Walter Biscardi
Forum Replies Created
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https://forums.creativecow.net/artoftheedit
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
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[Wayne Carey] “Motion is so freaking unstable inside of FCP that its almost USELESS! What is the point in creating a tool for us to use and it not to work correctly is totally beyond my scope of comprehension.
My FCP crashes at least 10 – 15 time a freaking DAY!!!!”
This has been my experience since, well since you could start using Motion templates inside FCP. It’s crap, plain and simple.
I always render out my Motion graphics first and then bring them into FCP or After Effects. It’s the only way to work and the only way to guarantee 100% success with no system failures or glitches.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Thor Ullr] “A big Thank you for the info… it gives me a better idea of what to ask him
PS: All I know at this point: short film shot with a Red one camera”
How much experience do you have in color enhancement? A RED project is not really a great one to practice with if you have little or no experience.
Also, RED material is much better suited for Apple Color or Resolve for color enhancement. FCP’s 3 Way CC tool is good for video, but I would step out to Color or Resolve for RED.
In answer to the question about time. I have spent 4 hours to 3 days on a 30 minute project for color enhancement. Depends on the material shot and the type of project.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[BrAd Steiner] “We went years without these problems, so please don’t fault the workflow or format choice.”
How full and / or fragmented is your RAID? I try to clean off our RAIDs every 3 to 6 months to keep them running clean.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Steve Martin] “On the outdoor shoot, we set the zebras to 100 and exposed so that the zebra’s were just starting to show up in the white clouds.”
Most DP’s I work with will set Zebras to 75 to 80% for outdoor shooting. 100% zebras on clouds is definitely too hot.
Also keep in mind that color applications like Color and Resolve can bring back detail that appears to be lost if it’s in the information. Did you try any simple color grade using the FCP 3 Way to dial back the highlights and see if the cloud information is still there?
[Steve Martin] “However, when we imported the footage into FCP (trans coded to ProRes HQ) everything looked hot – no detail in the sky and the talent was blown out on the green screen shot.”
No need for HQ, just ProRes for all frame sizes 1080 and smaller.
Sounds like you have a zebra issue with the camera if your talent was blown out with 70% zebras. Also you need to get an HD reference monitor on set. Downconverting to SD can lead to false impressions on set. FSI has a sweet 7″ HD monitor that would make a nice compliment to your camera, includes scopes too so you don’t need to rely on zebras.
https://www.flandersscientific.com/index/pg89713
Lastly, how are you monitoring this footage on your FCP system? HD monitor via a Kona card? If you’re looking at this in the FCP Viewer / Canvas, well you’re not viewing the footage correctly.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Daniel Frome] “Whether you’re editing dvcproHD, XDCAM, whatever, we found that the bigger the .fcp file the more frequent your crashes will be. Having lots of RAM won’t solve the issue, since FCP is a 32bit application and will only use/see about 3.5GB of RAM.”
Just about every one of our projects is a large project. Having extra RAM definitely helps in loading up a large project, particularly if you have the thumbnails turned on. If you’re getting a lot of crashing, then you either have something interfering with FCP as Shane notes, or you have a stability issue somewhere in your hardware pipeline.
Across 5 systems we might see two crashes per month on a bad month. Two feature documentaries and three series in production each day.
[Daniel Frome] ” The issue is somewhat unavoidable due to the nature of how fcp stores its information.”
The issue is almost completely avoidable with the correct FCP setup. When I find systems that are crashing a lot, I find people who are surfing the internet while capturing, doing log and transfer, reading email while the system is rendering, playing music in the background while editing, etc… In other words, doing things other than letting FCP work. Most people treat their FCP systems as just another computer that they’ll do all sorts of multi-tasking while a very processor heavy application is trying to do its work.
We treat our FCP systems as production machines. That is they are workhorses that simply edit, create graphics, create animations, etc… If you want to surf the internet, check emails, follow up on the Cow, etc… then you use the iMac that’s also in every edit suite. Allow the FCP machine to simply do what it needs to do to make you money and do all the “other stuff” on a separate computer.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Chris Dixon] “I’m on v6.0.6. using 150+GB of XDCAM footage. The project file is 15.4MB. I can’t even attempt to scrub through the timeline or even think about viewing a bin as icons without a crash.
I will try breaking my projects into smaller ones, but has FCP fixed this on the newest version?”That’s a really small project overall. Our documentaries run in the neighborhood of 100+MB project files and each documentary is broken into 3 or 4 projects.
We’re also running between 4 to 8TB of media for each documentary.
Each Mac has a minimum of 12GB of RAM.
So the fact that you can’t scrub or view items in a bin tells me you’re using underpowered or maxed out media storage arrays. We’re running 32TB of shared storage and another 16TB of local storage for four edit systems. It’s more than we need at the moment, but that means we don’t fill the arrays up. There’s always at least 25% overhead still left on the arrays to ensure maximum speed both for playback and for simply using the application.
Our projects can take a while to open but once they are open, we don’t have scrubbing or playback issues.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
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[Laura Weinstein] “I was told though by my boss to definitely use H264 though. I need the highest quality. I thought I had encore though on my computer but I don’t. So now I need to get that program!”
Ask your boss why he insists on H264. There’s no reason not to go MPEG 2. We’ve delivered in the neighborhood of 200 BluRay discs over the past four years or so. All MPEG-2. These discs have been used for home distribution to playback on 75′ and larger screens at film festivals. Your boss does not require H264.
Adobe Encore in a word, sucks. Great for DVDs and great for “Play Only” BluRay discs that do not require a menu. However, when you add a menu to the BluRay disc, the entire program falls apart. It will simulate just fine, but when you actually create an ISO file or try to burn the disc itself, 9 times out of 10 the disc will fail. I was surprised to find that Encore CS5 is no better than CS4 when it comes to BluRay discs.
We switched to a Windows only program call DoStudio from NetBlender. This is a professional BluRay authoring application that does work each and every time. We purchased a really sweet HP Workstation for around $1500 (including the BluRay Burner) solely to run this application.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
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[Alfonso Pozzo] “I also have noticed some skipping when playing back only 422 and 422(HQ) files. I didnt think this would be an issue, do i have to have them all be the same?”
ProRes HQ is designed for file sizes larger than 1080. No need for that format for anything 1080 or smaller. In your second response you say you’re playing off a LaCie Rugged Drive. Not really suitable for editing, it’s a single drive. Generally you want at least a two drive RAID for video editing.
[Alfonso Pozzo] “Does anyone have any suggestions for a quick fix to this problem? Other than spending an entire night converting all of my XDCAM EX ftg to ProRes422?”
Not really, run the footage through Compressor to convert and then edit.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
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If Michael’s option doesn’t work, just pull the Master Output faders down all the way in the FCP Audio Mixer.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaRegister now for our Open House March 5