4K@Home... a day in the life/a bullet in the head

Ninety-Nine

Ninety-Nine

New member
At this moment I'm editng a 90 minute concert DVD. The raw footage totals almost 25 hours (5 DVCPro50 cameras x 5 hours of footage each). I'm running FCP 5 on a Dual 2GHz GS with 2.5 gigs of RAM.

The media totals almost 900gigs and lives on a HUGE MEDIA VAULT with a SCSI connection.

In my timeline I have 2, sometimes 3 Multi-Clip streams that I'm cutting from. I'm working with 14 unique Sequences (1 for each song). My FCP project file is around 150mb.

Opening this project takes 5-7minutes. Saving this project takes 10-20 seconds each time. Duplicating sequences, copying clips, loading this project into Compressor for DVD encoding takes... forever. Switching over to check my email can be a grind. I spend as much time managing media and starring at the (Mac) spinning beach ball as I do editing sometimes.

And this is all at DVCPro50 rez. I think about editing a feature @ 4K. Yes it would look beautiful, but if it is at the expence of a fluid work flow and my sanity... [Two fingers to head - shots ring out].

Now I understand that my system, or methods, or whatever may be to blame. And I realize that this may be a scenerio not often repeated in the RED world. But, I know I'm not the only self-taught, working-class editor who can't be to picky about the jobs I'm given or the system I'm working on. We have to do the best job with what we are given today, right?

And when my Red camera comes to town I will still be using this system (until I've paid off my debt to the loan shark that is).

Give me fast and responsive offline any day. And give me a bullet-proof way back to On-Line for finishing.

Good editing is like playing an instrument. If you had to stop and adjust your instrument every few minutes you wouldn't be a very effective musician.

I just wanted to share some pain with those of you who understand the daily struggle that goes into managing Terebytes of media on a budget.

Thank you Graeme, Ted, Jim, etc. for thinking of us.

99
 
Why would you want to edit native 4K anyways... If you have a monitor able to display 2K you already need a larger editing room... :)
 
Two things (not RED specific or anything):

1) editing 4K footage

2) displaying 4K footage

If you're monitor cannot do #2 then the NLE will scale that back. But you can still edit 4K (if your NLE supports that), of course.
 
taubkin said:
Why would you want to edit native 4K anyways...
Click to expand...
Well, there seem to be a lot of people who want to, and as Rob's post indicates, you don't need a 4K monitor to edit 4K footage. I'm with Ninety-Nine, though. Give me a lower res offline so I can power through my footage and let the render farm deal with the full rasters at the end of the day. When I'm editing, efficiency is my biggest priority, and the easier it is to deal with the footage the better.
 
With regards to FCP, will REDCODE support just be a simple codec I can throw in my QT plugins folder? I assume it goes beyond that into territory guarded by NDAs.
 
Dude, You need to break up your project into smaller projects. FCP always gets sloooooow with large project files.
 
I would just have to say its the scale of the project and how final cut has to read through and write into memory the entire xml document that is your project. So the more cuts, the more cameras, the larger the xml document.

Also in regards to some of the thinking in regarding wavlet compression, is that it's rather easy to extract a half or quarter rez proxy and then just to flip a switch when the full rez needs to be extracted or rendered. This can already be seen in cineforms line of products. So at that point image size has nothing to do with playback ability, i really like cineforms methodology in that regards.

Lastly you might want to check on the settings of your scsi card, I've had several instances where I've worked on machines that were set to a lower speed because OSX doesn't autoset all cards.
 
I have had pleasure with working with RAW uncompressed HD footage my self, you have to start thinking of "ONLINE" and "OFFLINE" editing of your footage. Offline editing basically means that the footage you're editing is simply a proxy for a higher quality output. This way you don't have to break your back trying to look at the real thing while trying to do the tedious/exciting editing.

Here's an example.. though it might not be prefect, it still works in FCP

1) render your captured raw scenes into small resolution, something like 700 pixels wide
2) do all your editing with fcp using these crappy tiny files when you're finally satisfied that your edit is PERFECT than look at 3)
3) Render out the high rez files (keep same file names as you did in step 1 for low rez stuff
4) quit the FCP and rename your folder where you kept your crappy files to something else
5) rename the folder with high rez stuff to whatever your previous folder was called.. obviously make sure these 2 folders are in the same parent folder
6) open FCP, render the movie out and presto you're done.
 
Haakon said:
Well, there seem to be a lot of people who want to, and as Rob's post indicates, you don't need a 4K monitor to edit 4K footage. I'm with Ninety-Nine, though. Give me a lower res offline so I can power through my footage and let the render farm deal with the full rasters at the end of the day. When I'm editing, efficiency is my biggest priority, and the easier it is to deal with the footage the better.
Click to expand...

