New to Avid Laggy Playback -- Canon 5D, macbook pro

[JPschmidt]

Hello,

I'm an ex FCP user and am switching to AVID

I'm shooting on a canon 5D and am having slight lag in my playback

my laptop is a Macbook Pro
with:
Snow Leopard
2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 Gigs of Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 9400m

I captured the native h.264 footage via AMA logger

(if you need any more info let me know)

If it's just that my laptop isn't powerful enough, that's fine i just need to know what the issue is

or if I'm missing a setting or what

Thanks!

Also feel free to explain as basic as possible -- im very new to this AVID world :p

[bruceallen]

Yes, probably on the limits of laptop speed.

Mc 6 might be faster but to solve your problem FOR NOW:
Best way to get performance is to transcode to DNxHD (Avid's equivalent of ProRes).

Highlight the clips you've brought in via AMA...

Right-Click > Consolidate/Transcode... choose DNxHD (DNxHD36 = ProResLT, DNxHD115 or 145 = ProRes, DNxHD175 or 220 = ProResHQ).

Then this will transcode to create DNxHD .MXF files in the Avid Mediafiles folder of the drive of your choice.

Should be snappy now?

One more thing: The little green / yellow / half-green-half-yellow thing on the bottom of the timeline controls quality - if you want more realtime effects, change it to yellow or half-green-half-yellow.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[JPschmidt]

Thanks, I'll give that a try -- appreciated!