48 Hour Render for grading 1 Hour of ProRes 422 LT?

Cieloent said:
Make sure your external hard drive is at least 7200rpm 16mb cache. So after you upgrade your ram, express card and hard drive do a system update, After all of that you will notice an increase in your system.
:Drogar-SunGlass(DBG
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Great idea!! I never even considered the idea of the express card slot. That's a great idea. On my other MB, I had a FW800 port. Is eSata faster than FW800? Also, I did not know the 2.16 could go to 4GB. It has two slots, but I ready it maxed out at 3GB. I'll try that out. My son is getting this MBP back once I get my new system.
 
tfg said:
To the OP: I know from personal experience that Magic Bullet is a snail ... I have no idea why, but it's just so...bloody...slow. Probably a programming issue.
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I tried 3 way CCC and unsharp mask, and got decent results on screen. I tested it on a 4 minute clip and it still said 5 hours to render. Yikes....

BTW, can anyone recommend a way to denoise the footage? It needs a bit of punch too and unsharp mask works fairly well; however, there is still noise causing some flicker in the footage. I'd like to tone this down. It's just an educational video but....

And yes I plan to export it primarily for my blog, although I'm not sure how to deliver a on hour video presentation. Maybe I should break it up into chunks?
 
Sheldon,

Can you post the "Format" settings for your original footage, and the "Sequence" and Render settings your sequence is set to? It really sounds like not only is the color-correction being rendered, but there may be some format or framerate conversion going on as well. I haven't worked on any MBP (and I've worked on quite a few) that would take 5 hours to render 4 minutes of 3-way CC.

--SM
 
The sequence settings appear to be the same as my footage at 59.94, except the audio, which is 48 Khz vs. 44 Khz .wav clip in the project. I'm going to try and port this to another machine and see what happens. Maybe I have a reduced performance problem with this old MBP. If all my files are on my scratch disks will I lose anything in the project by opening it on another machine? Thanks for your help everyone. It's very much appreciated.
 
Sheldon Charron said:
Great idea!! I never even considered the idea of the express card slot. That's a great idea. On my other MB, I had a FW800 port. Is eSata faster than FW800? Also, I did not know the 2.16 could go to 4GB. It has two slots, but I ready it maxed out at 3GB. I'll try that out. My son is getting this MBP back once I get my new system.
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A simple card like this is what you should get, they retail for less than $20

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839328012


39-328-012-S01




FireWire 800 (1394b) – 800 Mpbs vs SATA 1.5 – 1.5 Gbps / SATA 3.0 – 3.0 Gbps.

Now the MBP is not going to give you those exact speeds, but generally it will be faster than a firewire 800.

So yes it makes a difference, it's almost as fast as if you were editing straight to an internal drive.
 
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Cieloent said:
:lipsrseal

The only person taking something serious here is you. David could be the first camera operator in the world, that does not mean he is above the truth. Now if you are someone that feels because of your age and experience that you can do no wrong that is another issue.


I assume you, David and everyone else here are cool people and have amazing talent, but the problem lies when people are not current with the times. For someone to just say a MBP is not a strong/fast computer is a VERY bold statement that must be corrected.


It's no different then a famous director who says an HDSLR is not a proper film camera, as to which you must correct them and show them different.

Before any further assumptions are made we need to know what exactly is the ops actual computer specs. Even an older MBP 2.4 with an external HD should not be taking that long even with Magic Bullet.

I have done 10+ minute projects and the render times have been at max 1 1/2 hours with heaving color grading. Would an extra 50 mins multiply that 40+ times? I don't think so but you never know.

Without the OP giving us full details on his actual FCP settings and computer specs it's hard to tell.
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Read what the OP stated. "I'm using a MacBook Pro, so I realize that it's not the greatest."

