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Fcp mac book pro 7d play back issues

I

imryankohler

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 13, 2011
3
0
I'm trying to edit a music video that I shot on my canon 7d last week. I'm using FCP 6.0 as well as my 15 inch mac book pro (4gb ram).

I wasn't having a problem editing, until last night. the footage will hardly play back for longer than 2 seconds without freezing up. I do have some color correction on the footage but I wouldn't think that would be a problem?

I'm also editing off a 500gb external drive connected by firewire 800.

Any advice would be much appreciated thanks!
 
my clips are prores 422 (hq)

editing on a 23.98 timeline, hd1080i 16x9 aspect ration

sequence settings are 1920x1080

are there free fcp updates available online? i've never done a update before, i figured updating would mean going to fcp 7 right?

thanks for your response
 
ok yea just installed the update, and it still isn't playing correctly, it plays for a bit, then cloggs up. aghhhh! :)
 
most likely you do not have the drive speed to run prores hq. Most internal drives on a laptop are 5400 or 7200rpm. Try converting to pro res lt. Unless you are going to broadcast for a show on certain networks, pro res lt is more than you need.

otherwise you would probably want to set up a raid system to back up the media and also allow for quick read times as the media would be spread across multiple drives.
 
Support for DSLR footage didn't come in I believe until Final Cut Pro 7. Before you brought the footage into FCP you should have converted it using compressor to Apple Pro Res. Did you do that?
 
the problem isn't that you are using the wrong video codec or an older version of FCP. You need to have your work files on a external Drive. Your hard drive simply can't cope with all the data you are trying to have it read & write at the same time, you need to separate the load from your boot drive especially with HD material. if you can get an external raid going off of a firewire 800 port that's about as good as it gets with laptops lacking express card port
 
imryankohler said:
my clips are prores 422 (hq)

editing on a 23.98 timeline, hd1080i 16x9 aspect ration

sequence settings are 1920x1080

are there free fcp updates available online? i've never done a update before, i figured updating would mean going to fcp 7 right?

thanks for your response
Click to expand...

Use prores 422 LT, HQ isn't going to playback from a firewire800 hard drive, requires too much bandwith. For canon 5D/7D footage, going anything higher than LT is a waste of space, you won't get any benefits from it.
 
Support for DSLR footage didn't come in I believe until Final Cut Pro 7. Before you brought the footage into FCP you should have converted it using compressor to Apple Pro Res. Did you do that?
Click to expand...

False. You can edit DSLR footage in FCP 6 just fine by transcoding to ProRes first. I was editing 5D MkII footage for several months before FCP 7 was released. FCP 7 does bring a few new ProRes variants to do the table, though (Proxy, LT and 4444).


OP:

Sounds like you're trying to edit off the primary hard drive. This will cause performance issues in almost any codec. You really should get an external FW800 drive to use as your scratch disk.

And like others have already said, ProRes 422 HQ is overkill for DSLR footage. The 7D records in 4:2:0 chroma sampling at about 44Mbps. Encoding to 422 HQ at 1080p24 literally quadruples the data storage requirement for practically no benefit over standard ProRes 422. If you upgrade to FCP 7 later, ProRes 422 LT is a great editing codec for DSLR.

ProRes 422 HQ should only be used for professional-level cinema cameras that can make use of the 4:2:2 color space and high bitrate.
 
jrlcopy said:
Use prores 422 LT, HQ isn't going to playback from a firewire800 hard drive, requires too much bandwith.
Click to expand...

ProRes HQ comes in at around 220 Mbps, so an 800 Mbps interface won't be a problem until you're running multiple concurrent streams.

CaptainChunk said:
ProRes 422 HQ should only be used for professional-level cinema cameras that can make use of the 4:2:2 color space and high bitrate.
Click to expand...

I'm not arguing with your recommendation of using LT for 7D footage, but I don't agree with the general principle of a lower quality source only being worth a low bit rate. Take a really crappy VHS tape and a well-mastered DVD and see how low you can get the bit rate before you start noticing the image degrade. You'll see it in the VHS before the DVD.
 
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