Choppy Multiclip

ProRes HQ? Really? What camera is your footage from? HQ is a CPU hog and can easily bog down in Multiclips. Unless this is footage from a RED or other high end camera, you don't have any reason to use ProRes HQ. DSLR & AVCHD footage should use LT, HDV should use 422.

How much RAM in that machine, and is that RAID eSATA or Fibre connected? I'm not familiar with the DX800 right off the bat.

Okay, now, this might sound like a stupid suggestion, but, restart your computer. Only run Final Cut, make sure all other applications are closed, and try again. Many times restarting the computer and emptying caches can help. (just like with PCs).

You can also transcode the material to Apple ProRes Proxy to edit and get that first cut, then when you have the cut the way you like it, make the proxy material offline and reconnect with the HQ material.

Hope that helps.

Another thing Magnus, to answer your question, Final Cut definitely doesn't make use of your RAM (beyond 4 GB that is) nor does it make use of your multiple cores (yet). So really your final cut is running off of your base processing speed (3,33 GHz Xeon) and 4 GB of RAM.

Soon with Final Cut X it will.

Hope that helps.

waiting for FCPX and hoping for the best is not a solution.

Try setting your RT settings to Dynamic, and turn off the dropped frame warning. Let FCP ramp the frame rate and qualtiy as it sees fit, and see how that works.

Though ultimately it sounds like a drive performance/throughput issue.

Hey Thrillcat, what's with the negative vibes? 😕 Nobody is just suggesting to "wait for FCPX and hope for the best". If you had looked at my suggestion, I would imagine you would agree with it.

Is "sounds like a drive performance / throughput issue" a solution? Especially with a pro drive giving 650-880 mb/s?

If you had read the beginning of the thread, Magnus put " (Playback video quality: Low. Playback Frame Rate: Quarter"

You can't get much lower than that.

I agree with you that turning off the dropped frame warning will at least let him view the material from beginning to end without all those interruptions.

Lets all try to assist people here and not diss others.

Negative vibes? 😕

If you read the OP, "wait for FCPX and hope for the best" was a direct quote, which means, yes, somebody WAS suggesting to "wait for FCPX and hope for the best." In fact THE ORIGINAL POSTER was suggesting it. 😮

Watiting for an update, whether it's to OSX, FCP, iMovie, or Word is never a solution. 😐

You're right. I did miss the fact that he ran the AJA system test and came back with 650. Where did you get your 880 number? 😕

99% of the time, letting FCP dynamically adjust the Quality and Frame Rate settings is going to give better quality than locking them in at one setting. 😀

You're the only db on here dissing anyone else. Until now. Take your 5 points and shove 'em up yer cinebum. 😠 I was trying to help the OP.

Play nice, children. You should be getting better throughput speeds out of that drive. It's a nice setup, and should scream. FCP 7 will use one and a half CPU cores, in fact. Motion templates and FXPlug effects use GPU.

Yes, FCP 7 will only use up to 4GB RAM, 2 of those for it's own internal processing, 2 for data, but you need the extra for OS, other apps open at the same time, etc. Graphics card should be handing a single monitor just fine. You don't have a second monitor on there, eh?

In the RT menu, you have Multiclip Playback checked, too, I'm sure.

Now, last question, what is the frame size, frame rate and length of clips, and what level of RAID are you running those drives at?

Seriously, you should be getting better perfromance.

BTW, FCP X is going to scream on your hardware, you'll be very happy.

Actually, FCP assigns 1.5 GB to "related processes", leaving approximately 2.5GB for FCP itself. But that correction doesn't change anything WRT the OP's problem.

Magnus, you might try using Media Manager to create new media for this project, and making it ProRes 422 (LT). That way, after you've cut the sequence, you can Batch the original HQ clips back into the finish sequence.

As far as "better throughput", either the volume is pretty full or one of the hard drives has gone paws up. Magnus, you might check that out.

I'm guessing, but it is probably set up as RAID 5.

Magnus, I assume the clip and sequence settings match. True?

BenB wrote:

Play nice, children. You should be getting better throughput speeds out of that drive. It's a nice setup, and should scream. FCP 7 will use one and a half CPU cores, in fact. Motion templates and FXPlug effects use GPU.

...snip...

Actually it's been my experience that FCP does use all your cores, just not to the max. Here's an FCP render on the CPU meters...

However, Compressor, properly configured, looks like this:

Hopefully FCP-X will be more like the latter than the former.

Patrick