MC5 AMA playback

[David Parks]

I have access to a T2i today. Is the data rate/compression the same as the 7D and 5D?

Going to do tests with our setup on AMA.

[Chris Medico]

Yes, they are all very similar.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by David Parks

I have access to a T2i today. Is the data rate/compression the same as the 7D and 5D?

Going to do tests with our setup on AMA.

It's the same as the 7D, and similar to the 5D.

[David Parks]

So here's what my experience is with shooting 10 clips on a T2i of scenes around our building 1080 24p.

MacPro with 8 Core Processing, 8 Gb ram, 256 Mb Nvidia (3 years old don't remember the actual card number) Snow Leopard OS.

1. AMA direct linked clips G-raid 4Tb via FW 800: No issues
2. Plackback of clips: No major issues; Had caps lock on with audio scrubbing, very small lag, reminded me a little of HDV playback with version 2.5 about four years ago but not as bad as then.
3. 24p in 1080i Timeline mixed with 30p HDV mixed in: No issues, real-time playback..smooth .. even with the pulldown with 24p I didn't even have to refresh the pulldown.
4. Color issues: None: Needs to come in as as 709 not YBR.
5. Added V2 with titles: real-time playback no issues
6. Moved titles to V3 added V2 video cipls added superimpose; required rendering, but rendered very fast. Certainly fast enough to finish with.

So, overall on the MAC I would have no reservations editing Canon DSLR footage other than the fact i didn't like the camera itself.

So, Chris, not to be argumentative, but the following rhetoric and statement for my use is way over the top. I can't say this was my experience at all.

"The performance in MC5 is totally unsatisfactory for anything other than just playing clips.
Then there are the colorspace conversion problems AMA linking or importing directly into MC. They are real, serious, and have not been fixed yet."

So, what you guys are saying is that you need to beefy hardware to edit DSLR footage via AMA.

Even Premiere Pro and the Mercury playback engine requires some beefy hardware. So, don't blame the software.

The real test was can you easily re-link AMA clips if you move them. And my test says no. That makes sense. So, in my mind AMA is for projects that need to be ingested quickly where media management is not as critical.

I don't know about you guys but it works great for me. Next i'll test on 3 year Centrino Pro HP notebook.

Cheers.

[Chris Medico]

Not taking your info as argumentative at all. It closely mirrors the discussion that has been going on over at Avids forum for a while now. MC5 on MAC users have not had the same trouble with Canon DSLR video that PC users have had.

Sorry if my frustration with importing 7d footage in MC5 boiled over a bit. Let me take a deep breath and communicate the issues a bit better.

Specifically the issue with colorspace conversion is this - when bringing video into MC5 (on the PC) the luminance valves are not mapped correctly but are instead truncated. The Canon DSLRs record full gamut 8 bit but when you bring that into a 709 colorspace project (on a PC with MC5) it gets truncated to 16-235 instead of being remapped to that range causing loss of highlight and shadow detail. This is the main reason why I recommend against using AMA with Canon DSLR files. Secondly is the amount of horsepower needed. Avid recommends dual quad core xenons to do it in real time (which your machine has).

On the EX1 I use Cinegama 4 which lets whites go above 235. MC5 when using AMA to access the BPAV folder of an archived memory card correctly interprets the luminance values and there is no loss of highlight detail.

Also there has been some stability complaints regarding XDCam footage and AMA. I personally have not had that experience on my machine.

And lastly my projects of late have been indie movies and have required more color correction to achieve the specific look the director wants. I have found that transcoding to a 10bit codec is better for such workflows. AMA would not be good to use here regardless of the editing performance of the machine.

[David Parks]

OHHHHHHH!!!

I now see and feel your pain. I transferred three of the ten clips to a FAT 32 1 Tb G-raid via FW 400
and AMA imported on 3 year old Centrino notebook with 2 Gb Memory and 256 shared Nvidia graphics.
OS is Win XP, (I'm surprised version even runs on it.)

At "solid yellow on playback the direct import 1080/24p clips would start and stop in 1080i/60. Granted this is an older PC.
I linked the same clips into a 24p project(23.978) and timeline and had the same playback issues. In fact, they seemed to hang in the same exact frames.

I ingested into DNXHD 115 the same clips (boy it took nearly 15 minutes) and had no playback issues at all.

