1080p/24 requires render for all fades/cross dissolves?

Ted Spencer

Ted Spencer

Veteran
Working with some 1080/24p footage imported from my Nikon D800, and can't seem to find a way to get simple realtime fades/cross dissolves. I've discovered that the footage seems to like to be transcoded to something other than its native format to play smoothly in the first place, so I've been converting it to DVCPROHD (staying 1080/24p), and that smooths it out fine. But any attempt at adding the simplest of realtime fades or dissolves throws it into re-render world (the dreaded red bar above and blue "needs render" screen of death on the viewer).

I've done many projects in the past with my now-departed HVX200A at 720/24 or 30p, and had no problem running realtime fades/dissolves. Those files still play R/T fine. Of course, that was a lower data rate, and maybe that's 100% of the problem...

But is it?

I've got a pretty fast Mac - an 8-core 2.8 GHz "Harpertown" with 10 GB or RAM, and am running files on a single built-in 1TB 7200 RPM Seagate ATA drive. This drive also is used for huge Pro Tools audio projects running upwards of 60+ 24 bit 44.1 tracks, and does so without a hiccup. Using FCP7 on OS X 10.6.8.

So what's the bottleneck:

-Must I use a drive array for 1080/24p?
-Is there some setting I've missed? I've tried virtually all settings in the RT tab, and none help
-I've also gone over all audio/video and timeline settings repeatedly without success
-Am I not accessing all cores fully?
-Is anyone else doing more or less what I'm describing here without problems? Again - I'm not asking for much - just fades and dissolves.

Thanks for any light you may have to shed on this!
 
Have you run a speed test app on the drive like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to see where your performance level is at?

For what it's worth, I run my MacPro with one internal drive for my boot/apps, and 3 internal drives Raid 0 for editing, with a Raid 5 external backup.
 
If you are transcoding your originals anyway why not try some flavor of Prores? It is the native codec for FCP. Might run better.
 
Wondering if my video card isn't up to the task. It's an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT (512 MB). It's running two monitors - 30" and 23" Apple Cinema displays, which are of course consuming some of its 'horsepower'. Would a (much?) faster card (at least theoretically) make this problem go away?

Thanks!
 
Update: I just installed the FCPX 10.0.6 demo, and what a difference! I allowed it to auto-convert my D800 footage on import, which seems much quicker than post-import rendering in FCP7 (not a strict comparison though), and right away everything played smoothly. Fades/dissolves play reasonably well while rendering (at a lowered frame rate), then perfectly after, which again seemed much quicker than 7. Unlike 7, where editing a fade/dissolve *or any portion of the otherwise unaffected clip it's attached to* prompts a mandatory re-render *of the entire clip*, X will just re-render the fade and leave the rest alone, while again allowing everything to be played, with only a small compromise on the faded segment as it churns.

What a difference!

It also puts to rest (or so it seems) any notion that the 8800GT card isn't up to snuff.

It's got me seriously rethinking this whole question. I really like FCP7's generally more professional environment overall, but X is cleaning its clock in basic workflow and efficiency terms. Disappointments may ensue where many details are concerned (audio, plugins, CC, OMF export, etc., etc.), but it's really got me thinking about dumping 7 for the ~14 minute narrative short film I'm about to shoot. Several major headaches simply vanished...

Thoughts?

TIA
 
FCPX has some cool features, but I have been using industry standard professional edit systems for so long that it's hard for me to get FCPX as it seems that it was designed for someone who isn't ingrained in industry standard methods. I will continue to explore it, but I have yet to use it on a paying job. At this point I'm making the switch over from FCP 7 to Premiere Pro CS6.
 
Yes FCPX is certainly based on a clean sheet of paper, for better and/or worse. I wouldn't be using it if it weren't simply wiping the floor with 7 in real-time performance. Which brings me to:
 
So what gives?

-FCP7 won't allow real-time fades/dissolves at all in my D800 1080/24p footage, after transcoding to either DVCPROHD, or prores 4:2:2, which I tried recently after it was suggested here.
-FCPX does the above just fine, with minor qualifications as described earlier.

So where FCP7's issues are concerned, I can rule out:

-Processor speed
-Drive efficiency
-Video card performance

...right?

