FCP continues to crash

Hi gang:
First of all, thank you for all the great help in the past. Incredibly helpful. I am trying to create a Quicktime movie from an 83-minute project (which I nested), using the ProRes 422 codec, SD 640x480, and Final Cut Pro 6.5 continually crashes about 1/5 the way into the conversion. I have dumped the FCP plist, rebuilt all directories with Disk Warrior, and zapped the p-ram, but FCP still crashes. I am on a G5, OS X 10.5.8, 6.5 GB RAMM, and a 1.8 GHz processor. There is over 400 GB available space on the Harddrive. Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks.

Don't nest the sequence.

Try exporting a reference movie ie; Export Quicktime Movie with "Make Self Contained" unticked

This will save a movie file with links to the original media - a bit like a sequence in a Quicktime Wrapper.

Use this in Compressor or Quicktime Pro to Transcode to ProRes.

There are issues when using G5 PPC computers with ProRes as it is not officially supported by any PPC other than the last Quad core G5 and certainly yours is pretty old now and I wouldn't be surprised if that is contributing to the issue.

Ideally you need to upgrade to an Intel Mac Pro as soon as your budget allows. Everything is constantly changing and unfortunately this is the nature of the universe so everyone needs to get used to it!

Hope this helps.



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Ben:
Great suggestion. Your comments have pushed me to get an Intel machine. One question. Is the bus speed relevant for FCP editing and functions? There are some excellent units available with 1.33 bus speed, but that doesn't seem very fast. Even my office iMac has a 667 bus speed. Is that important? Thanks.

Anything that speeds up the overall processing will help.

But to clarify those numbers

The 1.33 is GigaHertz

The 667 is MegaHertz

So the 1.33 has twice the bus clockspeed than the 667.

Your issue isn't necessarily down to this - but certainly there is a massive time-saving to bed had with a New MacPro as they really are massively faster than the PPC G5s and working with the latest software versions you should find you have the functionality you need. PPCs Mac are no longer supported so you will find it increasingly difficult to get help and new Apps to do what you need going forward.

Make sure you don't skimp on Storage either! 3TB and 2TB Hitachi DeskStar HDDs are VERY cheap (but still very high quality) and very fast - get 3 of them in a RAID configuration inside the MacPro (if and when you get it).

You can come back here and ask our recommendations when you are ready to upgrade.

Try the reference Quicktime movie see if it works ok.

If it doesn't work - you could give us a bit more detail as to the source footage specs and we can suggest another possible route.



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

>ProRes 422 codec, SD 640x480

Not sure if this is a typo. The setting for SD is 720x480.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yeah it doesn't really matter at all.

ProRes can handle pretty much any square or non-square SD or HD formats and also non-standard formats like web-banners et al.

I use ProRes is all manner of sizes with no issues.



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

I don't think the RT engine supports 640x480. Also, I've seen 768x576 behave weirdly on a broadcast monitor and when going out to tape. I took over a project once and it was set to square pixels. I don't think it will make any difference if you're just rendering and exporting a QT movie.



www.strypesinpost.com

Quote

I've seen 768x576 behave weirdly on a broadcast monitor and when going out to tape

Oh yeah that will screw up - I mean't for file based creation and wot not.

Most of the video cards don't like square pixel formats for SD as no decks use them.

But you can create any size ProRes without fear as long as you don't need to adhere to a standard for video output.



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

I really don't know how effective DCT compression is if it cannot divide the frame into blocks of 16.



www.strypesinpost.com

Ben King Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are issues when using G5 PPC computers with
> ProRes as it is not officially supported by any
> PPC other than the last Quad core G5 and certainly
> yours is pretty old now and I wouldn't be
> surprised if that is contributing to the issue.

Don't want to hijack here, but can you enlarge a little on this, Ben ?

I've been using ProRes on my old G5 Dual 1.8 for a couple of years with no problems that I'm aware of... Could well be that I'm missing something though. As Orwell said: "Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be"

Cheers

Mike

You may encounter dropped frames playing back or capturing prores hd, as it needs the machines with more juice to decode and encode in real time. But that relates specifically to hd frame sizes.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks for that Strypes. Very occasionally I have had dropped frames in playing HD, but it's only ever really a problem when I'm playing back in Digital Cinema fullscreen. It's very erratic though - some days the problem's there and on others the same sequence will play perfectly.

