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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

ProRes stutters

R

Rainer Fritz

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Hi !

Our feature is nearly finished after more then 2 months of shooting and have time for a short question:

All the rushes made with RR and ProRes SQ in 720p are stuttering very short sometimes when I play them in the QT player (8core or MacBookPro). Spoke with some other collegues and they saw the same problem. In Final Cut it is a little bit better but I can also see it there.... that is really annoying..... any advice ????

thx
rainer
 
ProRes is a pretty high bitrate codec. If you're not running off a Raid stuttering is not unheard of. Play from a faster drive or try converting one to a much lower bitrate format such as H.264 or DV just to assure yourself there's nothing wrong with the actual clip.

Noah
 
it is the same from the internal drive of the 8core as from the raid. prores sq is about 7 to 8 MB/s, so the drive can not be the problem..... the drives are giving at minimum 80 MB/s. frame by frame seems to be ok..... probably it is because of the high compression ???? it seems it happens when you have stronger movement in the picture, specially at panning..... i will look to make a h264 and post it.....
 
We're having the same problem and looking to figure it out. Brand new dual quad core 3.2 ghz MacPro with 16 gigs of RAM and GeForce 8800GT (whatever was the penultimate choice). So it's no the hardware. Happens mostly on pans, but we're talking about extremely slow pans/dollies. This is our first foray into editing RED footage on FCP, so we're still trying to figure stuff out, but I swear we've tried everything. Even does it on the h264 attempts. But it's only 1080p from the RED. Sources like apple trailers work fine at 1080p.

Just tried several more clips in H264 and proRes again. Still stuttering. Also it crashes FCP and the whole computer every once in a while (1 10 second file in 1 sequence...very simple test project).
 
Are you guys rendering out of RedRushes? If so, try rendering out of REDCINE and see if that gives the same results. Not sure why it would be any different cause the usual suspects would be CPU and disk speed in situations like this, but try it anyways.
Sounds like your systems and disk speed are up to par. What OS, QT, and QT component are you running?
 
Hmm..now you guys have me wondering about some shots I've had this similar effect and just thought I panned at the wrong speed. I'll be testing a new RAID to see if this helps.
 
This is pretty common for ProRes files. You shouldn't see it if you pipe it out of an IO or Kona. I always chalked it up to be a sluggish decode.
 
Mine has been closer to strobing. And I've seen it on TV Logic pumped from Kona 3. I've attributed some of it to the LCD lag, but I'm always looking for new theories.
 
it seems to be a prores only problem. when we play the same clips as dpx on the baselight it runs ok. so prores is only a offline base for us. hopefully apple will get on this problem. it is a big pitty to show customers a offline edit and they are asking why sometimes the footage stutters. i am more and more loving avid.
 
Interesting. Can you take the ProRes clips to another system and confirm they stutter there as well?
 
Also, you said it was SQ quality. Did you mean ProRes HQ? Or are you using the standard ProRes?
 
i have used prorez HQ, on one clip - white wall actors in black in front it "strobed/stuttered/not fluid motion". - camera was locked down. I get my own camera monday and will do exessive testing. The threads I have mentioned this and where others have mentioned similar, I have never found the Answer to this...
 
I allways work with Prores HQ 720 and never have a problem, the motion is fluid, what QT version you use?. I work with prores in FCP, AVID and QT for preview and all is perfect with QT 7.5.

The only thing I hate of redrushes is the wait.
 
it not depends on HQ or SQ 720p or 1080p. So I must say it is only really visible when playing the files in QT. In FCP or Avid the decompress seems to work better. When you have a PAN for example it looks like one frame is lost. So it happens only at playback in QT. But it is not if you play it frame by frame. In my opinion it is the decompress when playing in QT. I see this on any mac machine which plays prores in QT. This thing is also visible when I transcode via compressor or direct via QT to any other codec. Thats really a pitty. Would be great if apple would look to this. Probably I am not the only one which see this. Prores is a nice codec, but that is a lack of it.
 
I'm having this same problem. Looks more like a bunch of dropped frames or a hiccup in the system than strobing. At first I thought I had corrupt files, but it works fine frame by frame.

Any fixes found? I'm trying to use proress all the way though to finishing so this is a real big problem to me.

jeremiah
 
Still having the problem going straight out of RedCine to 1080p. Trying other options now. Ours is more of a stutter, dropped frame look. Like it chokes for a split second.

I mean a Dual Quad Core MacPro with 16 gigs of RAM should have no problem dealing with 1080p footage right?
 
Never had any type of problems descried here.

I'm always finishing with 2K ProRes HQ and enjoying to watch it at a full screen on 30" display.

The smoothest performance gives me on 8 core Mac Pro Avid Medea Raid with an old ATTO expressPCI UL5D controller

and Nividia GeForce 8800GT cards.

But if you have problems with any sort of stutter because your set up, drives, pipeline, etc... is not good optimized then you convert all

to 720p files and play smoothly that even "season" watchers and visitors at your editing desktop can be satisfied :).
 
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