HMC150 720-60P Transcoding in FCP

[Nick Sammons]

I'm using FCP 6.0.5 on a strong enough MBP -- and crash every clip I'm trying to transcode over 6 seconds long that is 720-60P. 720-24P footage works fine. One of the crashes said Perian could be a problem? I also use the Magic Bullet filters which have crashed me a few times in the past.

Anyone else had problems transcoding 720-60P? It will playback in the Log and Transfer window and start, and then crash and burn. I don't have Toast 9 but see quite a few people have been using that, would rather not spend the money if I didn't have to.

Also, tried both AIC and Prores transcodes. Neither worked.

[Nick Sammons]

Removed Perian and problem solved. Hope this helps someone else.

[David Saraceno]

Remove Perian.

[Nick Sammons]

Hey, I already figured that out.

For the record, the overcranked 60p-->24p looks GREAT. I'm quite impressed.

[Thomas Lew]

Heard all about these Perian problems. sheesh

[kabokuti]

I haven't had any problems. (Maybe because I don't have Perian).

I'm running a MacBookPro 10.5.6
Final Cut Pro 6.0.5
I have the Magic Bullets plug ins too.
I just finished transfering a lot of clips, some 10 seconds, some 60 seconds, and I had no issues with the machine crashing.

[evbb]

OK, try not to laugh too hard at this scrappy workflow I have planned till I can pull the trigger on a tower. Basically I'd love to get some input to see if this sounds feasible to folks here:

I'll edit on a macbook 2.4GHz core 2 duo using FCP 6.0.5 and FW400 drives.

Plan is to transcode from AVCHD to ProRez and also an HDV version. Edit with the HDV versions as an offline codec. When ready, reconnect to the ProRez media and output (overnight) resulting sequences to another FW400 drive. Obviously I wouldnt be able to QC or screen my final outputs, but other than that and the overall shadyness here is there any reason this method won't work? Anything to keep in mind so the HDV and ProRez versions stay as in sync as possible?

Any suggestions greatly appreaciated!

[JonathanS]

evbb, I believe you're overthinking it. I've happily edited 1080p25 ProRes on a MacBook Pro/2.2GHz, with the media coming off crappy LaCie 1Tb FW800 RAID drives or a cheapskate eSATA setup. I've even managed to do cuts-only ProRes edits off a 250Gb bus-powered USB2 laptop drive, which wasn't pretty but did work. Yes, I've cut ProRes while sitting on a train.

ProRes (not ProRes HQ!) is well within the bandwidth limits of even pretty cruddy hard drives, by current standards. The key is to set Final Cut's playback quality to 'Medium.' You won't see every pixel of the ProRes, but the processor and disk loads are halved or better.

Previously, I cut HDV natively but used ProRes for renders (HDV rendering is awfully slow). Sure, I hit disk limits faster with ProRes, but unless I'm trying to do multicamera stuff it's rarely an issue, even without a RAID array. The only times I notice the difference are when looking at the free space on the drive, and final exports - copying ProRes takes a while.

If your FW400 drives don't provide enough bandwidth, maybe it's time to turn them into archive/backup drives, and go FW800 or eSATA?

[evbb]

If your FW400 drives don't provide enough bandwidth, maybe it's time to turn them into archive/backup drives, and go FW800 or eSATA?

Thanks JonathanS. Your USB drive on the train story is comforting, I have to say. Unfortunately, my macbook is not a pro, so no FW800 port or card slot to expand to eSATA. I'll just have to make due till I can get a real system. Hopefully I can limp along without having to get to nutty with reconnecting media, etc, but we'll see.

[JonathanS]

Ah, drat - sorry evbb, I saw '2.4GHz' and thought 'That's better than mine!', completely overlooking the 'Pro' thing. :-)

I had problems with FW400, in that my old drives were stuffed in cheap and cruddy DIY enclosures. They benchmarked at no better than 15-20Mb/sec, which is dismal. Good enough for DV/HDV, but not for ProRes. Quality FW400 drives should push more like double that data rate, which should work well enough to get started.

Editing off USB2 wasn't pretty, in that I couldn't layer tracks (unsurprisingly), and even straight playback threw dropped frame errors every few minutes. That said, I wasn't expecting it to work at all, and it was good enough to discuss a rough-cut of a 12-minute short with a client on-site, while travelling light.

If you need to do lots of editing on a MacBook, I'd be tempted to run a batch conversion (Compressor) to anamorphic DV. Much faster to work with than HDV, far far quicker to compress, well within FW400 bandwidth limits, and it even looks great. There's help in the Final Cut manual to walk you through reconnecting a project to full-quality media (ie. making the offline->online jump), late in the process.

One thought: HD is unforgiving about focus, whereas DV is always blurry so one doesn't notice so much. As ever with offline workflows, careful logging helps avoid nasty surprised at the online stage of the process.

[evbb]

Great advice Jonathan, and much appreciated. When you reminded me about HDV's rendering pains, I was thinking anamorphic DV. So if I end up going the offline->onine workflow rout, your suggestion helps reassure me that I'm not taking a bad turn.