Oddly, I've found that when a sequence is dropping frames in DCD I can get it to play fine if I expand the canvas until it is near fullscreen. If you see what I mean. The odd thing is that the canvas at near fullscreen is running at about 97% and I would have expected that to require more grunt than actual fullscreen.

Mike

It sounds like you are working close to the limits of what your machine can handle.

>I would have expected that to require more grunt than actual fullscreen.

It depends on whether the scaling is handled by the software processors or the GPU. Full screen would take more processing power. DCD Raw would be most efficient on processing, but rarely useful.



www.strypesinpost.com

Quote

The odd thing is that the canvas at near fullscreen is running at about 97% and I would have expected that to require more grunt than actual fullscreen.

Any sizes that are non-standard or that are a requiring some arbitrary percentage scaling will often work erratically its best to stick to resolutions for playback that are easily divisible or multiples of the source so 25% or Quarter resolution, 50% or half res or 100% 1:1 or full resolution.

Quote

Don't want to hijack here, but can you enlarge a little on this, Ben ?

Sorry Mike should have expanded - ProRes was and is not officially supported on PPC - even the 2007 white paper of the ProRes release doesn't even mention PPC or G5 only the Mac Pro (Intel). Apple only ever talked about the PPC G5 Quad Core as being powerful enough for ProRes 422 without issue.

But its not to say it doesn't work - I was using it on a Dual 2GHz without too much issue, at least for playback at the lower resolutions (like you occasional dropped frames in HD) but capturing ProRes was a big no-no as it dropped frames regularly so I would capture Uncompressed and then convert to ProRes if needing to save space or deliver PR to another editor/client.

You always run a risk using hardware or software thats not officially supported, there are reasons Apple et al won't commit to support if they can't guarantee at least the basic functions.

Quite why Stan's timeline is crashing part the way through is a mystery - hopefully he will test it via a reference movie - if this doesn't work then some of his media might be corrupt or possibly the area on the destination HDD is flakey. But certainly ProRes is a strain on older Macs, especially encoding.

Quote

I really don't know how effective DCT compression is if it cannot divide the frame into blocks of 16.

Gerard man, where is your calculator! 640x480 is perfectly divisible by 16 to integers 40:30 or 4:3 so its not that either.

From the the FCP 7 manual: [documentation.apple.com]



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Ben King Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
ProRes was and is not officially supported on PPC

Crikey ! Talk about ignorance is bliss. Thanks, Ben.

Yeah I know how you feel but Apple had just gone to Intel so it would have been a waste of resources to spend a lot of money to properly support a system that they had officially dropped.

You must remember that Apple haven't made PPC G5 based computers since 2006 and 5 years in computing terms is several generations!

I think we all forget that the industry we work in and the computer industry is inextricably woven together.

It is always time to upgrade if you need to work in a contemporary style.

I used to fight the idea of change because so many adults around me complained about how good things used to be. Sorry but that's rubbish and overly romantic, especially when talking about what we can do with tech! Embrace change, make plans to continually adapt and you will be much happier and not at odds with the world around you.

But always keep a documentary record of your journey; because the romance of the past can make you realise just how lucky you have been and how lucky you are to live in the here and now and have the opportunities you do and to make a living doing something you (hopefully) enjoy.



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

It's actually not that big an issue for me. I do most of my work at outside facilities where they do have up-to-date machines. I bought the G5 second-hand a couple of years ago when an old friend (the sculptor, Chris Booth) asked me to look at putting together a film from his archive (80 hours of tape, going back over 30 years). Most of the archive is DV - the earlier stuff is V8, Hi8 or VHS. I'm still plugging away at that and of course the G5 has no problems with SD. That said - just having the machine attracts a bit of other work and I've done quite a bit with XDCAM and ProRes. And I have a little Canon HFS10 which spits out mts files which I convert to prores with ClipWrap. On the whole it works fine and I don't have serious playback problems. By far the worst playback issue I've seen was actually quite unrelated to the G5 - it was when I was handed XDCAM media on a 5400rpm external drive.

cheers

Mike
[www.nzonscreen.com]