sense 24F/30F is really an interlaced image being laid to tape. The camera is not shooting a true progressive image. It’s a limitation of the gear. However, the way Canon did it is virtually indistinguishable from a true 24p camera. Check these out for more info (not your exact camera but the principle is still there):
https://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php
As for what looks better…that’s a raging debate. Broadcast wise the main companies shoot both – progressive and interlaced – depending on the channel. So both can work. My preference is progressive since the majority of display devices are now progressive scans (projectors, LED, LCD, plasma, iPhone, iPad, etc.). There are fewer and fewer interlaced displays. For my $$$ I always shoot progressive. But if you’re going to broadcast and the channel demands interlace…give the people what they want!
As best as I can tell, if you’ve shot at 30F then you should be setting up your sequence as a progressive sequence. There should be an Easy Setup for in FCP. As for your 60i material, you’ll probably want to deinterlace it. Vimeo has a great compression guideline that you should give a read to. It applies just about equally to YouTube: https://vimeo.com/help/compression
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
Remember that YouTube and Vimeo are re-compressing your already compressed file. So some degradation in quality is almost inevitable. The higher quality file you can upload to these sites the better your results will be once their servers re-encode the video.
Settings wise, is your primary deliver method YouTube/Vimeo? If so, stop shooting 60i. i = interlaced. If your camera shoots progressive that is a good place to start (I’m not sure if the XHA1s does “p” though). If you can’t shoot progressive at least de-interlace either in FCP or in Compressor. You should be uploading a 1080p or 720p video to YouTube/Vimeo if possible.
It looks like much of your footage is overexposed. Not sure if you shot it this way or if you color corrected it this way. The sky is blown out, white shorts don’t have any luminance variation, etc. If you want to correct this while shooting you’ll need to adjust your f/stop. The bigger the number the less light entering the lens (so f/10 lets less light into the camera than f/2). If you did it while color correcting maybe it was a conscious choice? If so, I would dial it back a bit. Just my $.02.
Also, keep in mind that YouTube will usually default to the lowest quality setting when the user hits play (typically 360p or 480p). If you full screen a 360p video on your nice 1920×1200 (or bigger) monitor, well…it’s gonna look soft.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
You could also use Adobe Prelude. It’s sort of a Log & Transfer on steroids. You can mark sections, clips, import, transcode all from within Prelude. It’s taken me some time to adjust to it, but it works nicely and plays really well with Premiere (all your notes, markers, metadata transfers over to PPro).
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
Sony’s version of HDV is different than Canon’s version (which is different from JVC’s). You either need the original camera it was shot on (or rent one) or a Canon HDV deck that can read that format.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
[Kevin Carlson] “And no need for scolding, I have one of the few situations where this is legal and ethical to do…”
I think everybody you rips videos from YouTube says this! 😉
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
FCP7 isn’t very fond of mpeg-4 video. You’ll probably want to transcode that to something for FCP friendly – like ProRes. Depending on the speed of your machine the transcode could take quite awhile.
The choppy playback is likely due to the speed of the disk drive your storing (and playing back) the file from. Are you using your internal hard drive? An external drive (connected via USB or Firewire)? The data hungry the codec you encode to is, the faster the hard drive needs to be in order to see smooth playback. The ProRes family of codecs (especially (LT) and Proxy) work well off any hard drive and maybe what you need. If you need more quality the other ProRes codecs are great, but file sizes will be much larger.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes