this ain't right surely.......!

FC 6.05, Mac intel 2x2.66 intel. 5 gig ram, Quicktime 7.5.5 OS 10.5.5

i have a 20 minute sequence, fairly complicated with various layers, composite modes and up to 5 filters on each clip (2 of which are magic bullet) in an HDV sequence.

Now i'm not expecting much but in the past similar sequences have taken 12-15 hours to conform and render.

This one was 70% rendered before i set it to conform and render on friday night, i just came in at 9am monday and it still has 30 mins left of conforming and another 6 hours to render???

oh yes and as i was cancelling it to save it came up with the File I/O error.......

any ideas? many thanks.....!

This speaks to why a great many people eschew working in HDV. Change your timeline compressor to ProRes 422 and re-render.

Final Cut is a great program, but it has its limitations. Speaking purely for myself, I would never, ever consider building up a big, complex composite in my Final Cut timeline. That's what After Effects is for. Depending on your billing rate, you might consider shelling out the cash for After Effects and Automatic Duck Pro Import AE. It might actually save you money.

Hey Chris

Media Manage your sequence to a ProRes timeline and then render that. HDV is bad enough with one layer let alone several with several effects!

You can always convert to HDV if you need to playout onto HDV "master tape".

I would never advocate rendering in HDV it takes forever!

The file I/O error could have been caused by so many things - maybe your HDD power went off briefly or corruption of a file from filling the HDD too full.

Check you have space at least 20% free on your HDD (if not delete the old render files), run Disk Utility > Repair on the media/destination media drives, run repair disk permissions on the System Disk, restart your Mac, convert your sequence to ProRes and render that.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Thanks guys!

The only problem we have with using pro-res is drive space, we run the video and store on a 2TB server and have been advised that although pro-res would be great is a no-go for us. currently it has 914 gb free so thats not the prob.

When it crashed on me a second ago i took the time out to read the log and this popped out at me:

Thread 62 Crashed:
0 com.redgiantsoftware.looksuite 0x0c4629ec long gamma_float_world_MPproc<InstructionSet<float __vector> >(void*) + 212
1 com.redgiantsoftware.looksuite 0x0c4189ce DAE::Multiprocessor::task_proc_wrapper(void*) + 18
2 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x91056463 PrivateMPEntryPoint + 56
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x93f396f5 _pthread_start + 321
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x93f395b2 thread_start + 34


So am looking into the possibility of asking my employer about getting the magic bullet looks update as opposed to using the last 'editors' version that cam out in 2006(?).

i ran a test on a sequence with MB filters on and different composite layers and another that was identical but with various other fx filters instead of the MB ones and the render times differed greatly.

I think my machine is struggling to cope with the sheer amount of everything AND the out of date MB looks suite.

How much difference in storage is there between an HDV project and Prores if the HDV capture file size is 27gb?

The math of storage-versus-time isn't hard to calculate. Multiply your rate by the hours you'll spend conforming this project alone, and you'll end up with a tidy little nest egg to send off to Caldigit or whomever.

The thing you need to remember is that you should not digitize all your material as ProRes, so the "capture file" is irrelevant. A twenty-minute timeline rendered to ProRes, assuming the worst-case scenario of 220 Mbps, would only be about 31 GB. Paltry.

Findon, as per your recent "Benefits of using Pro Res as my render codec?" thread, you really should be looking at working with a less computationally intensive render/target format for the kind of complex edit you describe. Try Jeff's suggestion of switching the sequence compressor to Apple ProRes 422 and then Export > QuickTime Movie >> w. Current Settings ... what kind of time are you looking at then for such an export, and does it complete? Also see what kind of difference you get from exporting your native HDV sequence directly to ProRes 422 using Export > QuickTime Movie >> w. Settings @ Apple ProRes 422 1440x1080 ... what kind of render time does that give you, and again, does it complete?

Its all well and good suggesting pro-res, i forgot to mention the server has up to 2-3 projects running from it at any one time or are stored on there waiting to be worked on. So space for pro-res is very very limited... its not my euipment either...... so i am working with what i have and is available......
I would love to be working with pro-res, i'd be able to use color then!

Findon, we're talking abut rendering out a single file (exporting your timeline) not all your source clips ... if you don't have sufficient space for an export of your timeline in ProRes then I fear your media drives are already much too full for any kind of acceptable performance :-/

Sorry matey i mis-read your post, was burning my tongue on chicken soup at the time. as i put in a post before i have 914 gb free on the drive that everything comes from and goes to and 386 gb free on my system drive so thats not an issue at all.

What i would worry about is if i set this seqeunce and the 5 others i have after it to render as pro res would there be much memory left on the server for the other editor who would also be working in pro res if this was the best way forward?

What do you mean by "server?" Surely you're not trying to use a networked volume as your framestore? If you're trying to use a single hard drive on a file server ? well, you've got much bigger problems than your intermediate format. No wonder it takes hours or days to work.

For the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to assume you're talking about a SAN.

If you'll refer to my last post, you'll see that 20 minutes of ProRes 422 HQ 1080i60 at the absolute worst-case scenario of 220 Mbps is only 31 GB. You can render out shows all day and still have hundreds of gigs free on your SAN.

