Compressions in FCP 6

[Todd Gill]

Hello,
I am currently working on a project in 1080p with 10bit 422 uncompressed settings. I am unable to play out because the drive is not fast enough(Promise Raid). I have a work around. I change the compression of the sequence settings to ProRes HQ and enable the 444 chroma filtering.

My question is... by changing the compression setting to ProRes, that in fact the rendering process is actually a transcode and therefore compressing the original image? If this is true where would one be able to find literature on this topic. I need to show this to my supervisor.

My second question is... Is anybody able to play 1080p with 10bit uncompressed settings on their promise raid in a non SAN configuration?

Thanks in advance for the responses.

 

[Uli Plank]

Here is a whitepaper on ProRes:

http://images.apple.com/finalcutstudio/resources/white_papers/L342568A_ProRes_WP.pdf

 

[Craig Parkes]

By changing the settings to Pro Res and rendering you are effectively creating a workflow when you render out that timeline will result in a Pro Res Compressed render file.

Any further changes to that render file that are made on the timeline, will be to the compressed render files.

If you further down the line delete all the render files and change the timeline settings back to uncompressed, you will be able to re render the timeline changes in the uncompressed codec. HOWEVER, you will still not get real time playback (for the same reason you don't now) and you won't have got a wysiwyg preview of the timeline changes in uncompressed while working on it.

If you want to work in uncompressed 1080, you will need a very fast raid config.

 

[Cail Young]

Is anybody able to play 1080p with 10bit uncompressed settings on their promise raid in a non SAN configuration?

Last time I checked we benchmarked 26fps 1080p 10bit on our 3 drive RAID 0; I'll check it again to make sure.

 

[Todd Gill]

Craig,

So you are saying that if I create a ProRes sequence from Uncompressed, that it will become compressed. (Understood) Well What are people outputting 1080p We have been outputting it as a ProRes HQ with 444 chroma filtering for digital distribution. Is this acceptable?

Our internal argument is Why use ProRes as a final output setting when 10bit Uncompressed is better? Is it really? I am one for ProRes. It obviously works. I just don't want any additional compression if possible.

Has anybody heard of Neo HD/4K from cineform? is this anything to look into?

 

[Simon Blackledge]

You have a 16disk promise raid direct attached over fibre to a macpro and cannot play 1080P uncompressed in RT ? :-/

I'd say thats an issue in itself.

What data rate are you getting from the raid?

ProrezHQ is massively compressed compared to uncompressed.
The 4:4:4 sampling should be ticked for when going from 4:4:4 material to Prorez which is 4:2:2

I'd get back to your raid guys... should be easy fast enough.

si

 

[Kaku Ito]

Todd,

What is your CPU?

 

[Todd Gill]

Flameop

The Promise I have is at a Raid 5 with two partitions One side for my edit suite the other for the other edit suite. as far as data through put, I will have to get back to you after I have talked to my promise guy.

 

[Todd Gill]

Kaku Ito,

I have a 2x3ghz Dual-Core, 6GB Memory, ATI Radeon X1900, Fibre channel-Slot 2 2gigabit. OSX10.5.6, FCP 6.0.5

 

[Simon Blackledge]

8 disks at raid 5 should easy give you enough. Sounds off to me.

s

 

[Kaku Ito]

Todd,

I have Infotrend 16 drive RAID6 working on x2 2gb fiber with metaSAN, so it would be not so different from your Promise's performance, but my Mac Pro is 8 core.

ProRes does take a lot of CPU power to playback and probably more so when you select the 444 chroma filtering option.

How does it run without the 444 chroma filtering option?

 

[Todd Gill]

flameop,

I ran a speed test and here is a max situation.
my read speed is 151.2MB/s, Write 189.7 MB/s

What is the minimum data rate for 1080p Uncompressed?

 

[Todd Gill]

Kaku Ito,

ProRes does not seem to be an issue. But I would like to see if we can be able to playback Uncompressed 1080p.

Note: We are not on a SAN Configuration. We are using the promise as a direct attached storage and is partitioned to 2 sides for two edit suites.

 

[Kaku Ito]

With my x2 2gb fiber connetion, I'm getting the similar performance but I can playback 444.

What is the reason you'd think it's not ProRes issue? Because your drive performance is way beyond ProRes requires.

And remember, ProRes requires way more CPU power than playing back uncompressed, but uncompress requires more RAID speed.

 

[Todd Gill]

Kaku ito,

1080p ProRes plays back just fine, No problem. I would like to use ProRes. But my suprervisor would like to use 10bit 4:2:2 Uncompressed to maintain the least amount of compression. So that is why I am trying to figure out the configuration of other users raids.

 

[Kaku Ito]

I see,

10-bit 4:4:4 is around 190MB/sec and my system plays it back, and according to your performance capture it would be workable with 10-bit 4:2:2 which requires less transferring rate.

What if you turn off the other suite (I'm not sure how you're sharing the Promise without SAN setup, other on LAN connection? then it will affect the speed performance)?

 

[Todd Gill]

Problem solved.

I noticed I was able to play out 1080p at 10bit uncompressed in Edit2 No problem. So I checked the differences Between edit1(Not able to play 1080p unconpressed) and edit 2(able to play back 1080p Uncompressed) in Kona Settings, Slot settings, Sequence settings...All the same. I then trashed AJA drivers and re installed in edit 1. Still did not fix the playback problem. I then mounted edit 2 raid in edit 1 with a 1080p Project from edit 2 and Visa Versa. (had to reset scratch disk, autosave, render folders) BOTH EDIT SUITES PLAYED BACK 1080p 10bit uncompressed PERFECTLY. Then I Switched Everything back to the original state... Edit1 to Edit1 Raid and Edit 2 to Edit 2 Raid. Edit 2 played back fine, but Edit 1 was back to its old tricks. SO I thought what was different. I had to set everything back...Scratchdisk etc. I located my problem to render files. I trashed them and then rerendered the sequence. And now all is well and We are no able to playback 1080p 10 bit uncompressed from both Edit suites.