Every MBP isn't as powerful as the latest. An early MBP won't handle certain filters as well or as well as latest iteration, particularly if they aren't optimized for the FX Plug in architecture. Try Color with an early MBP, or even the latest iteration. It won't run, in party due to the graphics card, and the processing power. This is particularly true for Red Giant plug ins. I am correcting you that because apparently you are unaware of the distinction.

Contribute without arrogant comments. It works better for all of us.

Cieloent said:
It truly boggles my mind how people speak without truly knowing what they are talking about.
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This unnecessary and is a personal attack.

Leave it off the boards.
 
Cieloent said:
Why isn't a MBP a powerful machine?


A New MBP i7 is faster than a Mac Pro 8 core ( last gen late 2008 early 2009 non nehalem processor ).
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4374/geekbench.jpg

It truly boggles my mind how people speak without truly knowing what they are talking about. To the op please list your systems specs to see if I can help you out.
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As I stated, and you apparently missed:

A MacBook Pro isn't the most powerful machine. I didn't say it wasn't a powerful machine. For some plug ins, particularly those by Red Giant, it isn't very powerful.
 
Cieloent said:
A simple card like this is what you should get, they retail for less than $20

So yes it makes a difference, it's almost as fast as if you were editing straight to an internal drive.
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Be careful about buying cheap EC/34 slots for eSATA.

There are many reports about flakey performance, kernel panics, etc.

Get the best quality you can purchase, not necessarily the least expensive.

And remember that a 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro is a model that was introduced about four years ago.

It won't come close at all the performance capabilities of the most expensive current models.
 
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David S. said:
Be careful about buying cheap EC/34 slots for eSATA.

There are many reports about flakey performance, kernel panics, etc.

Get the best quality you can purchase, not necessarily the least expensive.

And remember that a 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro is a model that was introduced about four years ago.

It won't come close at all the performance capabilities of the most expensive current models.
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I agree, but their are certain drivers in place that prevent the kernel attacks. Also my point being was that the esata connection would be faster than 400/800 firewire.

I currently have that same card I posted ( crosses fingers ) and I have not had any issues as of yet with it. Also even though is computer is old it is still very good. He can convert his files to pro res , max his ram out , upgrade his hd,etc. and still have a good system.

Of course he can benefit from something faster, but those upgrades for less than $300 IMO will give his system more legs.


* If in anyway I cam off wrong I apologize , I am only here to share what I know and also be helped as well.
 
Sheldon Charron said:
Hi everyone.

I'm pretty new to final cut pro, but have been managing okay. I have a 7D and my 13 year old son shot 1 hour of video for me last Saturday of a presentation I was doing at a local university. There were 6 different clips total. The video was mistakenly set at 60fps 1280 x 720p. The audio was recorded on a zoom H4n and 44k wav file (I think it's supposed to be 48k).

I'm using Final Cut Pro 7. I imported everything using log and transfer with the EOS conversion to ProRes 422 LT and then edited and synced everything just fine (we used a clapboard each time he had to restart recording lol). I wanted to use Magic Bullet Looks to color grade, and after applying a saved grade to each clip, I tried to render it out. It is telling me 48 Hours! I hoped it would speed up, but I left it all night and there was 36 hours left so I cancelled. I'm using a MacBook Pro, so I realize that it's not the greatest, but 48 hours to grade one hour of video? Does that sound right to you? Can I expect similar or worse times to export the finished product?
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Please use separate storage Mac OS Volumes/Physical Disks for Render Scratch/Thumbnail and Waveform Cache, - Your Assets on Time-line and - Final Output.

You have 1HR of stuff, so your contraint/bottleneck is RAM to Disk Cache on the I/O which could better be tied up doing computational math and internal FCP buffering for render. So your main bottleneck is disk contstraint, most likely your're rendering-scratch is set to the internal 5400RPM MacBook Pro disk. "Macintosh HD" for many.

15" Macbooks up to 4,1 and all 17" macbooks can be extended using Express34 I/O adapter, though it creates additional wattage use and heat.
You can do this via a Sonnet Tempo Express34 Card if you MBP supports it.

