Maybe I'm dumb - real time on the canvas
 

One of the things I like about Vegas is that when I produce an effect, I can see what it looks like on the canvas without rendering it - it may be playing at a reduced resolution or at a choppy framerate, but I don't get that annoying "Unrendered" screen. In fact, I'm ticked off at it - I'd really like to be able to render everything at once instead of stopping what I'm doing every so often to render.

Is there a way to do this in FCP? To have a small preview (maybe 640x360) that'll play on the canvas in real time without rendering?

Next to your timeline you have the letters RT standing. Click on it and if the checkbox is on Safe RT, change it to Unlimited RT.

It's a fact though that many Windows program (I switched from Premiere Pro to FCP) show much more things in real time.
That being said: I've never, for a second, regretted, the switch.

I don't see an option for that. I did see an option for it in system settings, but changing it didn't seem to do anything.

Its at top left of the timeline window, directly to the left of the timeline's timecode display field.
Furthermore, in the same menu you can set Playback Video Quality to Dynamic and Playback Frame Rate to Dynamic ... in this way FCP will automatically adjust quality on the fly in order maintain render free playback

No - I mean, I read books and yes, these selections ARE under the RT button on the timeline - in Final Cut Pro 5. I'm using Final Cut Pro 6 - and the options simply aren't there.

Here's what I have:

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1023/rtiy8.png

I use FCP6 and the RT options are there. What setting is your sequence set to?

William's on the right track Brian, you lose all the RT options when you are ending in a non RT Extreme codec ... from the manual:

RT Extreme is not capable of playing back all video codecs. The processor speed and amount of RAM installed in your computer affect which codecs can play back in real time. The following codecs are supported for real-time playback:
- DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO (25), and DVCPRO 50
- IMX
- OfflineRT (this is a Final Cut Pro preset that uses the Photo JPEG codec)
- 8- and 10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 video formats
- Apple ProRes 422 codec (standard definition)

The following high definition codecs have higher system requirements:
- DVCPRO HD, XDCAM HD, HDV, Apple Intermediate Codec, and Apple ProRes 422 codec

To see a complete list of real-time codecs supported by your system choose Final Cut Pro > System Settings, then click the Effect Handling tab ... The Effect Handling tab allows you to choose whether Final Cut Pro uses RT Extreme or a supported video effects accelerator card for processing real-time effects. For example, you could choose to have RT Extreme handle media using the Photo JPEG codec while using a video effects accelerator card to handle DV NTSC footage.

... Is it possible you have inadvertently set your codec effect handling to your capture card hardware? These days most codecs are better handled by FCP than the I/O card.

I don't know what I did, but I fixed it. I -think- I simply changed the frame rate from full to dynamic, and changed the codec to ProRes 422 from HDV.

HDV?!?!?!?

HDV is very, very processor intensive. I'm not sure if the newest 8-core MacPros can do real-time effects with it. As you found out, by switching the sequence to ProRes suddenly things ease up on the processors. Right now I'm editing 720p HDV footage transfered to ProRes during capture (directly in the computer, no special card), switched four cameras using multicam and now applying color correction and dissolves. All viewable in real-time on a regular monitor as ProRes will do a live transcode down to regular DV for previewing! It's not the best transcode but it works great for color correction. Right now I have a dual 2g G5 which works quite well so I wonder how much better this will be when I finally get an 8-core.

You can hit Option+P to 'force' FCP to play thru unrendered areas as best it can, and you can also use the QuickView tool, Option+8, and that will bring up a window that does a FCP version of a RAM preview loop from 2-10 seconds long. A cool thing about QuickView is that it is live updating so you can mess w/your effect in the timeline and QuickView will continue to play and reflect the changes you are making. Now, depending on the speed of your computer and the complexity of the effect QuickView might start to chug until the changes are loaded into RAM though.

-A

>HDV is very, very processor intensive. I'm not sure if the newest 8-core MacPros can do real-time effects with it.

Yes they can ... easily. The issues of raw CPU horsepower vs HDV were surpassed long ago. In fact I can easily do realtime effects on my crappy old 1st rev MBP with only 1GB RAM. Whatever Brian's problem was, it wasn't because his sources / sequence was set to HDV. He should still have seen the RT options we pointed him to with a correctly configured HDV sequence setup. Clearly, one way or another, he had his sequence settings all messed up ... changing the sequence preset fixed it.

I have one of the first models of the MBP and it can not do effects in an HDV sequence in real time in the Dynamic RT mode. Color correction yes. In lower res playbacks the effects can sputter badly which doesn't work for me. As long as there's enough hard drive space for the render files, working in a ProRes sequence is a lot easier than playing around with RT settings and the renders come out perceptibly better.

For what its worth, when it comes to HDV and XDCAM HD I'm more in the native capture in native timeline with renders set to ProRes camp ... but the main thing is that we're both happy with our workflows William! Not sure why you see such poor performance with native HDV though ... is yours a 15" MBP? Mine is a 1st gen 17".
As mentioned tho, the settings we directed Brian to should have been there for a correctly configured HDV sequence so its a puzzler why he wasn't seeing them.


Anyway, warm regards
Andy

15" MBP it is.

I used to always capture native HDV but I have found 720p HDV to be too quirky in FCP, 1080i HDV captures fine. Either way, a ProRes seqeunce works with my older Macs just fine.