Walter Biscardi
Forum Replies Created
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[Matt Campbell] “Since I am a 1 man band I just need to make sure the set up I go with is not only good for FCP and Premiere, but also for GFX work. With Motion 5 and AE in my workflow, I basically need to have all the areas of post covered.”
We run our Mac Pros with dual Startup Drives. One with Snow Leopard and FCP 7 as that is EXTREMELY stable. And the second with Lion and the Adobe suites which is extremely stable. Since FCP 7 was so stable on Snow Leopard we didn’t see any reason to move it forward to Lion so we took advantage of the extra drive slots and added another 1TB drive for Lion.
[Matt Campbell] “Again, I like the iMacs but expandability seems rough. Having to get a Thunderbot chasis for I/O card and external storage seems pricey. But then again, so is a juiced up Mac Pro. Hmmm!”
You don’t need an I/O card for a Thunderbolt Chassis. AJA IoXT or the BMD UltraStudio I/O devices are all you need. The IoXT is essentially a Kona 3G in a box.
The current 12 Core Mac Pro full configured with RAM is very pricey, hence our decision to go iMac. Although we do have on Dell 8 core machine with 48GB RAM also running the Adobe suite and that has opened my eyes to adding more Windows machines moving forward. Once inside the app, it’s all about the same.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
[Matt Campbell] “This was my first project on Prem. Just this week. Slowly making switch from FCP to CS6. But want to iron out all the bugs before I completely dedicate my workflow to it.”
Using a Hack is definitely not the way to do this, sorry. You need a proper machine running the proper version of the software. An NLE, no matter which brand, is very demanding on your computer configuration and just because your machine “can” run OS X, doesn’t mean it’s going to work with professional software.
Some folks get it to work but I simply don’t understand the appeal. We’re transitioning from Mac Pros to iMacs because the new machines are so fast and they’re simply kicking serious tail with Premiere Pro. It gets even better with Premiere Pro Next.
So if you’re looking to stay Mac but save some money, get the 27″ iMac, load it up with RAM and attach either an AJA or BMD Thunderbolt box and go. Here we run almost 100TB of shared storage to our iMacs via the Small Tree Communications Titanium systems so you can even hang a ton of very fast storage off an iMac now.
Or, if you want to stay the “Hack” route, again, I would just switch that machine over to Windows so long as it’s a properly configured system for Premiere Pro.
Especially since you’re a one man band, you don’t have time to deal with technical issues. Get a configuration set up so it works and you can just create.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
[Matt Campbell] “Sorry for not mentioning this but the other Hack is not used for post work. It’s used by the IT manager.
I work in advertising as the in-house editor and am a 1 man band, doing it all.”
Ah, well then not sure why they’re forcing you to work on a Hack then. My advice would be to simply switch over to the Windows version of PPro and go from there. It all works the same, no need to force yourself into a Mac just to run the Adobe suite.
Another idea though is to go ahead and install PPro onto that other box and see if it does the same thing when you try to quit.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
[Walter Soyka] “So in summary, it’s not that 2-pass VBR gives the absolute best results — it’s that 2-pass VBR gives the best results for a given file size.”
Very interesting post Walter. Great analysis and good food for thought moving forward. I’ve just had so much better luck with 2 pass that we never even consider one pass or CBR. Thanks.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
Dynamic link is awesome to a certain extent. Use it too much in a long project and it’ll bog you down. Definitely something to understand fully and have a strategy of how much to use in a longer project. I’m hoping Next helps us out a bit with this.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
What’s different between your Hack and the other one? Anything?
Does that other machine have the same issue?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
2 pass is always better. The first pass is analyzing your project and the second pass actually executes the compression. You will always get better results going 2 pass.
In most cases the difference is most prominent in areas of motion or quick changes in light to dark, such as when flashes go off in your case. Generally when it’s one pass you’ll see much more blockiness in those situations then when you go 2 pass.
Especially for a wedding project, I would recommend 2 pass as I’m sure you deal with a lot of lighting variations and lots of motion from time to time.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
I’d agree with the folks pointing to the Hack setup. Sorry, looks like something in Premiere is not happy with whatever the system is that was set up for you.
I’ve seen this on rare occasions with CS6 across our 6 Mac systems, but very rare. Without a proper Mac system, it’s hard for me to make any further suggestions except that PPro runs equally well in Windows so perhaps just switch your systems over to Windows?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
When you’re mixing and matching formats and especially frame sizes and frame rates, there are compromises. You can’t just mix a whole bunch of stuff together and expect it all to look perfect.
Sounds like you’re mixing frame sizes and progressive / interlaced.
You set the Sequence for your primary format and then you can drop anything else in. How those other formats render / transfer to your final product depend on what you’re starting with. We mix 1080, 720 together all the time. When it comes to mixing in some SD, we use the AJA Kona boards to convert those to HD via hardware first and then bring them in.
When mixing Interlaced into a progressive timeline, that can cause some issues as well.
Also make sure you’re using “Maximum Render Quality” when making your final outputs.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
[John Young] “But, if the subscription model is the only option, and we chose to not use Adobe, we would lose access to any project files. Not having control over your own projects = BAD .”
You mean like when Apple dropped FCP 7 to X and we could no longer access our project files if we moved forward? Apple never did address this, took a third party to do that.
[John Young] “I guess in theory, you could have xml or EDL options for accessing old projects, or you could buy a short term Cloud subscription for $30 if you needed it for one time use. But those options don’t make me feel too safe about a subscription-only service.”
Exporting XMLs of our FCP projects is precisely what we are doing now. We have FCP 7 on several of our systems “frozen” on Snow Leopard drives. Slowly, but surely, we are exporting those projects as XMLs for use later if needed.
And like you just said in your own post, you can literally pay $30 for one month of service to access and export your project and then let the subscription lapse.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People.