Rendering & RT
 

Hi

I have FCP 5.1.2 on a Powermac G5 dual 2gig with 4 Gig RAM.

I am using Apple Intermediate Codec at 720x576 PAL.

However, I find that I have to render everything, even cross disolves etc.

Secondly, I don't know if related, I am doing multi camera editing using Open Sync so that the viewer plays all camera angels at the same time as the canvas.

However, they will not play, they catch up when you stop playing. I am thinking of upgrading the video card. Will this solve it?

Thanks

Trevor

Intermediate codec is for HDV material, but the resolution you specify is SD. I suspect you have your sequence settings different from your footage settings. What material, from what camera, ingested how?



How many angles? Regardless, multiclips not being able to play in real time is almost always a disk speed issue. I have a 2ghz dual G5, and can play 9 DV angles in real time off of a 4 disk SATA RAID.

Back when all I had was FW disks, I could get 4-5 DV streams in real time in multiclip. Any more caused what you describe.

Updating the video card will almost certainly NOT fix the problem.

Hi Nate

Thanks for this.

I have 3 angles. Basically 2 were shot in SD and one in HDV so I have downconverted the HDV using the AIC and then encoded the other two with AIC also.

Definately open to suggestions on better workflow!

I am using an external Firewire 800 drive. When I was just using dv all the angles played ok, but not in AIC. I am also thinking of an external SATA Raid.

Is there any performance benefit at all to upgrading the graphics card? At the moment my G5 has a 64mb card which seems quite small.

Thanks

Trevor

AIC was designed as a HD res codec only, so even if you were able to successfully convert material to it as an SD res, it's no surprise that it's not working in FCP correctly.

Why not convert the HDV to the same format as the other two angles? You've made things more complicated than they need to be.

FCP is only just recently starting to lean on the graphics card for it's processing. The 5.1.2 update now allows FXPlug plugins from Motion to be used inside FCP, and those rely on the card (like Motion).

But the Multiclip stuff, it's not a card issue.

Hi Nate

Thanks for this. The only reason I havn't converted the hdv into dv is that when I have done this the hdv looks much worse than the other footage shot natively in dv.

Don't know if I have been doing something wrong I have been using quick time conversion.

Thanks

Trevor

Hi

Just exported as a quicktime movie instead of conversion and got much better results!

One last question.

I am dropping my 16:9 on a 4:3 DV PAL timeline and exporting. Obviously a big red line comes up wanting to be rendered. I would rather not render as its 40minutes long and I have many of them to do. So is it necessary to render before exporting?

Thanks!

Trevor

First

You'll have to render (If you don't, the computer will do it in the background before exporting anyway).

But why do you make cropped 4:3?
If it's for DVD you could make 16:9 and keep the extra rez on 16:9 sets, while automatically cropping for 4:3 (Choose "pan, scan & letterbox" in DVD studio pro)

Second:
Why not use DV50 (DVCPRO 50) as common ground for HDV and DV material. At least if you're CC'ing a bit in addition to cuts in post, this will look better. (Do a small workflow test on a few colorfull seconds of video, and you'll see what I mean).

Just change your compression presets of your sequence to this format before final render.


Gunleik

Hi Gunleik

Would capture the dv as dvcpro50 then?

Would I lose any quality if I exported the dv I already have as dvcpro50. I am not sure I understood your point about changing the settings just before final render?

Lastly! If I did keep it all as 16:9 wouldn't that mean that my 4:3 footage would be stretched?

Thanks!

Trevor