RENDERING HDV

EQuipment - G5 dual 1.8 GHz, 3 GBs Ram, OSX 10.4.11, boot drive - 153 GBs capacity, 26 GBs available, Final cut 6.0, footage stored on external Lacie firewire 800 (153 Gbs capacity, 22 GBs available)

I have just bought this G5 recently, with the intention to edit HDV footage shot on a Z1. I was testing the machine tonight and I imported some HDV footage. I took a 7.5 second clip, copied it and lined up three layers one on top of the other and made a three way split screen. I tried to render it and it gave me a render time of 23 minutes, which i think is ridiculous. I then did a test on a single clip. The clip was 16 frames long, I added the TINT video filter, and again it gave me a 23 minute render time. I then shortened this clip to 1 frame, and again it gave me the render time of 23 mins; 23 mins for 1 frame !!!! I experimented by trying Safe RT and Unlimited RT and in the render settings changing the codec to ProRes 422 but there was no change. I am completely blown away by this; I have used this system for DV footage and its performance was flawless. Im pretty concerned that In order to edit HDV and XDCAM footage I may have to buy another computer. If anyone has had problems like these Id appreciate your advice. Cheers,

Gavin

try a 5 sec clip ... ignore the 23 minute progress bar and time it. how long does it really take?

Thanks for getting back to me. Ive experimented a bit and the results are strange. I took a 5 sec clip and pasted it into a new sequence. I put the tint filter on it and rendered selection, it quoted me less than a minute to render and it took less than a minute. I got rid of the tint effect and put the Light Rays effect on it and it took about the same. I tried the same clip in my previous sequence (with other rendered clips in it) - it quoted me 23 mins render time, but i got bored after 5 mins, hit escape and the whole clip was rendered. I copied the clip, pasted it a couple of secs down the timeline, took the effect off then put it on again so it needed rendered. This time it estimated 7 mins but i got bored after 3, hit escape and it was fully rendered. I also did another 3 way split screen in a new sequence void of any other clips, it quoted me less than a minute to render and it took less than a minute to render. I did the the same three way split in my previous sequence (with other rendered clips in it) and it immediately went to 82 % and quoted me 5 secs to render, then 10 secs to render, then a minute, then 10 sec, then 5 secs. It seemed to hang quite a bit. The whole process took about 6 mins. I have pressed Render selection every time after highlighting the clip as opposed to render all. There are other clips on this timeline but they are all fully rendered so what is it rendering all this time considering the clips i have asked it to render are rendered reasonably quickly ? Because if i was editing a proper piece I wouldnt have time to keep copying and pasting to a new timeline just to keep the render times down.

Thanks, Gavin

sounds like you might be invoking the wrong render command

by default:
Cmd-R is Render Selection
Opt-R is Render All

... you're not pressing Opt (or Alt) R are you? you might want to check your render commands have not been remapped to something unexpected too.

sorry, double post.

No, im not invoking the wrong render command. Im going into the menu and selecting 'render selection'. Anyway, there is nothing on the timeline that needs to be rendered apart from the clips that I am selecting to be rendered.

The numbers are in:

2x2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Tiger 10.4.11
8 GB RAM
Internal SATA raid


30 sec HDV PAL source clip
3 layer composite, 30 sec HDV sequence. RENDER TIME: 3 min 4 sec


Source clip converted to ProRez 422

30 sec ProRez 422 source clip
3 layer composite, 30 sec ProRez sequence. RENDER TIME: 2 min 2 sec

Hope this helps.

Yours system is a bit too slow, the firewire drive you are using is not that good too. Thats why you got those huge render time.

The time specs of nick are really precise.

I did a test too :

4 layers of HDV 1080i60 (split in 4 pictures ) + sounds

Rendered in 3 minutes and 6 secs. on a MAC PRo 2x2.8 quad core INtel xeon with 6gb of DDR2.

Its more about your processors than other things, since you got enough memory cause Final cut dont use more than 2.5 gig of ram its the maximum allows by the application.

No guys, you're missing the crux of the problem thats being described here:

Quote

I took a 5 sec clip and pasted it into a new sequence. I put the tint filter on it and rendered selection, it quoted me less than a minute to render and it took less than a minute ... I tried the same clip in my previous sequence ... it quoted me 23 mins render time, but i got bored after 5 mins, hit escape and the whole clip was rendered.

This is clearly not a drives not fast enough, not enough RAM, not enough processor power issue, as it all renders just fine and dandy in another sequence ... seems more like a project/sequence corruption issue.

Well thanks alot for your advice guys. I havent looked at that particular project in a while but I have updated from FCP 6.0 to 6.0.4 and I had a look at another project shot in XDCAM. I was able to play the clip back on Desktop Cinema Preview and it played back fine whereas before it played back XDCAM footage (full screen) a little choppy. So I have a feeling that updating to 6.0.4 will solve alot of my issues. Also have just ordered a GTech Raid 2 1TB drive so I think HDV and XDCAM footage will run much better off that drive. I will re-test the clips in that project and let you know the results. By the way, how do I convert already captured HDV and XDCAM clips to ProRes 422 ? DO I use Compressor ?

Thanks,

Gavin