I just checked it is SAN.....

31gb that would be the overall size of the render files for it under pro res?

Nooooo, that's the size of a 20-minute Quicktime movie at 220 megabits per second. ProRes 422 HQ will never exceed that bit rate, though it can be substantially lower.

Chris you're in the UK right?

ProRes 422 is about 52GB per Hour in 1080i50 including 16-bit 48kHz Stereo Track.

ProRes 422 HQ is approx 78GB per hour

So your Render for 20mins will be approx 26GB


For future reference:

Get the free videospace plugin from Digital Heaven [www.digital-heaven.co.uk]

or if you can't install it use it on the web here: [www.videospaceonline.com]



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Ok, thats cool, our HDV SCQT files currently run to 5gb max for a 20 minute program. and we only deal with QT's we no longer send stuff out on tape. Size isnt too much of an issue as everything ends up stored on g-raids any way. the san is purely for holding the projects and capture stuff on and working from.

We do tend to qt fx piecs and transiton fx to ease things on the main sequence (baking). I think once we have sorted our magic bullet problem we'll definetely be thinking hard about pro-res.

Thanks for all your help guys!

I am indeed in the uk i shall start doing some pro-res homework! thanks again!

Quote

We do tend to qt fx piecs and transiton fx to ease things on the main sequence (baking).

The generational loss you're subjecting your footage to brings tears to my eyes. Granted, it's not quite as bad if you're on the 50 Hz standard, but still ? multiple generations of HDV? Weeping Jesus on the cross.

i think jesus was beyond weeping at that stage... rightly so roman swines..... thanks jeff

This is why I mostly (99% of the time) use FCP to EDIT ONLY, render / export the cut as ProRes & composite using Photoshop / Illustrator / After Effects. Waiting for FCP to render HDV is like having your toe nails pulled out with rusty pliers = PAINFUL.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thanks guys for all your replies!

No problem Chris



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Media Manager "Recompress". Then you have handles (saves you lots of space from capturing from the original files), AND you can use that to grade in Color.



www.strypesinpost.com

Jeff,
You have me a bit confused at this "The thing you need to remember is that you should not digitize all your material as ProRes". For my last two projects I have worked in a Pro Res 422 sequence and rendering always went fine......that is unless I brought in other clips that were not pro res clips and forgot to convert them. If I did that without converting those clips to pro res, then if I went to render I would get that damned HDV conforming window which was like getting flayed alive over the course of a week. As long as I remember to convert everything to pro res then rendering seems to be quick enough as it reads and writes the video.
Steve

steve-sharksdelight

Something doesn't quite add up, Steve. If your timeline is in ProRes format ? that is, if your timeline compressor is set to ProRes 422 ? then no conforming happens.

I'd double-check my settings if I were you.

I just finished my first cut last night of a half-hour industrial. The interviews were all shot on HDV, and my shooting ratio was something like ten to one. (Some of my interview subjects tended to ? ramble.) Capturing all of that as ProRes, or capturing HDV and post-converting to ProRes, would have required between a third and a half a terabyte. In HDV, it only required about 50 GB. Capturing HDV as HDV is far more economical.

In this case, I'm doing an anamorphic SD finish, so my timeline is uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2. (I could have used ProRes for this project, but I enjoy the nostalgia of working in uncompressed SD. It was really a choice based on whimsy more than anything else.) I just cut my HDV footage, along with some non-anamorphic SD archival footage in ProRes format, into my uncompressed timeline. Everything stayed at preview quality as I was cutting, which was fine. When I get in this morning, I'm sure I'll find my whole timeline auto-rendered itself while I was gone last night.

Final Cut 6's open-format timeline works really well. For my own pipeline, I've found that converting material in advance is very rarely necessary. The only exceptions I've run into are those rare occasions when I've got no choice but to incorporate footage that only exists as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or H.264. In those cases, yeah, I batch-convert to an intermediate format, and also try to use as little of that footage as possible because invariably it looks like ass.

Hey Jeff, not sure whether I understand what was going on either. It was the way it was. Before I actually could ingest as Pro Res, I would log and capture my HDV footage in HDV and then do a batch export as pro res and import the results from that into a Pro Res sequence. I would then dump all the HDV files as who needs duplicates of the same thing or has that much extra room on their hard drives. All would be fine, unless later down the road I decided to bring in a clip perhaps from an old HDV project. If I forgot to convert that HDV clip or animation to pro res, then when I went to render, the conforming window would open up. If I remembered to convert it first, than all would be well.
Not too long ago I was working fine in a Pro Res sequence when I decided to copy and paste the timeline sequence to a new sequence. I thought the new sequence would also be pro res as the first was. Nope. Went into the new sequences' settings and had to reset. So I learned that even though one sequence in a project is set to pro res, it doesn't default to pro res for another sequence in the same project. As least I learned something. And it is always something.
Steve

steve-sharksdelight

>I thought the new sequence would also be pro res as the first was.

A quick one... When you create new sequences the settings used are stored in the program, not the project (a bit like scratch disk location). You can check it in Easy Setup and change it in Audio/Video Settings.



www.strypesinpost.com