The doubled iops during a read/write to same disk will be neutralized.
You can use a cheap Firewire-400/800 scratch drive as well. (AVOID USB2.0 dirves for this - eSata or Firewire only)
If you don't want to go real cheap for your scratch drive, get a G-RAID RAID-0, it's pre-striped at two disks RAID-0 so some more latency in random seek times, and read spead is boosted, then bottleneck to the I/O will only be the Express34 bus speed.

Make sure you're not doing 10bit or RGB rendering in your prefs in FCP, MBP early has issues with more than 8bit and magic bullet.

RedGiant coded the software back in the day, so even Macbook1,1 CoreDuo can handle it with-in reason.
I could understand if you had a problem in Color using lots of secondaries with blur/feather.

Also Hitachi makes real great internal 2.5" 7200RPM drives and iFixit has a guide on how to put them in.
 
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Hello everyone and DJDecay.

My internal HD is a 200 GB 7200 RPM drive. I have two scratch disks and all my fles are on the scratch disks.

Last night I shot a few minutes of my 13 year old son on his dirtbike for a school project. He had to make a fake video game commercial. We drove out and shot it with the 7D and then came home to edit it last night. I did the editing on a machine with a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 with 500 GB 7200 spin drive and 4 GB ram plus the scratch disks and the rendering was WAY better.

Now I'm off to pick up an express card and a drive bay and drive. The guy at the store has a card with dual sata II ports that will do raid 0 or 1, but he recommended I got to a USB 3.0 card and drive bay. Just the fact that it say USB in front of the 3.0 has me gagging. I HATE USB. Ugh. That being said, s it really faster? Sata drives are going in it any. Also, what drive should I stick in, size and specs? Thanks again everyone! This is the best idea for sure until I get a new machine.
 
I'm not aware of any compatible USB3 cards and drive bays for the Mac.

Wish it were different because USB3 drives show promise.
 
I bought an eSata II express card, a NexStar dual toaster Sata II bay and a Seagate 1.5TB 7200 Sata drive. I stuck the 2TB Sata in the second port that used to be in a USB 2 drive, and disconnected the FW drive that probably has a slow 5400 spin drive in it. It seems quite a bit faster but I'm hoping it will get better now that I've started moving stuff around with Media manager. Why should I have the project file on the Mac OS HD??
 
To answer your question.. yes that does sound "normal". It depends on a lot but Magic Bullet renders take a lot longer. I had graded a SD feature back in the day with Magic Bullet and it took weeks to render so imagine HD.

A few things people don't realize. HD video is resource hungry. It will help if you purchase an eSata drive but you need to raid your set up.

You are dealing with a lot of pixels so be patient. As much as possible I try to use three way color correction.

A fast videocard is important too among other things.
 
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check you sequence settings

check you sequence settings

Make sure the clips you imported in your final cut have the same frame rate as the sequence you edited your video. You might need to go to audio video setting and set the correct frame rate. If the frame rate in your rendering codec setting differen't from the clips you are editing then your computer has to duplicate frames to match the frame rate of your rendering codec which results in long render times.

If your coloring software supports it. It's better to open the sequence then file -> export -> quicktime convertion and keep current settings and uncheck make self contined. This way you have a very small .mov file with refrences to your renders and you can take that into most programs and do what you like and export again.

Right click on a clip in the browser and click "item properties" this will give you info about the audio and video clips so there is no guessing.

-Zei
 
Just so you all know, that tanks to everyone's advice, I've solved the problem and am getting very good performance. I purchased an eSata Express Card and an eSata dual toaster drive, plus two 1TB Seagate 7200 spin drives and striped them in Disk Utility. I have a second 2 TB scratch drive and keep my main drive pretty clean, so it's whipping along and I am a very happy dude. :) Thanks again!

Peace!
 
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