Ahhh!!!!! Bloody hdv & prores!!!!!!

J

Jay Laville

Well-known member
Okay, Im a qualified level 1 user FCP. I have recorded some footage on my canon xh-a1 in HDV. I capture footage into FCP 6, no problems, I then layout roughly where I want each clip on time line, I set RT to unlimited and dynamic. It plays fine no choppyness or anything. I decide to give it some magic bullet looks detail, orange render bar appears above clip and play back is very choppy.... so I figure damn it, I should render clips in pro res so I can render quickly and perhaps orange bar would turn into green bar, then output to HD. So I go to sequence setting render in prores 422 and still even adding the slightest filter I get orange bar and choppyness on playback before rendering... what am I doing wrong? Even adding lower 3rd text and superimposing over a clip creates orange bar and choppyness

Im running fcp on an IMAC 2.8GHZ INTEL CORE 2 DUO, Memory 2GB 800MHZ DDR2 SDRAM and has a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS, have external Hardrive 800 firewire 1tb for media
 
Last edited:
you can add filters to a scene, look at it, load the clip in the viewer and un-check the filter, finish the edit, and then recheck everything.

or render.
 
amrrahmy said:
you can add filters to a scene, look at it, load the clip in the viewer and un-check the filter, finish the edit, and then recheck everything.

or render.
Click to expand...

kinda defeats the object of putting it in render prores 422 then as would like to edit in as close to realtime as possible without frame drops
 
ProRes HQ is a very high bitrate codec for that sort of editing especially with your modest system spec. I'd pick an offline codec that's lower bitrate, such as Photo-JPEG. Or upgrade to speedier gear.

Noah
 
not convert the file before editing, render as in render (sequence render, you could also change the settings for render hdv and xdcam using prores)

some filters require rendering, then you have to render.you get all the different color render bars and small and bold texted in the effects menu to tell you what can be added without rendering, other than that you can disable clips with clip enable option or un check effects to disable effects, and you can restore everything when you need to.

color correcting, editing and titling should not be mixed from the start, that's just common sense, you go one step at a time, you dont add none cc'ed footage cut one clip add cc and then edit the next, you need to do one job, finish it, and then go to the next.

a good practice would be to work uncompressed(you will probably need a fast raid for that), color correct in your favorite application, export the footage uncompressed, then start editing, so it's easy on your machine and only harddrive intensive.

other than that, you edit first, then using fcp in your case or color, color correct after you edited, render, then title, then render(this time would be noticible smaller), then your done.

too much rambring from my part, hope it helps.
 
hi guys thanks, I imported in HDV captured pretty quick I have to say. Then set the render to prores 422, after putting all clips in place, cut and edited and added colour, took a while to render, took ages in fact... do you think if I convert it to prores 422 to begin with it will save alot of time as I plan to only post footage to web anyhow, or perhaps shoot in normal dv? What is a raid anyhow, isnt that just another name for a firewire hardrive?
 
working with prores, you will render faster, and you will encode faster.
so if your doing more than a few minutes and have a few cuts, it's more practical to work with prores files from the start.

raid system is a combination of harddrives working together, with some variations and options to have they work together, mainly you would find some harddrives working at the same time together to establish higher constant output of higher read/write data rate, usually if your working with uncompressed or prores, it's much easier on the computer and the software to calculate and operate and is much less intensive than any codec, also avid uses it's own flavor of specially designed encoders/decoders(i was refereeing to fcp when talking about prores), uncompressed is the best way but comes at a price that you need too much storage space and in hd footage resolution, you will need something faster than a normal sata harddrive speed to have a good editing experience, so a solution would be a raid system, it gives you the option of combining more than one harddrive to get faster data rates, depending on the kind of harddrives and the raid option you choose and the connection between the raid and the drives, you can get smooth performance using uncompressed hd resolution on an average computer.

if however you dont want to go uncompressed prores on final cut is a very good choice, it renders faster inside of fcp, and export faster as well, in that case a nice raid from g-technology would make sence, two harddrive, working together through firewire 800 is enough for smooth prores hd performance, any faster than that you will need to have a computer with esata connection and more than two drives, in case of sata and uncompressed hd footage, it's like 5-6 drives raid 0, i dont know what's the average through output of the san drives or ssd drives, it should require much less drives, but it costs too much more that it's not very practical, you can make two raids one for editing, and one for storage for the same price as one editing san raid option with the same performance, in case of more than two sata drives a fiber cable solution would be best.

as an option, some people work with proxies or smaller versions of the files that, will work gr8 and gives you the performance you need and then just relink to the original files.
 
amrrahmy said:
working with prores, you will render faster, and you will encode faster.
so if your doing more than a few minutes and have a few cuts, it's more practical to work with prores files from the start.

raid system is a combination of harddrives working together, with some variations and options to have they work together, mainly you would find some harddrives working at the same time together to establish higher constant output of higher read/write data rate, usually if your working with uncompressed or prores, it's much easier on the computer and the software to calculate and operate and is much less intensive than any codec, also avid uses it's own flavor of specially designed encoders/decoders(i was refereeing to fcp when talking about prores), uncompressed is the best way but comes at a price that you need too much storage space and in hd footage resolution, you will need something faster than a normal sata harddrive speed to have a good editing experience, so a solution would be a raid system, it gives you the option of combining more than one harddrive to get faster data rates, depending on the kind of harddrives and the raid option you choose and the connection between the raid and the drives, you can get smooth performance using uncompressed hd resolution on an average computer.

if however you dont want to go uncompressed prores on final cut is a very good choice, it renders faster inside of fcp, and export faster as well, in that case a nice raid from g-technology would make sence, two harddrive, working together through firewire 800 is enough for smooth prores hd performance, any faster than that you will need to have a computer with esata connection and more than two drives, in case of sata and uncompressed hd footage, it's like 5-6 drives raid 0, i dont know what's the average through output of the san drives or ssd drives, it should require much less drives, but it costs too much more that it's not very practical, you can make two raids one for editing, and one for storage for the same price as one editing san raid option with the same performance, in case of more than two sata drives a fiber cable solution would be best.

as an option, some people work with proxies or smaller versions of the files that, will work gr8 and gives you the performance you need and then just relink to the original files.
Click to expand...

