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View Full Version : Fcp 6- Very Important Read If Editing Hdv



pelai
2007 December 5th, 21:17
Hi all maclovers,hehe!

I was editing my HDV footage in FCP 6 and had terrible problems exporting. Basically it was impossible exporting the rendered sequence in any codec + exporting times flew up in the roof.
I posted around at different FCP forums but no answers. I experimented a lot and came up with a solution to what I realise now is a FCP 6.01 and 6.02 bug.

Here's a big warning for those of you editing HDV footage in FCP 6 in HDV native form:

When editing HDV material in an HDV sequence you get the choice of changing your rendering settings to Prores within the HDV sequence (Not the same thing as having a Prores sequence).
Why you would do this is because if you render as HDV, rendering times are much longer and this option permits you to work faster. So far all is well.

The problem arises once you have finished your editing and want to export it:
If you then have your whole timeline rendered with option to render as Prores and now try to export selfcontained file or reference file your exporting times go bonkers: 8hours for my 35min sequence.
Why? Because it doesn't just export referencing renderfiles but starts recompressing the whole thing once again.

Solution:
What you should do is this:
Edit HDV in HDV timeline with option render to Prores ticked. Now, once you are completely finished editing delete your Prores-rederfiles (use rendermanager).
You have now two options:
1 Rerender your hole timeline as HDV (change your rendering option to same as sequence codec).
This time rendering will of course take a while. But once your rendering is done and you try to export, exporting times go down to 5min for selfcontained and 2min for reference (on my system).

2. Your second option is to change your sequence settings or drop your edited clips into a Prores sequence. Rerender sequence again. And this time exporting times will be very short as well. Though maybe a bit longer since files are now bigger.

EXPLANATION:

I asume by all this that the Prores-rendering option in an HDV sequence is only a meant as a temporary-while-editing solution by apple to help you work on your editing much faster than if you had to render to HDV while you were editing. It is not intended that you export a sequence from these renderfiles and therefore problems arise when you try.

I hope this can help those of you that have had problems exporting.

P.S. When doing your final render it's very important that you have all your rendering options ticked: even FULL render. Otherwise, when exporting you will not only be exporting but compressing.

If you have any questions please post quickly as I will be off on a nice vacation for a few weeks.

Little-Big Sound
2007 December 5th, 21:52
Actually, I'm having the same issue in FCP5 (I've lost the last 3 days working down this bug), and it turns out that the issue is across the board even with SD files (I actually redigitized ALL the video for a concert shoot - 6 hours - AFTER stupidly throwing out all the HDV digitized video....), and can be traced to the Quicktime 7.3 upgrade (lots of posts on this at Apple Support).

My work around was to export as a full size QT (rather than exporting using QT conversion), and then convert within QT itself. Also threw out my QT preferences and repaired permissions. I'm now back editing and exporting HDV files. Of course, now I've got to RE-digitize the HDV footage beyond the one song experiment...

Looking forward to QT7.4 which fixes this very public bug - shouldn't be too long 'cause there's plenty of pissed off editors...

Little-Big Sound
2007 December 6th, 00:04
Hey Pelai -

Just saw your other post to me elsewhere here. Sorry bout that. Thanks for your reply - hopefully we'll help other FCP users here that are trying to edit their HV20 video.

Appreciate your input!

CJDaniels
2007 December 6th, 00:36
I am so glad that you posted this. I have yet to try to output any of my HV20 work. I have been working my butt off editing a bunch of SD stuff for my commercial work I do, and at the same time learning FCPS2 on the fly. I think I know what your talking about but where do I find the render manager?

pelai
2007 December 6th, 06:23
Little-Big Sound,

Your issue may not be completely due to QT 7.3 as I can export both reference and selfcontaining without any probs now. Having said that I see that you do not have FCP6 but 5.

I am wondering if you have done "reconform to HDV" before exporting. As I mentioned in my first post it is vital that when ready to export and your rendering is finished that you remark all your clips and render all again, and make absolutely sure all your rendering options are ticked. If FULL isn't ticked this could explain your crashing.

pelai
2007 December 6th, 06:25
CJ Daniels,

Rendermanager is under Tools I believe, up on the right, if I'm not mistaken. I have not FCP to look at right now.

xzu
2007 December 6th, 10:45
Once you want to edit, cut, slow mo', grade, ... don't use prores !

pelai
2007 December 6th, 13:13
Once you want to edit, cut, slow mo', grade, ... don't use prores !

I don't quite agree there.
Prores has several advantages as opposed to HDV:
1 A lot shorter rendertimes while editing.
2 Better handling of color as Prores has a 422 colorspace, meaning yielding better results in colorcorrection and effects.
3 If you convert your HDV footage into Prores you have an i-frame format as opposed to GOP that is easier to handle by FCP.


That said, I am afraid my system might be slower in editing Prores instead of HDV as my iMac 24" 28ghz 3gb Ram only has a FW800 port for external media drive and then is limited by the transferrate of FW800.

This is has been the principal reason for my choice in editing HDV native. But I will probably do some tests editing Prores instead as the long GOP with HDV seems to cause some problems.

CJDaniels
2008 January 1st, 20:50
Ok is this, this situation?

I captured edited 35 minutes of HV-20 footage 60i. I exported it via compressor, brought it to DVD Studio build worked fine, no issues. compressor took about 2 hours.

I noticed a glitch in a transition, and decided to add chapter markers in FCP.

Compressor has taken over 4 hours with it so far. Outputting to SD.

Is this, the issue in question?