ProRes Playback Nightmare FCP 6.0.6
by Shannon Taggart on Aug 23, 2012 at 7:19:14 pm
Dear Kind Folks WAY smarter than I,
Always snooping around on the board looking for answers. Never brave enough to post. Here goes:
I am struggling to edit a project shot on a Canon HG21 video camera, which shoots AVCHD, and when I downloaded the footage in Log and Transfer, it converted it to Apple ProRes 422.
The converted files are huge. All told, probably 250GB of transcoded footage. When I'm in this project and try to play the files back, either on the timeline or in the canvas window, they play for a few seconds then invariably drop frames and lock up. I tried reducing my playback to safe RT, then dropped the quality and frame rate down to the minimum and it helped a tiny bit for a minute I thought...then back to the same problem.
I have tried this on my faster Mac Pro at work (forgive me for not having the specs since I am now at home but I believe we added memory to 16GB and it is a quad core?) and on my MacBook Pro laptop here at home (2.66 GHz Intel Core i7, 4GB, OS Version 10.6.8) and am running into the same problem.
The footage is on a DROBO firewire 800 Drive.
Normally, I shoot on the JVC GY-HM100U, which shoots right to tidy little .mov files that stay the same size as when you shoot them. I just drag, drop and edit. Never had any hangups -- even with lots of footage.
Perhaps because of this I've become super spoiled and have simply overestimated the muscle of my puny little machines?
I've read that there is ProRes LT which is less space consuming, but doesn't seem to be an option in the FCP 6.06 that I'm using. Not sure if this would help anyway.
Can I make lower res copies of my ingested clips and edit off of those, then substitue with the higher res ProRes when it's time to make a final product?
Anything at all anyone can think of to help me through this? I'm pulling my hair out.
Would be so SO grateful for any advice!
Thanks!!
Shannon
Re: ProRes Playback Nightmare FCP 6.0.6 by Tom Daigon on Aug 23, 2012 at 8:15:15 pm
I think your first problem is using a Firewire drive for your media. You need a much faster system to playback large HD files using the Mercury Playback Engine.
Unfortunately, the offline-online workflow is not well supported by Premiere Pro. Google for the nitty gritty details.
I pretty sure you need a faster media drive (I use the Dulce DQg2 16 TB system) in order to get better IO performance.
Re: ProRes Playback Nightmare FCP 6.0.6 by Shannon Taggart on Aug 23, 2012 at 8:23:18 pm
Hi Tom. Thanks for the reply. I'm working in Final Cut Pro...and am so sleepy that I posted in the Premiere forum. Sorry. But I suspect it may be the same problem. I just imported the project as an .xml into Premiere Pro 5.5 and it worked, but yes - same glitchy playback problems.
A friend just told me that P Pro 5.5 may work natively with AVCHD (I don't use it very often) and I think they still have the original footage on the cameras, so I may try that. Any thoughts on AVCHD and PPro 5.5?
Re: ProRes Playback Nightmare FCP 6.0.6 by Tom Daigon on Aug 23, 2012 at 9:07:46 pm
Yes, I have worked with native AVCHD on my system. But again, performance will be a function of CPU speed, GPU , Ram and Disk IO speed. Give it a shot!
Re: ProRes Playback Nightmare FCP 6.0.6 by Shannon Taggart on Aug 23, 2012 at 11:23:08 pm
Hi Phil. Hmm. Well, I have been editing off this drive for a few years with no problems, and it seems fine when I do other projects (using footage I shot on the JVC which shoots straight .mov files).
Actually, I moved all of the footage to another drive so an intern could log it and she had the same problem, so I don't think the DROBO is the culprit here. Thanks though.
Re: ProRes Playback Nightmare FCP 6.0.6 by Phil Balsdon on Aug 24, 2012 at 7:14:50 am
JVC shoots HDV, about the same as DV.
Drive speed tests all from my MacPro (Stress set at 5Gb for all). Drobo and Lacie connected via FW800. Internal RAID is 2 Hitachi 2Tb 7,200 Deckstars (same as in my DROBO).
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