So...just to be clear - are others *not* having difficulty running FCP7 under similar format/hardware circumstances? In other words, achieving (at least usable) real-time playback of unrendered fades/dissolves on 1080/24p DVCPROHD or Prores 4:2:2 footage on a single FW800 hard drive, and an 8-core 2.8 GHz Harpertown/8800GT card or equivalent?

If so, then there must be something I'm doing wrong here, and I would really love to know what that is. I got pretty darn comfortable editing 720/24p (or 30p) HVX200 footage in 7, with all fades/dissolves running smooth as silk in real time, no need to re-render whole clips when attached fades/dissolves are edited, etc., but I'm not even in the same county now with my D800 stuff at 1080p. Workflow slows by at least 50%. Meanwhile, FCPX is zooming along in overdrive - on the same 'highway'...

Any conclusory insights would be most appreciated. A switch to FCPX, in its current form, will involve many tradeoffs. Cash expenditures, for a start...

Thanks again for all previous and future advice!
 
Ted Spencer said:
So what gives?

-FCP7 won't allow real-time fades/dissolves at all in my D800 1080/24p footage, after transcoding to either DVCPROHD, or prores 4:2:2, which I tried recently after it was suggested here.
-FCPX does the above just fine, with minor qualifications as described earlier.

So where FCP7's issues are concerned, I can rule out:

-Processor speed
-Drive efficiency
-Video card performance

...right?

So...just to be clear - are others *not* having difficulty running FCP7 under similar format/hardware circumstances? In other words, achieving (at least usable) real-time playback of unrendered fades/dissolves on 1080/24p DVCPROHD or Prores 4:2:2 footage on a single FW800 hard drive, and an 8-core 2.8 GHz Harpertown/8800GT card or equivalent?

If so, then there must be something I'm doing wrong here, and I would really love to know what that is. I got pretty darn comfortable editing 720/24p (or 30p) HVX200 footage in 7, with all fades/dissolves running smooth as silk in real time, no need to re-render whole clips when attached fades/dissolves are edited, etc., but I'm not even in the same county now with my D800 stuff at 1080p. Workflow slows by at least 50%. Meanwhile, FCPX is zooming along in overdrive - on the same 'highway'...

Any conclusory insights would be most appreciated. A switch to FCPX, in its current form, will involve many tradeoffs. Cash expenditures, for a start...

Thanks again for all previous and future advice!
Click to expand...




The reason is newer editors like FCPX and PP CS5/6 use either OpenCL or CUDA from the GFX card to render some effects and transitions - they are done in realtime . FCP7 and older don't make use of this, so it uses the CPU to render it - a huge bottleneck

There is a big difference between 1080p and 720p - you're driving 2.25x the number of pixels (and HVX footage isn't true 1280x720, it's 960x720 so the difference is larger)
 
Great, thanks PDR. I certainly understood the difference where 1080 vs 720 data rates were concerned, but not the 'offloading of R/T video tasks to the display card' thing. Explains it perfectly. Also didn't know that PP 5+ does that too. I have PP, but only v4, and it came on a laptop I bought used so there's no upgrade path. Nonetheless, it might be the answer where a better set of pro features is concerned, and thus might be a worthwhile investment. I'll certainly do the research into its full feature set (and download a demo if possible), but is there anything big in terms of pro inter/applicability that I might need to know about? For starters, does it 'talk' OMF?

But thanks again - this seems to finally reveal what I'm really up against with FCP7 at 1080p...
 
Ted Spencer said:
I'll certainly do the research into its full feature set (and download a demo if possible), but is there anything big in terms of pro inter/applicability that I might need to know about? For starters, does it 'talk' OMF?
Click to expand...

I'm not up to date on what FPCX does or doesn't do. I know it didn't when it was first released and there was a big outcry for that and various other reasons. But apparently many features were added in subsequent releases and it got "better". Maybe someone else knows or can give you a concise run down on the current state of affairs

Have you tried things like reducing preview quality and resolution ? It might be enough to get you by with the current FCP7
 
Thanks, PDR. Actually I was asking about PP6 re: features like OMF and other pro stuff FCP7 does natively.

FCPX can reportedly do AAF export with a 3rd party plugin...

I'm downloading the PP demo right now.
 
