Wolf Austad
Forum Replies Created
-
I’ve used ShotPut since version 1. Version 5 is imho the best upgrade yet.
Copy to one destination is faster, copy to two or more destinations is way faster in 5. This has a lot to do with ShotPut 4 becoming very slow on OSX Lion/Mountain Lion, so the difference to 5 when all the good stuff works again is very big.
More notes:
CF cards in USB 3.0 readers going to multiple destinations is dramatically much faster. (25 min in v4, 5 min in v5!)There’s a new function to combine offloads that should help a lot for those who use Hard Drives.
Haven’t tested SxS cards yet, but should see a pretty significant speed increase.
Hope that helps.
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
Yes, there was a massive slowdown with ShotPut 4 and Lion and Mountain Lion. Not sure entirely if it was a version of ShotPut or a version of OSX, but doesn’t matter now.
I just downloaded ShotPut 5 and the speed increase is just flat out massive! OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2
Full 16GB CF card with C300 footage downloaded and fully verified with MD5 checksum to two drives in 3 minutes 45 seconds. That’s with Sandisk 600X cards. RED 16GB card (with C300 footage) took 3 min 16 sec. Not so fast with P2, yet, but maybe some day…? 600x SD UHS-1 cards from my 5Dmk3 goes almost the same speed as the CF card mentioned so the mini P2 thingy SD card they are talking about might be quite useful…?
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
For footage originated with a 1/3″ camera and AVC-Intra 100 codec there’s not much of a benefit to go 4:4:4:4. Unless you need an alpha channel in the codec. Or if you plan a lot of roundtrips in post. The vast majority of compositing apps work in RGB, so it can be beneficial to convert to a RGB codec right away, and keep that codec throughout post, instead of having the app convert back and forth between YUV and RGB every time you go in and out of an app. But to see a noticeable difference you would probably have to shoot with a higher end camera to begin with.
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
https://www.studiodaily.com/2012/10/sony-reveals-f5-and-f55-cinealta-4k-cameras/
“Gaggioni did warn that XAVC 4K is “computationally intense,” meaning the equivalent of an HP Z820 workstation packing 16 cores of processing power will be needed to hit real-time performance benchmarks. “An xw8600 workstation can also handle it, but for demanding post-production applications, you need a beefier machine.””
Seems very reasonable to me. I’m not a post guy, but when I try to play back 1080/30P AVC-Intra after a shoot on my Macbook Pro 17″ with 2 cores it skips frames. 4K will be 60P for broadcast and XAVC is, according to Sony, more advanced than AVC-Intra, so probably more computationally intensive. That’s roughly 10x the horsepower needed compared to a typical 1080/30P AVC-Intra workflow. If Sony can make this flow on the hardware mentioned I think they have done a good job.
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
Apparently real time performance for 4K XAVC requires 16 cores or more. According to a Sony rep. So current Macs are too weak for this work. When, or if, Apple decides to make a Mac that’s powerful enough to handle this, maybe 4K support will come to FCP X???
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
The way I understand it is that version 2.40 P2 Driver for OSX Lion will work with Panasonic’s P2 readers, but not with a generic CardBus slot (f.ex. Sonnet QiO). USB volumes should mount without driver. If you have a generic CardBus slot you would need to boot in 32bit.
Not sure what this specifically has to do with the F-Series cards? Have they moved to ExFAT formatting? Since the new F-series are limited to 64GB I wouldn’t think there would be a need. Not until Panasonic decides that they are serious about replacing the 2 hour video tape with a 2 hour P2 card.
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
Yes, PCD2 can be powered from a USB HUB or even an iPhone charger.
I have been told that the USB 3 bus you connect this to will revert that entire USB 3 bus to USB 2 speed, since the PCD2 is a USB 2 device. I don’t know if those two USB 3 connectors on your computer are on separate USB 3 busses or on the same USB bus.
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
1/3″ cameras combined with a cheaper stock lens have the problem that diffraction starts around f2.8 or f4 or thereabout. While the lens is optimal around F5.6. Hence you get a rather limited range of f-stops where that combo will look decent.
Also: There really isn’t any zoom lens priced to match the HPX370 that will resolve 1080 lines vertically across a 1/3″ chip. So you will get a somewhat soft image. If you want 1080 resolved optically across a 1/3″ chip you would need something like a DigiPrime or similar.
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
Ah, the Achilles heel of Panasonic: A small, fast and reasonably priced P2 card reader that works with a variety of standard computer interfaces. (Note to Panasonic: Micro P2 should have UHS-II interface for fast offload! Or faster… if there is something more future proof by next year. And in the meantime release a PCD3 with USB3 interface!.)
Anyway, here are some more workarounds for today:
Use multiple readers. My MacBook Pro has two separate USB busses. Mac Pros have a lot more. So PCD2 in one and camera in the other and you half your offload time. Your computer’s CPU and your Runner Drives would have to be able to keep up, of course. If you use slow hard drives, there’s not much point in this method.
A PCD35 or PCD30 will probably be faster than this, though.
BTW. I’ve been told that the larger Panasonic readers (PCD35 & PCD30) use custom PC-card chips (not standard PCMCIA chips), hence the higher speed (and probably price).
Also: Stay away from ShotPut Pro version 4.1.3 (downgrade to 4.1.2 or upgrade to 4.1.4) as I’ve found that version glacially slow for P2 offloads.
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based -
If a Hard Drive is involved in the transfer, set it to 1.
If you are using SSD runner drives and downloading from flash memory cards, set it to the number of CPU cores on your computer.At least that has worked for me, although with variable results.
I mostly leave it at 1, though.SSD runner drives on a fast interface will make you CPU limited for MD5 checksums, hence the need to optimize. Particularly if you are downloading from a recording device that records to individual frames like DPX, or RAW time-lapse. For P2 download your runner drives could choke your CPU on the read back, but your P2 reader never will (until Panasonic decides to make a P2 reader that’s faster.)
Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based