Apple work flow - clips stutter

[Rowland Jobson]

Can anyone offer some work flow advice and Tech advice?

We just shot a drama which will go to DVD and HDCAM for broadcast in the UK. We shot at 4K 25fps and 50 fps, 3K at 60fps and 2K at 120fps. Shot on build 17.

We have been testing the work flow on a 2.8ghz Dual processor Intel Mac with 3 gig of RAM, using FCP. We will offline in FCP (inhouse) then conform and grade using Quantel at a London post house. Our drive are LACiIE Raid drives using Firewire 800 (drive speed 7200).

We tested in FCP using the log and transfer process to transcode to Apple Res RS422 (not HQ) on a few of the 4K 25fps clips. However we found even at this res clips stutter on playback in the timeline in FCP and also in the viewer. However using the Quicktime proxy _M files there is no stutter but anything else bigger does.

Is this a RAM issue? We thought it poss might be an issue also with the Firewire 800 connection being too slow to handle the data and that we should use a SATA connection possibly.

If possible we want to save time trancoding also as we have about 500GB of rushes and are thinking this may take quite a number days to transcode.

Can we use the _M Quicktime proxies to offline and then reconform to 2K when we go to the online using Quantel?

Some shot we know we want to re-rack too will our EDL in FCP contain any re-rack data to take into Quantel?

As we have shot a mix of 4K 2K and 3K is there a better workflow?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

All the best

Rowland

 

[Nick Shaw]

If the _M proxies work for you on your machine, then use them for editorial would be my advice. No point in transcoding if you don't need to. However you will probably find that if you start adding any effects you will need to render the FCP timeline. Horses for courses…

FCP EDLs do not contain re-rack information. You could try Automatic Duck to create AAFs. But test first. I have tried to get re-rack data from FCP into a Smoke at a big London post facility without any success. Not tried Quantel though.

Can't emphasise enough how important it is to test your workflow with the facility and system you intend to finish on.

 

[Chris Pickle]

FWIW - I'm running 2TB of Prores 720 from a FW 800 drive through my MacBook Pro single 1.8 with 2 GB Ram.

Since it's the very first MacBook Pro, it doesn't have FW800 so I'm using a FW 800 Sonnet card in the expansion slot.

System works like a charm!

No issues at all, although FCP doesn't like lots of audio tracks so occasionally it chugs on that. (it's a feature film with up to 6 tracks of audio on each clip) but the audio issue is mostly a function of FCP and not the prores or my comp set-up.

Chris

 

[markh]

Hi Rowland

If you are creating a DVE on FCP to re rack that data should go across to the Quantel system so long as the quantel system is on latest code and your FCP goes through current Automatic Duck. I'd suggest you send a couple of test shots to the post house in the next day or so then contact me off list if there are any questions.

Mark
Quantel

mark.horton@quantel.com