Editing demands -xdcam ex format?

I have recently been doing some projects transcoding from HDV to pro res on import. Running FCS 2 and a Dual G5 Power PC G5 (2 gb ram)

To be honest its not that great -glitches on import cause FCp to crash regularly - i am constantly saving and rebooting.

While i know it can be hard to say whats causing this I suspect the HDV codec (and porbably its 35 mbs variant) really prefers a grunty machine to handle it - even when transcoded to hi res i am getting random crashes! I suspect Dv (works great for me), DVC Pro 50 and DVC pro hD 100 are far more robust codecs... if thaqts the right word to use- even if you do suffer reduced recording time to P2 cards..

Have been sitting on the fence for a while - the whole issue is making me reconsider a XD cam ex purchase -

FWIW- maybe the HVX 202 is a better option if you are locked in to editing system for the next year or so

(i cant afford to get a new edit suite AND Camera / crd combo)

If anyone has had good experiences on older systems- I'm happy to be proven wrong on this one!
 
Just finished anoterh frustratingly slow edit session - 3 more crashes - usually casued by a "glitchy clip" (something gone wrong in transcode?) which casues fcs 2 to fall over - i have auto save set to go every 5 minutes!

Or maybe its my "older" system struggling with pro res? - i really dont know! And its a mission to find the cause.

All i do know is that shooting in DV(HDV stepped to DV on capture - via in camera conversion) has been trouble free and allows me to get on with the job of shooting , editing and supplying content to my clients - I know some people have had success with it - but HDV - has been nothing but a time sponging handbrake for me . P2 is looking more attractive all the time...
 
Anyone had any real life experience editing and doing basic color correction in xdcam ex format....I had sony hdv didn't like it coz of the format....now I have p2 hvx200 and I love the editing process because I am staying in the same format from start to finish on the macbook pro 2,4ghz as well on the macintel 2,66ghz....can I expect to edit in xdcam ex, have dissolves, freeze frames and similar without transcoding to pro res??....if anyone knows please let me know...

Best regards

cckid

www.honeymoonthemovie.net
 
I just updated my 'old' Dual G5 (2Ghz / 1.5 ram) to Leopard and am now installing
FCP 6. Tomorrow I am shooting with the EX.

More news about workflow tomorrow evening or friday.

Cheers
 
Reflex,

I think you're system may be just a little bit pokey for decent HDV/XDCAM performance. Also, for ProRes I'm sure it could really benefit from a minimum of 2 drive SATA raid. You can get away with single drives but ProRes will be more efficient in timeline scrubbing and rendering from a decent raid setup.

Also, consider a KonaLH. It's helped my system's performance a great deal.
 
Hi Elton / Reflex,

I think I'm in a similar boat to you. I have a Dual Proc G5 (1.8Ghz) system with 5 Gigs of ram and FCP 6.02. I went and saw a road show of the Sony and came home with some test footage on an external hard drive. One of the downfalls I noticed was I was still trying to edit this footage while it was on a USB 2.0 external hard drive. That type of thing worked fine for my DV and even DVCPro50 SD footage, but seems to be an issue when trying to process full 1080P images. Strangely enough though editing some comparable HVX200 footage shot at 720P seemed to be smooth enough coming off the external HD.
To get around the data bandwidth I'm considering upgrading my internal SATA 160GB drives up to a pair of 750GB or 1 TB drives. Does anyone know for certain if my mac will have a problem if the drives are technically SATA II vs. SATA I? I would hope even if the Mac only supports SATA I that the drives will still work, just not as quickly.
Also any tips on migrating my current system drive to a new HDD?
 
Not sure, but I think the SATA II drives will work ok.

USB 2.0 isn't the ideal external drive interface because it's more CPU intensive than firewire or SATA and doesn't really achieve the theoretical 480 mbs anyway. ProRes HQ 1080 (about 30+ MBs) can almost saturate that bus so I wouldn't go that route for ProRes editing.

As far as migrating to a new hard drive--try Carbon Copy Cloner (google it) and move your system disk to a firewire external. I've done this before with a G5 and it worked fine, able to boot via firewire, but I'd recommend getting a SATA card and go with external SATA drives in a raid config for better overall system performance.

I bought my SATA card from macgurus.com
 
Elton,

thanks for your feedback. I'll check the Kona option.

I gotta fess up - looked at my external media drive and its a usb 2 connection (works fine with DV) - could that be causing a bottleneck with the higher bandwidth requirements of apple pro res not coming off the drive quickly enough - ultimately causing Final Cut to fall over? - Does this sound like a typical mistake that crew make?
 
Reflex Films said:
I gotta fess up - looked at my external media drive and its a usb 2 connection (works fine with DV) - could that be causing a bottleneck with the higher bandwidth requirements of apple pro res not coming off the drive quickly enough - ultimately causing Final Cut to fall over? - Does this sound like a typical mistake that crew make?
Click to expand...

Totally. I know some people do it, but general rule is NOT to edit via USB. FW800 is all I will edit with sans SCSI or internal SATA.

FW800 is only a $70 card, more than worth its money.

Naveen
 
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