I believe, a lot of people want to because they never had to do offline editing. It's really not the end of the world...

But anyway, I still expect Red team to give us maximum flexibility, and certainly to try to give us online deiting solutions that work. Still, I wouldn't be extremely worried, if my computer couldn't handle an online 4K editing. As I said, if I can't even enjoy the images in full res while I'm editing, what's the need for an online editing? Of course it's more convenient, but what do the process get from it?

It's all I'm saying...

Cheers!
 
Both -- online and offline are useful considering different circumstances (including hardware), projects, budgets and needs. I'd be so glad if besides the always helpful and easy offline, we'll have the 4K online in order to be used here as a suitable and true reality. As we already said, our hopes are with Graeme and his RED team. Welcome Rob!
 
How about something like the way Raylight works transparently under applications like Vegas and Premier?

Throwing a switch effectively takes you from lowest rez proxy through two options for first-pass (medium level) and pixel-for-pixel full-resolution editing. Perhaps there would be a way to select 480 / 1080 / 2k / 4k edit proxy if there was a way to build a single lower format for reference that could quickly point to the larger RAW data?

With Raylight, I switch back and forth from red to blue for resolution critical work (e.g., titling, composites).

Certainly, this is already being done?

e
 
Just a small addition to the offline post...
If your computer ain't as sweet as your camera and you hate all editors in town you could consider renting a kick-butt station on day one to downrez to an external HDD, and then once again on the last day to render the project. Doesn't sound like that's your case but others might find out that they don't need to get a new computer just yet.
 
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Thank you Ninty Nine!!! I KNEW IT WAS NOT JUST PC!!!

I have the same HELL every freakin day with a 2 hour plus feature film timeline at 720P HD!!! OMG what PAIN@!!!!


HEY GUYS THAT CODE NLE APPS LISTEN UP:
Please make software that does not corrupt and choke over a timeline that has over an hour on it and a project file that runs over 70megs with over 1000 clips!!!

HELLOOOO...anyone hear meeeeeeee.....meeeeee.meeee...me










I feel so alone
 
Makes me Like Vegas More

Makes me Like Vegas More

Yeah - I've been training myself with FCP on an identical system, and find it very frustrating after editing a feature on Sony Vegas 5 on a decrepit P4 2.8 W/ 1 Gig of RAM. This feature, all on one timeline, ran 87 minutes and had 27 tracks of video, overlays and audio. And all the footage was stored on internal IDE drives. It always felt like a 5 minute project. Vegas is pretty amazing, and despite my sizable investment in the Mac and Studio Pro I still find myself doing most of my work on my Core 2 Duo running Vegas 7.
 
DVXSanDiego said:
Yeah - I've been training myself with FCP on an identical system, and find it very frustrating after editing a feature on Sony Vegas 5 on a decrepit P4 2.8 W/ 1 Gig of RAM. This feature, all on one timeline, ran 87 minutes and had 27 tracks of video, overlays and audio. And all the footage was stored on internal IDE drives. It always felt like a 5 minute project. Vegas is pretty amazing, and despite my sizable investment in the Mac and Studio Pro I still find myself doing most of my work on my Core 2 Duo running Vegas 7.
Click to expand...


Yeah, i hear the same from a lot of Vegas guys and I'm always a little jealous.

But I love FCP without a doubt. I use it for so much more than just editing it's crazy.

I'm aware of all the current offline to online methods. I just wish (maybe with FCP 6) that there is a truly elegant way to switch back and forth from Online to Offline. Clean and Simple.

I used to drive around in a Toyota truck with a tape deck that only worked when I stuffed a book of matches in it. it worked. But... you know... It sucked.
 
Roxco said:
Graeme had this issue nailed. Complex projects in FCP get slower and slower, but it has little to do with the resolution of the footage.
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What does that mean, exactly? Lots of clips?

If they want people to take it seriously for editing features (which are probably pretty "complex"), they need to make it more efficient than just for editing a clip of their kid's birthday.

I'm warming up to FCP, really I am. But I spent the whole weekend editing a music video on a brand new Mac Pro system and I couldn't believe how slow it was. The feature set is good, and if that is what it is going to take to get into RED then I'm game (I know it's going to be PC compatible as well, but none of the PC NLEs really excite me too much either). I'm just surprised at how much support FCP seems to have, given what seems to me to be very sluggish performance.
 
Yep.

Yep.

Thanks Haakon, for letting me know I'm not the only one who sees it this way. Speaking of RED, are you going to be at the 4K screening on Tuesday? I'm heading up with one of my production partners to check it out.
 
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