Sean Oneil
Forum Replies Created
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I think only the HD Pro is hardware. The other cards use software.
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[TK] “If your media is not attached. NOTHING will be deleted. On the bright side, the reversed clip gets properly media managed. (How weird is that?)”
I’d like everyone to read this wonderful quote carefully. This is 100% the truth. Every single time someone brings up this issue in the Cow, about half the replies are “MM works fine for me, you’re not using it right” (in so many words). I just fear that people at Apple think the same thing, even though it’s not the case whatsoever.
Sean
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[Martin Baker] “On real world footage (i.e. not test gradients and stuff like that), I defy anyone to spot compression artifacts on screen”
Of course you can’t from one generation. The problem is this. Someone shoots on DVCPro50. Then it’s edited, color corrected, and mastered back to DVCPro50. Then someone else takes it and edits it some more using effects that requires another recompression.
Then it needs to be compressed yet again, this time much more lossy with MPEG-2 for broadcast or DVD. Then someone takes the DVD and creates web videos from it for promotional purposes or whatever.
If the show was instead shot on Digibeta and always mastered to D5, the DVD and web videos will look better. Now I’m not saying that’s always practical. Don’t get me wrong, I think DV50 is great and is almost as good as Digibeta. But nobody should every go under the misconception that if it looks great then and there, there’s no damage done from lossy compression.
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On this subject, can I request a new feature? The ability to create Blackmagic AVI files on a Mac. That would be helpful.
Sean
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There are 4 PCIe slots. One is 16 lane and meant for the graphics card (Quadro 4500FX for example). It replaces the AGP slot. Then there are three additional slots which replace the PCI-X slots of the previous G5 models. So the quad-G5 has the same amount of slots as before. You’ll just need new cards.
Sean
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Yes you can. The DV50 Quicktime format is an Apple thing and has nothing to do with AJA or BMD.
Sean
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Forgot to mention, while mixing formats also works with HD, it does not work well enough to be practical. I know mixing uncompressed HD and DVCPro HD will stutter quite a bit on a dual 2.5ghz G5. I have not tried HDV so I don’t know if that’s any different.
For all I know, the new quad-G5 could handle this without any problems. Hope to try it out sometime.
Sean
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Let me clear this up.
Since Final Cut version 5 came out, yes, you can mix as many formats as you want in the timeline w/o rendering. You get an orange render bar which means it will attempt to play it back in RT. You do not necessarily have to render it while eding (although you’ll eventually have to render your final sequence before mastering to tape).
The playback quality will depend on the load and the speed of the Mac. If it’s too much to handle, you can make sure DynamicRT is on and that could help.
So for example, you can make a standard-def sequence, say DV50 for example. On this timeline, throw down a DV25 clip, an 8-bit Uncompressed clip, a 10-bit clip, and even an IMX clip. They’ll all playback smooth and full quality on my dual 2.5ghz G5. No rendering required. And the playback will also play through a Decklink card.
I’ve even tried this with non-FCP codecs, like Animation. It wasn’t perfect but was very, very good.
The one exception is Photo-JPEG which Apple purposefully prevents it from working with any RT capability unless it is the half-res “Offline-RT”. There is a simple hack to fix that though (search the forum).
All that said, it probably isn’t the best workflow to rely on. Figure out what the limitations are and if it’s worth it. Like people here are saying, working with one format is a much smoother editing experience no matter what. Take in everything uncompressed and the same format if you can. But of course time, disk space, disk speed, 3:2 pulldown, deck availability and other factors could make that a problem. So weigh your options carefully.
Sean
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Yes, this has been talked about before. I’ve personally called Apple’s FCP department and asked to speak to a manager – just to bitch about this. It is the stupidest, most ridiculous thing ever, and it certainly doesn’t help break the false, yet commonly held misconception of FCP being inferior to Avid.
Basically, what you’re trying to do does not work in MM if the media is already gone. Since the client is bringing you the project file but with no media, you cannont “Delete Unused Media” or “Don’t Include Master Clips, yada, yada”. It does nothing. Why? Good question. So if the media is already gone, you have to recapture all of the source footage. It’s a total joke.
The only solution for you is to tell the clients to run Media Manager and do this themselves before bringing the project over. Then it will work fine provided they didn’t trash their offline quality media. Hopefully this won’t jeopardize your gig and cause them to search for an Avid editor.
Sean
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Yes, so divide that by 4 and you get 50. You have 150 MB/s of bandwidth per channel (each SATA connector is a channel). But you’re only using 1/3rd of that because the drives, individually, will not go faster than 50 MB/s.
Sean