Wow a wealth of info thanks so much for this. Will there be any limitations in exporting in prores 422 after I have captured prores via firewire? For example if I did a short film and wanted to post on vimeo in HD will prores 422 codex exported be okay? Could I also export onto HD DVD? Will it export faster as it wont need to build gop as if I exported back into hd again? For now will a firewire external hardrive be okay or is raid imperitive when working with proress? Sorry if Im a bit blond here, been searching on web all day trying to figure all this out, never heard of a raid system, thought it was something to do when you have a whole network of computers running :huh:
 
if you live near an apple store, look into a "one to one" membership, I have found it to be worth the money.

if you've gotten it to work, then you're all set. If not did you check your render setting before? sometimes it isn't set to render everything that needs it & that could be the real issue.
 
if your going to vimeo, or any other video sharing site, even if they accept prores which i doubt, it would be somewhat insane and not logical to upload prores files, they are too big we are talking massive numbers, that's when you introduce yourself to the world of delivery codec compression, a wise choice would be h.264, it has some flavors and profiles, but you can stick to the default h.264 settings on your system only changing bitrate and resolution, without interfering with the other parameters, sometimes people would use a flavor of mpeg2 instead, if you dont know way, you dont need to, stick with h.264, it will provide good quality to bitrate on hd footage.

if you export prores to hd dvd using compressor, it would take a small amount of time compared to hdv, if that's what you were asking, i will assume you didn't mean burning an hd dvd disk with a prores file on it. you need to use an authoring software for hd dvd, like dvd studio pro that comes with fcs2.
also not sure if you mean hd-dvd or upscaled dvd, but it's the same, you will need to use a software that will create the files needed and the video files to be compatible with the player your going to use, hd-dvd is a discontinued medium by the way.
 
prores data rate is something like 225mbit/s max if i remember correctly, so you will be able to playback smooth, but scrub through the footage, and you will notice your limit, and you cant play more than one file at the same time, but it doesnt mean you have to get a faster drive, most of what you do might not require more than playback smooth image and you will get that.

so it depends on your speed, if you can edit faster than the footage your playing, it might bother you, but it wont stop you in any way, keep in mind your drive need to have some free space to obtain a good constant speed depending on the drive somewhere between 25-50% of the drive your playing from needs to be free.
 
Last edited:
amrrahmy thank you so much for you patience with me, you have been a tremendous help, will start experimenting now, and see what I come up with. Will also look into getting two raid units that can run through 800 firewire. Much appreciated :thumbup:
 
Jay Laville said:
amrrahmy thank you so much for you patience with me, you have been a tremendous help, will start experimenting now, and see what I come up with. Will also look into getting two raid units that can run through 800 firewire. Much appreciated :thumbup:
Click to expand...

sorry if being blond again, if I upgrade from 2gb ram to 4gb ram on my current imac (cant go down the mac pro yet) will this aid editing and rendering HDV format ?
 
it wont change the performance of editing, hdv should run smooth from the start, and it wont affect export rendering either since it's a 2 core system, i noticed that earlier that you said 2.8ghz and nvidia 8800gs card, the nvidia card only comes in the 3ghz version.
also ram distribution advantage wont be affected that much since it's a 2 core system,

it might help if your using more than one application at the same time, which is not very logical but some people would have final cut open, and something ram intensive like after effects at the same time, after effects can take up more than 2gb ram alone, not doing anything just a project opened left alone, so you might not have ram to ram preview or play every frame, and rendering will sufer too much, that it would be a good idea to have more ram, but normally, you dont use final cut with after effects in the background, or vice versa, also goes to the point of do one thing at a time, and dont open up everything at once, but you can do something small and quickly in after effects or photoshop without closing final cut, just dont open something and leave it open, make sure you do what you want save and close then go to final cut again.

you can save up for your next computer instead.
 
amrrahmy said:
it wont change the performance of editing, hdv should run smooth from the start, and it wont affect export rendering either since it's a 2 core system, i noticed that earlier that you said 2.8ghz and nvidia 8800gs card, the nvidia card only comes in the 3ghz version.
also ram distribution advantage wont be affected that much since it's a 2 core system,

it might help if your using more than one application at the same time, which is not very logical but some people would have final cut open, and something ram intensive like after effects at the same time, after effects can take up more than 2gb ram alone, not doing anything just a project opened left alone, so you might not have ram to ram preview or play every frame, and rendering will sufer too much, that it would be a good idea to have more ram, but normally, you dont use final cut with after effects in the background, or vice versa, also goes to the point of do one thing at a time, and dont open up everything at once, but you can do something small and quickly in after effects or photoshop without closing final cut, just dont open something and leave it open, make sure you do what you want save and close then go to final cut again.

you can save up for your next computer instead.
Click to expand...

Yeh I think I will save up. The Nvidia card was one of the specs I upgraded when I configured the imac, so I was able to have it installed when I purchased the 2.8 processor. When i order a mac pro Im guessing then I should look at 3.2 processor and perhaps the raid card and of course more ram
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top