HDV on a Mac or do i go back to PC
 

Hey Guys

thinking of going HDV but noticed it takes a lot lot longer to render. MY system is a macpro 2.6 4core system.I was playing around on the timeline with some HDV footage which was fine but when i went to render it takes much longer than DV.

I have friends that use pc and HD rocks on there systems plays back realtime.

what do i need to do to get my macpro to rock. I hate pc for the fact it is unreliable and FCP is one awesome program
Do i upgrade my videocard it is the standed card the system came with, do i upgrade the ram, is there cards that offer reatime

what can i do i am lost and worried.

Rob.

i too am interested

Are your sequence settings correct? if different from what you shot, everything needs to be rendered and renders take longer... your mac should 'rock' harder than any pc...(no offence to pc lovers).

Transcode your footage to prores

If your sequence timeline is setup properly for HDV it will play in realtime on FCP too. It's hardly a Mac vs. PC issue.

Noah

Yo didn't mention what you are trying to render to, or what your final destination might be (DVD/BLURAY).

Besides transcoding your footage to ProRes, try changing your render codec in you preferences from HDV to ProRes. Then export to Quicktime Conversion.

the only thing i did was change my easy setup settings to 1080i 50i thats it

I have run HDV in the past on my Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro in real time with very quick rendering. Now I run XDCAM EX1 in real time with very fast rendering. I would look at your sequence settings and make sure you are set up properly. The go up to Sequence then settings and make sure you are using the proper HDV settings or go to Prores. As said before this is not a Mac/PC problem it is user settings.

because i'm a bit of a dummy, i usually drag a clip into a fresh sequence and if the 'clip does not match sequence settings' prompt comes up, i let FCP change to the appropriate sequence settings for me. i will also then go into the sequence settings and change the render to 'pro res' as this is better quality and, i think, faster rendering...

Rendering HD will always take longer than rendering DV, but I have a 3 year old 2Ghz g5 iMac and it's realtime HDV. There must be something wrong if you're not getting realtime playback on your MacPro.

If you want faster effects rendering, there is an option to render effects as ProRes which works pretty nicely, effects hold up better too.

It may be that your friends are using an intermediate codec too on their PCs (you don't say what programme they're using) which can loosen things up considerable and make rendering/playback easier for the most part, but you'd need much more storage space.