Now the strange part is that I played the clips in quicktime player on the same PC and they played fine So, I guess it is an Avid issue and not just a quicktime issue.

So I understand your frustration, I only plan to edit with AMA when I'm in a rush even on our XDCAM footage. Otherwise, we're doing direct ingest on larger projects for media mgt. reasons anyway.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by David Parks

I have access to a T2i today. Is the data rate/compression the same as the 7D and 5D?

Going to do tests with our setup on AMA.

I have an 8 core Dell PC, with a Quadro 4800 (1.5GB or RAM) and 8GB or system RAM. And I can tell you without question, playing files out of the 5D or my T2i isn't smooth. Particularly once I start adding some effects. Yes, it's fine for playback, I have no issues there. But once the work starts (indie films), AMA falls down for me. Transcode to DNx and I couldn't ask for a better editing experience.

[Peter Moretti]

Originally Posted by David Parks

Interesting and makes sense. We're seriously about to purchase a Panasonic AF-100 (end of year money yea) and moving to ProRes record. Our tests so far with ProRes HQ show a little lag in playback compared to DNXHD, especially after color correction.

Does linked AMA clips change the load to be more processor intensive vs. DNXHD which sort balances the workload between processor, graphics card, and memory?

David,

I'd suggest considering the nanoFlash over a ProRes recorder for the AF100. That's b/c:

1) The AF100 is 8-bit out, so any extra bits that ProRes uses aren't going to add quality.

2) The nano can make Avid compatible MXF files for native, non-AMA editing. I'd check over on the nano board for the exact workflow. I believe it is at worst, a fast import and at best, a drag and drop into a bin.

3) The nano is very small and well tested.

4) The low cost of batteries and recording media somewhat offsets a somewhat high price.

HTH.

[David Parks]

Good advice. However, we have to consider the fact there are also FCP installs in a couple of NASA directorates. So, we feel like the KiPro mini and more importantly Quicktime currently represents a flexible post standard.

We have to play well with others.

[Peter Moretti]

Dave,

Just to clarify my post, the nano also makes Quicktime files as well and can be used directly in FCP.

[Jeff Murray]

I agree with the current debate that AMA is a disaster.

There were three things I wanted to acheive with the upgrade from Dual Pentium Xeon to i7.

1. Improve editing render speeds from FX.
2. Play AMA smoothly.
3. Improve mp4 render speeds.

1 Is a tick - improved render 300%.
2. Is an much better but not useable - especially since I am getting a CORE_CONSISTENCY_CHECK_FAILURE error - which is a disaster. Avoiding AMA for now.
3. Is a tick but I trashed Sorenson for a cheap renderer with CUDA functionality = TMPGEnc.

Not sure why everyone goes for the high end NVIDIA cards I can see no impact on the GPU editing or rendering in MC5. CPU is critical. GPU isn't and as Peronne said 4GB RAM is all one needs from what I can see.

Regards

Jeff

[David Parks]

BTW, I edited linked AMA QT XDCAM 35 Mbits/sec on Macbook Pro w/4Gb of memory 256 Mb graphics w/o any hicccups over the weekend. So for me and the MAC side it is a stretch to call it a disaster. However, I think it is safe to say that native higher bit-rate H.264 editing is still not baked yet on Avid or FCP. It is just too processor intensive for now. So it is not for everyone.

They will fix this as PC's get more powerful. And by then we will have 3 and 4K footage that we will complain that we can't edit easily. :)

[Perrone Ford]

Agree 100% David. AMA has been anything but a disaster for me. I can pull my selects faster this way than with anything else I know of. In a proxy workflow it's VERY fast. And working with XDCam or similar I don't even have to transcode for smaller jobs.

No, real time playback of 5D and RED isn't great. But I don't need it to be. I wouldn't want h.264 on the timeline even if I could put it there.

But to each their own. AMA works great for me and for many others. Just depends on needs and workflow.

[Jeff Murray]

For me the core consistency error is a disaster. I cannot render my video out without a lot of dramas.

When AMA linked clips don't error in this way it will be very useful indeed.

Regards

Jeff

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Jeff Murray

For me the core consistency error is a disaster. I cannot render my video out without a lot of dramas.

When AMA linked clips don't error in this way it will be very useful indeed.

Regards

Jeff

Have you contacted support about your problem? I've never seen this on either of my Avid machines. Don't know anyone else who has either.