Final Cut Pro Realtime question

[Aaron Koolen]

Hi all. Looking at getting a Powermac and starting down the editing road as a secondary source of income, and have a couple of questions re realtime playback.

I went and played on a demo (Old style) dual processor 2.5GHz PowerMac and loaded up FCP and imported some video and no matter what, I always got the "beep beep" of non realtime playback. The files weren't Quicktime (AVI's) so I assume that was the problem (Never could understand that limitation). Therefore I'm wondering, if I got the low end 2.0 GHz Dual Core Powermac, would it:

1) Run a couple of streams of SD DV in realtime, with basic effects (Cross fade, lower thirds, chroma key etc)? I can do this in Vegas on my 3GHz machine with no problems at all.

2) If I later need to do HDV or DVCProHd, will it handle those in realtime also, again with basic effects.

3) If I add too many intensive effects (Like Colour Corrections etc) and overload the processor, will it just drop the frame rate but still preview fully?

I don't do a lot of hardcore editing, mainly short films, commercial videos etc, but I REQUIRE that it's Realtime. I'm too used to Vegas, and so I DO NOT want to have to render out on anything so simple as a couple of streams with basic effects.

When I'm about to buy, I'm hoping that a shop will install FCP on it and allow me to fiddle for a while, but that might not be possible, so advice would be nice.


Cheers
Aaron

[Boyd Ostroff]

Yes you will probably need to render anything that isn't DV, although FCP 5 may be more forgiving (I'm on 4.5). On my dual G5 2.5ghz I would have no problem with the kinds of things you mention in realtime. On my 1ghz powerbook I could still do most of them in realtime if I lower the quality settings.

No experience with DVCPro, but I think you will need a fast disk array for that. I believe HDV works natively in FCP 5 just like regular DV.

In the US the Apple Stores are pretty good about doing demos, but I guess that isn't an option for you...

[Shane Ross]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

Yes you will probably need to render anything that isn't DV

That isn't true. All you need to do is make sure your project settings match your capture settings. The EASY SETUPS are the best way to do this. If you import video from another source, make your timeline settings match.

[Zach Mull]

My secondary machine at work is a dual processor 2 Ghz PowerMac, and I can run multiple DV streams with effects in real time at full resolution - not preview resolution. But you can't just toss anything on a clip and expect it to work in real time in FCP. Cross fades are easy for the system, Color Corrector 3-way is easy, Chroma Keyer is easy, variable speed effects are easy, but if you add too many effects or certain effects then you might have to render. One easy example is drop shadows - those always seem to require rendering. If and when you demo your system, look at the filters and see what's listed in bold type - those are supposed to be the RT filters. If your effects load gets to be too much for the system, FCP5 will either slow the framerate or make you render, depending on which RT options you choose. I haven't used FCP5 too much, but I find that it's markedly better than FCP4.5 at real-time performance. In fact, in FCP5 I ran four streams of DV with effects on a dual-processor 867 Mhz G4 with 512MB of RAM at the real-time preview resolution. But you will run into walls with certain filters. I wish I could compare it to Vegas for you, but I've never used Vegas.

Your rendering and beeping with AVIs was definitely a problem with the file format. FCP only supports Apple's QuickTime codecs and I think only 16-bit uncompressed audio. Anything else almost certainly has to render. I've seen plenty of people get angry at that beeping when they try to drag mp3s onto the timeline.

By the way, Boyd, you don't need anything more than a firewire 400 drive to edit DVCPRoHD if you keep it compressed: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...low_balis.html. The data rate is not even twice that of DV.

Finally, you should ask about real-time performance with HDV on the HDV forums if you haven't already.

[Aaron Koolen]

Thanks everyone. That's good news, sort of. If I just keep my footage in a nice, friendly format then things are OK it seems. Different to Vegas where you just drop anything on it and it works - converting in realtime. But I think I can get used to the FCP way of doing things. I think in the end, being on FCP will give me skills that I can actually transfer into the real world as supplemental income hopefuly.

Good to hear that a low end Mac could handle multiple DV streams - might even make me consider a lower end mac if I could get one. iMac maybe? Little aside - does the iMac support dual monitors?

[Zach Mull]

I don't recommend the iMac for real-time performance. I wrote about this already in another thread, but I got an iMac G5 at work (1.8Ghz w/ 2GB RAM, 20" screen), and it performed poorly in real time. We ended up giving it to our print designer. It's great for her, but it wasn't much good to me.

The G5 iMacs do support dual screens in a way. Apple disables screen spanning in them even though they have graphics cards that are more than capable. You have to run a script to change a PRAM value to make it work (it's called Screen Spanning Doctor), but this violates Apple's warranty. One of their support reps assured me that when I ran the script, I was only voiding the warranty for damage related directly to running the script and not for anything else, but it still made me a little nervous. Anyway it worked, but the iMacs only have a mini-VGA port so don't expect to be adding a cinema display to it.

[Aaron Koolen]

Thanks Zach. I think I'll go for a dual then. A local store is going to be updating their demo machines to the dual core ones soon, so a 2.0 GHz Dual Proc might be come available - second hand which might be a go.

I'm concered, but having looked at DVD Studio tour movies on apple's site I dunno if I *can't* not get one!