Video Card too slow?

As an experiment I set-up a new sequence as ProRes HQ 24p
to import some test footage from an XDCAM 24p timeline to see
if ProRes would mitigate some problems which seemed like frame stutter.

Not knowing better at the time; the XDCAM Cinelata footage was edited on
an XDCAM 24p timeline and then finally exported as a ProRes HQ 24 QT;
and the system never complained.

The system is a Dual 2.5Ghz PPC G5 with 2G Ram and a ATI RADEON 9800 XT
with 256M Ram.

Anyhow, back to the story; as soon as I copy pasted the testclip from the XDCAM
to the ProRes timeline, FCP says "FCP can not render the effect Vignette with the
present Graphics hardware.

I Ignore this message and clicked Render-All on this one test clip
FCP said " the video card hardware can not render the effect vignette".

So, hmm, I am thinking that the video card we were sold with the system back in
04' is no longer up to spec???

Your thoughts?

Generally I'm not a MAC expert, but a couple of thoughts that might help.

First off, why are you trying to use ProRes HQ (220Mb)? If you were exporting for a film out you might want to use HQ if your finishing to any other HD format D5 or DVCProHD for example ProRes (140Mb) should be fine. I have used the medium quality ProRes almost exclusively, the little I used the HQ I found it to be quirky.

Initially when Prores was released the minimum requirements were an Intel Mac Pro, I'm not sure if that's what Apple is still recommending. It does appear from some of the feedback on this forum that people are successfully using it on G5's.

I'd suggest trying the same test with the medium quality ProRes.

That was the next thing I tried, and it came up with the same messages
with ProRes medium on the 6 second test scene.

Again, it says the effect "vignette" can not be rendered with the present
hardware.

Even on apple.com the video card is listed as being alright for Motion 3!

As it is a timed piece, set back in 1850s, the producer used the vignette effect
throughout; and I am wondering why FCP picks this one particular effect to complain
about!

Thanks for your help....




Chuck Spaulding Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Generally I'm not a MAC expert, but a couple of
> thoughts that might help.
>
> First off, why are you trying to use ProRes HQ
> (220Mb)? If you were exporting for a film out you
> might want to use HQ if your finishing to any
> other HD format D5 or DVCProHD for example ProRes
> (140Mb) should be fine. I have used the medium
> quality ProRes almost exclusively, the little I
> used the HQ I found it to be quirky.
>
> Initially when Prores was released the minimum
> requirements were an Intel Mac Pro, I'm not sure
> if that's what Apple is still recommending. It
> does appear from some of the feedback on this
> forum that people are successfully using it on
> G5's.
>
> I'd suggest trying the same test with the medium
> quality ProRes.

Will this effect render in a "normal" XDCAM sequence? Just trying to determine if this is a ProRes issue or an effects - plug-in (vignette) issue.

Is this graphics card and the G5 listed as the minimum equipment required for ProRes?

For the original XDCAM sequence; no issues were noticed; only with
taking the ingested and filtered XDCAM footage from the rendered XDCAM
sequence and dropping it on a new ProRes timeline.

As for the minimum requirements I have checked the internet and have
not found these in regards to ProRes.

Thanks


Chuck Spaulding Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Will this effect render in a "normal" XDCAM
> sequence? Just trying to determine if this is a
> ProRes issue or an effects - plug-in (vignette)
> issue.
>
> Is this graphics card and the G5 listed as the
> minimum equipment required for ProRes?

When ProRes was first released I seem to recall that the minimum requirements were for an Intel Mac. But after looking at the minimum requirements, I think you are correct, a G5 appears to work fine.

I was either wrong or this has been a new development with the later released of FCP6.

Either way I could not find any specific requirements for ProRes.

About the only other thing I can think of to test this is to start with a "raw" XDCAM clip and place it in a ProRes timeline and export it.

I have had the same error message but for me it was because I didn't have the filter that created the effect.

I'm on a 2.66GHz Intel Mac Pro with the ATI X1900 graphics card.

Sorry I couldn't help -- good luck.

>The system is a Dual 2.5Ghz PPC G5 with 2G Ram and a ATI RADEON 9800 XT
>with 256M Ram.

Think I had this on a similar system (can't really remember which graphics card), except with 5 gigs of RAM. The Vignette FXplug renders using the GPU. Is your render setting on the sequence set to "render in high precision YUV/ render 10 bit material in high precision YUV"? You can try toggling that to render in 8 bit and see if it works.



www.strypesinpost.com

Good call; I will try that in Render/Settings.

I have read on the net that very, very few of the effects or transitions
in FCP are 10 bit anyway!

I will try this...


strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >The system is a Dual 2.5Ghz PPC G5 with 2G Ram
> and a ATI RADEON 9800 XT
> >with 256M Ram.
>
> Think I had this on a similar system (can't really
> remember which graphics card), except with 5 gigs
> of RAM. The Vignette FXplug renders using the GPU.
> Is your render setting on the sequence set to
> "render in high precision YUV/ render 10 bit
> material in high precision YUV"? You can try
> toggling that to render in 8 bit and see if it
> works.

I don't believe that's actually true. Final Cut gives you the option of forcing all renders to 10-bit, forcing all renders to 8-bit, or rendering in 10-bit only when one of the underlying layers is 10-bit. It's under your timeline's video processing options.

By default the ProRes HQ or ProRes default to 10 bit render;
but I switched this in Render/Settings; and the issue went away!

I learn so much from this forum!


strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >The system is a Dual 2.5Ghz PPC G5 with 2G Ram
> and a ATI RADEON 9800 XT
> >with 256M Ram.
>
> Think I had this on a similar system (can't really
> remember which graphics card), except with 5 gigs
> of RAM. The Vignette FXplug renders using the GPU.
> Is your render setting on the sequence set to
> "render in high precision YUV/ render 10 bit
> material in high precision YUV"? You can try
> toggling that to render in 8 bit and see if it
> works.

Check out this link...this is where I got the info;
it is about 2 paragrpahs down

[www.coremelt.com]



Jeff Harrell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't believe that's actually true. Final Cut
> gives you the option of forcing all renders to
> 10-bit, forcing all renders to 8-bit, or rendering
> in 10-bit only when one of the underlying layers
> is 10-bit. It's under your timeline's video
> processing options.

>I have read on the net that very, very few of the effects or transitions
>in FCP are 10 bit anyway!

That is true for FXscripts. Possibly not, actually... as I come to think of it. Sometime last year, I ran a differential matte on a tga export of the same shot with a shift fields filter, with a blink filter applied (for control), as well as shifting the the shot one line down in the motions tab and one without a filter applied. As someone mentioned that adding a shift fields filter softens the image. The result was that it was anything required a render resulted in an exact replica (with no other change applied). But in this case, shifting in the motions tab would result in a 10 bit render, and the blink filter and shift fields filter results in an 8 bit render, that would probably result in a white count. Though I'm wondering if that would be an accurate test for this...

On the contrary, all FXplugs from Motion are rendered via the GPU, and can be 8 bit, or up to 32 bit floating point accuracy.



www.strypesinpost.com