FCP jamming up with HD footage

[redbeard1970]

Im editing on a 2x 2.8 quad-core Intel Xeon with 4 g of 800mz ddr2 ram. Ive recently switch to filming with Panasonic hmc 40 cameras. When i would edit with SD I could have 4-6 streams of video, now that Im using the HD the file size is quite larger and the Canvas and Viewer stop playing the clip. Im not going the be authoring this dvd as a blue ray disc, so should I just downsize the file to sd or what. Im also a new convert over the FCP from a real basic editing program called On Line Express from United Media.Ive used media manager to make a smaller file and been told to make a proxy file, I just dont want to go down the wrong road with this. Any leads to help me get editing would be greatly appreciated. Garrett

[budwzr]

Macs are very slow, and the operating system is like Fisher-Price.

[JimmyS]

Holly Crap, I've got to jump in here again and scrape the bullshit off of another one of the MAC haters replies.

Oh yeah, MACs are so slow that as of 2009 more than 86% of ACE members are using them. And please note, these people are "THE BIG DOGS" of film editing. They certainly would not risk their careers on an inferior OS & hardware.




The resources needed to edit AVCHD vs. SD video are quite high. But with a dual quad core Xeon machine you shouldn't be having that much of a problem if you are only using one stream. You need to determine what is causing the hang up. It could be CPU, hard drive, or memory related, or a combination of these. CPU in this case would probably be the least suspicious. I haven't used MAC OS in years, but there are utilities to check the utilization of your resources. Until you can make that determination, your best bet may be, as you already mentioned, converting your original file to an Apple ProRes intermediate file, then edit with that. The reason for the ProRes file is to provide a much smoother editing process over the highly compressed AVCHD format. The only drawback to it is that the fille size can get quite large.

[poisondeathray]

What version of FCP?

You can't edit native AVCHD on FCP7 and earlier versions, you have to log & transfer , transcode to prores (much larger than avchd filesize that you are complaining about now), but prores will make your life easier

To put things into perspective a 1920x1080 stream has 6x as many pixels as SD 720x480.

Also, h.264 is a newer compression scheme with longer GOP lengths, more compressed thus harder to decompress (higher latencies) . Something like DV was intra frame only, and less compressed. Just think the data rates for typical AVCHD are about the same as DV ~24-28mb/s, but it's an HD stream, much better quality

[budwzr]

Holly Crap, I've got to jump in here again and scrape the bullshit off of another one of the MAC haters replies.

Mac = a rowboat, that quickly swamps from the slightest swell. PC = a cruise ship.

[Cornucopia]

Really, budwzr, that's just plain ignorant baiting. All platforms may have their weaknesses, but ALL the current platforms are quite decent in terms of features, security, responsivity. This includes Macs. Get over it.

@JimmyS, what I find interesting in that citation is that, contrary to "popular belief", AVID systems were still at over 75% of the ACE market in 2009/2010 (regardless of platform).

@redbeard1970, what you've got there isn't AVC-Intra, it's AVCHD, so that means Long-GOP, h.264 decoding as well as HD presentation, just like poisondeathray said. The only thing in your favor right now is the bandwidth/bitrate @ 22Mbps. I'd follow the recommendation of transcoding to ProRes intermediate (or Cineform, or DNxHD) to edit/master this with. And FCP is a must, iMovie or any other consumer-oriented app won't do the job well enough.
Yes, bitrates will grow 5-10x. You'll need to make sure your Harddrives & buss can handle it (both size-wise and bandwidth-wise), but then you'll be within range to deal with layers of HD video again.
BTW, what's your Graphics card? You may be able to upgrade there and use GPU-based accelleration to improve the h.264 decoding...

Scott

[budwzr]

OK, sorry. Won't do it again.

The post wasn't getting any attention, so I just wanted to spice it up a little, and sure enough, some great responses.

I have a side question. Isn't AVCHD a proprietary version of H.264, put out by Sony/Panny?

And I notice Vegas has both AVCHD and AVC/AAC render options. Can somebody spell out what's going on with this?

[poisondeathray]

OK, sorry.

WTF ????? must be going soft !!!

Either that or someone hijacked his account!

[budwzr]

OK, sorry.

WTF ????? must be going soft !!!

Either that or someone hijacked his account!

I'm sporting a new look!

I'm an Apple lover now, been converted. Thanks to JimmyS! When I saw how many ACE people were using Apple it really opened my eyes. I guess it was a real "eye opener", hyuk yuk yuk (Apple Fanboy Chuckle).

P.S. "It just works!"