Haha sorry :) . Yes CS6 does support all those features

But be aware that the Mac version of PP seems to have issues that the PC version doesn't. Also you might need to upgrade your GFX card for the Mercury playback engine to work properly. I don't think it's on the "official" supported list. (There is a "hack" to get lower end cards to work, you can read up on it in several threads here an other boards)
 
I just tried fading and doing cross dissolves with FCP7 and DVCPRO HD transcoded footage (from Canon .MOV files) and it worked like a charm. 2011 MacBook Pro 17" here. No rendering required.
 
Not sure how enforced it is on PP but they recommend a video card with min 1Gb of VRAM. FWIW Ted my Mac Pro is 2010 and similar in spec to yours - I put in a NVIDIA GTX570 that I picked up from ebay for $160. Theres no start up screen when you hear the mac startup tone, but other than that it works well.

PP6 works well with Cuda enabled I'd give it a speed edge of maybe 5-10% over FCPX using openCL. Not much. PP6 has that old NLE feel - in fact you'll drop right into it coming from FCP7. It has tight integration with PS and AE as well.

FCPX on the other hand is a different way to work. I find it far more efficient in building an edit. You know what they say however, one mans trash is another mans treasure. There is an app that can fix the audio export issues, there is an app so you can export xml from 7 so an older edit can be brought into X and there are other apps that beat off any other shortfalls. Point is for whats missing theres an app.
 
Thanks Gary. Very interesting. On the face of it this shouldn't be true, because the 'fastest' 2011 MBP 17 is 'only' 2.5 GHz x 4 cores, where my 2008 MP is 2.8 GHz x 8 cores. But I don't doubt what you're saying...

So, first of all, if I may ask, which 2011 17" is it? There were 4: 'early 2011' 2.2 and 2.3 GHz and 'late 2011' 2.4 and 2.5 GHz. Each has other related specs of course, but since they all had different processor speeds I should be able to look up the rest on everymac.com.

Otherwise, do you, or does anyone else have an explanation for this? I installed another identical 8-core 2.8 'Harpertown' (+FCS) in a clients' studio a few years ago and found the same issues with 1080p (or i) footage, so I have two matching data points on this question.

Secondly, what about other folks' Mac (or MacBook)Pro setups and FCP7? Are you, like Gary, finding you can run realtime 1080/24p fades/dissolves (and basic 3 color-wheel CC, which I forgot to mention before, which also runs fine R/T on 720p)? Are there any other owners of an MP like mine who similarly *can't*?

If so, what do you suppose might explain it? Again, I'm talking:

-1080/24p from D800, transcoded to DVCPROHD or ProRes
-One external FW800 drive
-8800GT vid card
-10 GB of system memory
-OS X 10.6.8 (all OSes I've tried are the same in this regard)
-FCP 7.0.3

And last, is there anything anyone can think of that I might be missing in FCP's setup/prefs? I think I've tried just about everything, but it's certainly possible I've missed something. Remember, all's well with it in 720p...

Thanks for the ongoing help with this!
 
Last edited:
Ted Spencer said:
So, first of all, if I may ask, which 2011 17" is it? There were 4: 'early 2011' 2.3 and 2.3 GHz and 'late 2011' 2.4 and 2.5 GHz. Each has other related specs, but since they all had different processor speeds I should be able to look up the rest on everymac.com.
Click to expand...

It is the early MacBook Pro 17" 2.2GHz i7 Quad. I put an SSD drive in there, and that's where the footage was playing from, and I doubt it stems from that because your FW800 should be plenty fast for DVCPRO HD unless you have an insane amount of layers on it. I also routinely edit from a G-RAID Mini hooked in either via eSATA or FW800.

Otherwise, do you, or does anyone else have an explanation for this? I installed another identical 8-core 2.8 'Harpertown' (+FCS) in a clients' studio a few years ago and found the same issues with 1080p (or i) footage, so I have two matching data points on this question.
Click to expand...

Two different setups both experiencing the issue would seem to absolve user error. I've found that DVCPRO HD is such a low-bandwidth hog codec that it's an absolute joy to work with, and so I'm very interested in why you are having these issues. Do you have the timeline set to Unlimited RT? That could be your issue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top