T2i Big problems in post-workflow

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FatBird19

Well-known member
I love the T2i; it's an absolutely amazing shooting tool. I have big video shooting plans with this camera.
A big hangup though; I feel like I spend a disproportionate amount of time setting up and transcoding my footage compared to actually editing or uploading anything that I've shot.

Is there anything I can do to speed up the transcoding?

If I bought a PCI-to-Expresscard adapter, are there any ProRes encoder cards? Any H.264 decoder/encoder cards?

How much faster does a Mac Pro transcode these files?

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I have the FCP EOS plugin. But for every file it transcodes, the sound is off by a frame or two.
Most importantly though, the time that it requires to transcode takes forever on my Macbook Pro. A 1min clip takes about 1:30 to transcode to ProRes; for that amount of time, I might as well just be capturing tape from my DVX.

Also, transcoding to a format that I can upload online takes forever, too. I've got a few clips on my computer of some fun my friends and I were having at disneyland and I want to quickly put them online. It takes forever! Even on single pass mode!
I've taken a ton of pictures with the camera so far, edited them, and put them online.If the JPG pictures required as much work as the video, I'd have a hard time taking pictures with the camera as well...

Also, editing inProRes on my macbook pro is absurdly slow, but that's another problem in itself....Help?

Thanks,-Justin
 
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It's HD. It's very resource hungry.

It is not ideal to be editing on a laptop for 1080 hd. It can be done but it is not ideal.
 
Simple solution. CS4. Drag and drop and start editing. T2i on Mac is slow which is a disappointment. I edit 2k files on Mac with no problems but when working with T2i footage it's slow as hell.
 
The Matrox MX02 (mini) with Max will give you realtime or slightly faster than realtime H.264 encoding out of Compressor. Awesome little box.
 
draven4 said:
It's HD. It's very resource hungry.
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Also to the OP it is impossible for you to compare SD image of a DVX to an HD image of the T2i.

HD takes time and no matter how fast your computer is it will ALWAYS take time to upload and bounce these huge files.
 
Absolutely Cieloent. Dead on with what you said. HD is a different beast than SD. In the post houses I work in they do a lot to ensure that the Avid's and Final Cut's are able to handle. Important things such as working off of only Raids something many people overlook.

Also transcoding might take a while but it is something that helps your editing system run more efficient when editing. Less rendering time too.

I've never used the new CS5 for video but even something like Final Cut on a tricked out system will start to lag using H264. In addition to that, that is the reason why Avid imports media and makes it its own. It is for efficiency. (Before I get replies I am well aware that in the new Media Composer you can work of a Link to AMA file).
 
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I always edit off external firewire drives because you start running into trouble when you try editing off the same hard drive as the OS; not to mention Macbook Pro hard drives are only 5400 RPM, unless you plumbed for an SSD drive.

External raid drives such as the G-Drive RAID do speed up the process, and a firewire card reader speeds up the initial import, but you'll always be limited by your computers power. Transcoding the HD footage off DSLRs in faster than real time would take more than a Macbook Pro, you're probably looking more at a top of the line Mac Pro with a decent sized RAID array.
 
BLUESPIDER said:
Simple solution. CS4. Drag and drop and start editing. T2i on Mac is slow which is a disappointment. I edit 2k files on Mac with no problems but when working with T2i footage it's slow as hell.
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Native editing a Long-GOP codec will never work as well as editing an I-Frame codec like ProRes. Quality degrades as you edit or color correct, and it taxes the computer. The OP has also said his computer doesn't seem to even be up to the ProRes editing (in addition to the long transcode times) which means it definitely won't be up to H.264 editing (which again, is a stupid idea...Long GOP codecs are for delivery and compressed acquisition, not for editing.)

I would advise upgrading the internal hard-drive of the laptop to a 7200 rpm version. I edit 1080p ProRes just fine on my '07 white Macbook and '06 iMac...can get a little slow with longer projects but is perfectly workable.

As for transcoding, plan it around sleep :D

Also, try using compressor instead of the Canon utility...it's possible it could be faster.
 
Thanks, everyone.

I'll keep all of these ideas in mind as I'm trying to figure out a new system. All I know is that this current method isn't working. I'll use these suggestions to help figure out a new one.
 
Cieloent said:
Also to the OP it is impossible for you to compare SD image of a DVX to an HD image of the T2i.
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I wasn't comparing image quality. I was comparing the time required to capture DVX footage to the time required to transcode T2i footage, which comes out to about the same.

"Most importantly though, the time that it requires to transcode takes forever on my Macbook Pro. A 1min clip takes about 1:30 to transcode to ProRes; for that amount of time, I might as well just be capturing tape from my DVX."


I'm disappointed to discover that I'm not saving any time by going tapeless, which is what I thought was one of the main selling points of tapeless workflow.
 
FatBird19 said:
I'm disappointed to discover that I'm not saving any time by going tapeless, which is what I thought was one of the main selling points of tapeless workflow.
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Going tapeless can be a massive savings in time and cost over shooting tape. I see that you, like most users here are comparing apples and oranges. You are comparing shooting SD tape to HD tapeless. Try comparing apples to apples and tapeless wins by a mile.

You have a computer that is very slow. Of course it's going to take a long time to transcode. Are you transcoding from one drive to another, or are you transcoding from one drive to the same drive? If the latter, then that's 50% of the problem. Your hard drive is constantly interrupting itself trying to read from one place and write to another. With two drives, one drive can busy itself with reading, and the other can stay on task writing. Makes a massive difference.

Why people insist on using slow computers to work with this difficult HD footage is truly beyond me. If you want speed in your editing, buy a machine suited to the task. And some drives. HD *IS NOT* the same as SD and you cannot get away with the same poor habits.
 
I always chuckle when someone recommends switching NLEs to work with one particular camera. I remember, back in the 90s, there was this program that worked with virtually everything...

...and then Sony bought and shackled it.

Suppose that the good very good news is, if you have to work in HDV or XDCam, you can switch from whatever you're using now... to Vegas.
 
Erik Olson said:
Suppose that the good very good news is, if you have to work in HDV or XDCam, you can switch from whatever you're using now... to Vegas.
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Not sure why anyone would want to do that... If you want a 4K timeline and the latest RED color science, then maybe... but plenty of other editors work with HDV and XDCam better.
 
PerroneFord said:
Not sure why anyone would want to do that... If you want a 4K timeline and the latest RED color science, then maybe... but plenty of other editors work with HDV and XDCam better.
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Yeah, the RED support is quite good. Strange that, because Sony doesn't make RED.
 
I personally have never used the plug in (mostly because I didn't get it to work for some reason) but I know transcoding using MPEG Streamclip works great. It's free so try it. I work on a 2 year old Macbook Pro and I can edit HD with no problem at all.
 
Angry Leprechaun said:
I personally have never used the plug in (mostly because I didn't get it to work for some reason) but I know transcoding using MPEG Streamclip works great. It's free so try it. I work on a 2 year old Macbook Pro and I can edit HD with no problem at all.
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Great to know! We probably have the same macbook pro model.

I'm very familiar with streamclip. What codec are you compressing to?

Also, I did install the FCP plugin, but for me the sound is always off in the files by a frame or two. Maybe the same would happen with you.
In any case, that plugin will probably be updated soon to support using the T2i without hacking.
 
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