[Tom Meegan]

Tom W. is, of course, correct.

Here is a link to get you going:

https://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_scopes.html

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

I’m curious – which drive does your media sit on?

Technically media should not be on your boot drive, however having done this in a pinch on a much less robust system than yours, I’ve had minimal problems.

Another cause could be full media drives. If they are over about 90% you will get a very sluggish system. Sadly, I’ve done this as well.

I’ve not heard of the tabs in the Viewer effecting the timeline playback before. Interesting.

Best regards,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels

[Tom Meegan]

The path is:

/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins/

Good luck.

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

Max,

What you are trying to do is not consistent with a no budget production. Below are my equipment recommendations, but I think paying your friend with the ingest system to do the edit would be smarter, faster, and cheaper – assuming he/she has the experience and equipment to do the job professionally.

To play back three streams of regular ProRes (not HQ) you will need a consistent 54 MB/s. In practice this means you should shoot to have storage that advertises about double that. That means eSATA. Which means a pci-e card for the Mac Pro or a pci express card for the Mac Book Pro.

My rough calculations indicate that you will need about 3.0 usable terabytes to hold 36 hours of ProRes. Regular ProRes is 144 megabits per second. Check my math, and remember to add about 25% to leave 10% free space on the disk and to have room for other project elements.

You will want the storage to be RAID 5 or RAID 6, or you will want to buy a second storage unit with the footage duplicated on it as a back up.

You don’t want to have to spend the time or goodwill going back to your friend to ask him to re-ingest if something sad happens.

So look for 3 usable terabytes of 100+ megabytes per second eSATA storage at RAID 5 or 6. This means between 4 TB and 6 TB raw (depends on how many drive spindles are in your storage appliance and whether you go RAID 5 or 6.)

ProRes works better with fast processors. A newish Mac Book Pro loaded with ram would do, but a Mac Pro would be much better. A used Mac Pro would do the job. I’m not as sure about ram requirements, but I would recommend at least 4 GB of ram, perhaps more.

All of the above assumes you want a smooth editing experience. You can make due with less – it all depends on how valuable your time and sanity are.

If you are not comfortable experimenting with configurations, or need this to work first try, I suggest finding a local consultant to help you. Or, as I mentioned above, hire your friend with the ingest system to do the edit.

If you need to color correct the footage, you will need an MXO, MXO 2, or a product from AJA or Black Magic Design. You will also need a separate monitor to view the footage. Search the Cow for color correction and monitor solutions that would be appropriate.

If you need to mix the sound, you will need decent audio monitors.

If you are confident that the sound and visuals will not need any tweaking, you can forgo this, but in my experience the sound and visuals always need tweaking.

If you try to color correct using the Canvas in FCP you will be disappointed. It does not tell the truth about color. It is a confidence monitor and a content monitor only.

If you try to sound mix with cheap speakers you will be OK as long as there is almost no complexity to the mix. If you have music, natural sound, and voice over happening at the same time, your mix will be less than optimal without flat studio monitors with a wide dynamic range.

Best of luck with the project.

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

Gary’s advice is, of course, right on.

I would only add that Matrox makes several solutions that have good reputations as well. Google Matrox MXO and Matrox MXO 2.

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/new_mac_pros_imacs_and_minis.html

Scroll down to the part on the Mac Pros.

https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/apple/story/inside_the_new_mac_pros/

For media, I’d buy fast external storage from CalDigit, or Dulce, Maxx Digital, G-Tech, etc.

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

You need to tweak your audio monitoring in:

Final Cut Pro > System Settings…

Then go to the Playback Control tab.

Change the value in Frame Offset.

Repeat until your monitoring is in sync.

NOTE

It is very important that you are sure that the footage you use to make this adjustment is in sync.

The Frame Offset is only adjusting your monitoring to account for the different paths your audio and video are traveling on the way out of FCP.

This adjustment could easily HIDE a problem with footage, or lead you to believe there is a sync problem with good footage IF you make your initial adjustment with footage that is not in sync.

Best,

Tom M

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

Sounds like number lock is turned on. It is a toggle, usually near the top of your keyboard. Turn number lock off and things should be fine.

Best,

Tom

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

Understood. When I visit, I look for unanswered threads and do what I can.

I didn’t connect “To Clarify” with the thread below it, but should have noticed it had the same OP. My bad.

Best,

Tom

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC

[Tom Meegan]

Hi Tony,

Without more details this problem will be difficult to diagnose.

Details that would help:

FCP version
Quicktime version
Computer system details (processor, ram, etc)
OS version
CODEC you are editing in
CODEC, media and camera you aquired on

That being said, when things get weird on me, I typically try a total reboot first. If they remain weird, I usually Trash Preference.

Trashing preferences has fixed weirdness 95% of the time.

Wishing you the best,

Tom M

Best,

Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC