HD on MAC or Windows

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princigalli

Well-known member
I'm still experimenting with my new FX1. I get the footage on my Mac Powerbook G4 with Lumiere HD. I then import the footage in Final Cut Pro and play around with it. It is soooooo slow, I can't do anything with it. Even extracting a single frame is too slow. Playing demuxed Mov files is also very slow. I suppose most of you would tell me that a dual G5 would be better. You are probably right.

Then to test the DVFilm deinterlacing software which for now is only on PC, I copied the MOV file on my 2 years old supermarket deal Athlon 2000 PC. I was amazed how fast it was to play the movie in Quicktime player. Even in Premiere Pro, I could edit the file in the timeline as if it was regular PAL. Of course the playback frame rate was not as good, but it was a lot faster. Extracting a frame was immediate.

Now, I prefer Mac for almost everything, but I have to say its video handling is less than impressive, and I'm not so impressed by Final Cut Pro for basic editing tasks. Premiere Pro looks more stable and solid to me. It never has problems recognizing cameras, never crashes.

I might transfer all video tasks to Windows and use my Mac for everything else. Sad but true.
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

You know, I'm a PC guy all the way, but I have to say that something doesn't sound right about your Mac experience. A powerbook should be able to handle the footage as well as it would in Premiere pro.
Wow, that is the first time I have heard anyone refere to Premiere as "stable", especially when comparing it to FCP. This tells me that there has to be somthing wrong with your configuration on your Powerbook. Although, I don't know your proc speed or anything, as well as what your ram is. Those would be your two biggest factors unless your hardrive needs to be defragged. Although you can't really do that on a Mac, can you? and you really shouldn't have to do it on a mac. The other thing could be that your slower Powerbook HD (RPM) may not be up to the task of streaming HDV media. Good luck in whatever you find, and lets not turn this into a Mac vs. PC thread. Please :D
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

Have you thought about conveting your files to quicktime in Lumiere? MPEG files are too much for a powerbook G4's processor and hard drive speed.
Good luck,
Sam
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

Things have vastly improved when I capured the files with Lumiere but exported to quicktime with MPEG Streamclip.

Also, yes my editinf HDV on a laptop might be THE problem, I suppose. But I do like premiere for some things, and AFter Effects for others. Can't say I prefer one over the other. Also, my editing is relatively simple, rarely with high end special effects, so Premiere handles most tasks well. I like to stay on Apple, because it's more practical for many things, but PC is still good for video. I had many DV editing cards in the past, including the Matrox RT X.100 and others, but the best setup I had (and still miss sometimes) is the Canopus DV REX, which was not real time or HD, but was really good. I think Canopus has come out with real time editing solutions for HD. Only PC for now, and that's sad.
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

I have the Canopus DVRex RTPro and just about all SD is realtime. Preimier 6.5 on a dual Athlon w/1GB RAM works great. I've had it for several years and recently have been checking out Final Cut Pro HD with the Panasonic 1200 HD deck. Everytime I've had a chance to eveluate FCPHD (720P) it has not worked as advertised - however, I think that has more to do with me than FCP. I have only seen Eduis (Canopus HD) at trade shows and I have not been impressed with it.

I too would like to hear some oppinions from people who have actually used any PC or Mac based HD NLE's. :)
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

If that's true, it's going to be sad. The DV-REX was very special because it just worked. Perfectly and all the time. I remember my first setup very well. Pentium Pro (that was Pentium 1 series) 64Mb Ram, system drive, about 4Gb, Ultra Wide SCSI 18Gb drive. This tiny little system never, never had any problems capturing processing or printing video. I was capturing while working with 3D studio Max and rendering. Never 1 dropped frame. That was a nice stable system. I used to think that things would only get better. Machines gave 30 to 0 times more memory and power, they render more effects, but reliability has gone down.
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

The most important link that have always overlooked was hard drive. I would say SCSI or the new WD Raptors (I think that's what's in G5's). I have edited on 7200 rpm raid drives, and I still believe that a standalone raptor 74G was faster and stuttered less on large files.

Most laptops have slower rpm drives by default from what I have seen.
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

I can tell you it's not the MAC or FCP. Your Power book most likely has a 4500 rpm drive. Even SD DV should run on at least a 7200 rpm drive. Using and external Firewire drive would do fine. It really depends on how you are getting the footage into the MAC. I'm not sure why you wouldn't just capture it to your Powerbook using FCP. That way you are using Quicktime codecs that are native to FCP.

I cut TV spots and movie trailers for a living. Using an AJA IO break out box and a 600 GB Huge Brand disk array running at 10,000 rpms. I can cut uncompressed Digital Betacam footage running at 28 megs per sec. without any lag or shuttering.

I would double check your set up and do a little research. Just speaking from experience. There is no reason the MAC or FCP should not handle the footage. FCP is used in a lot of professional set ups. Using faster drives and capturing in FCP should do the trick.
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

agreed with above users, Due to the different clients I visit on a weekly basis cutting corp and training spots. I have been cutting SD on a powerbook since final cut pro 3 and that was a 667mhz machine. I upgraded earlier in 04 to a powerbook 1.25 with 1.5 gbs of ram and I have no issues; have even done some pretty intense motion projects with few lag issues. If you like the mac emvironment you might want to check out Final Cut Express HD, it might suit what you are doing with less of a headache, or for true simplicity iMovie HD both due out in the next couple of weeks.
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

I can tell you it's not the MAC or FCP. Your Power book most likely has a 4500 rpm drive. Even SD DV should run on at least a 7200 rpm drive.

I edit on a Wondows laptop with Canopus Edius and an internal 4200rpm drive, multiple layers, filters, and transitions, all in real time, so I don't think the drive speed is the problem.
 
Re: HD on MAC or Windows

At the moment HDV is much easier to edit on a PC, either in PP or Vegas using the ApectHD codec it's about as easy as editing DV. This visualy lossless codec uses the SSI instructions in the P4 chips to do its magic, for once Intel gave us a bit of useful silicon.
Editing native HDV is firstly causing any CPU major overload and secondly it's not a good idea anyway, the generational loss in the HDV encoding is quite bad being mpeg-2. Anything the camera had trouble encoding only gets worse at the next encoding pass so you need to be very careful.
Hopefully Lumiere will have their codec for FCP revised to handle 1080 very shortly so the Mac users can enjoy much the same performance.
 
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