i have FCE, can i use 24p?

[iThinkergoiMac]

Not render time wth JES. I'm talking about render time while editing in FCP. My ram is maxed out on my Ibook. I guess there is nothing else i can do to fix it.

Sorry, I meant with FCP/E too. On the Core2Duo iMacs in the lab at my school, the HDV I pull in doesn't have to render until I run it through JES, and then it does in FCP. Kind of annoying, but it's not too bad.

I gotta say... you get props for editing HD on your iBook.

[The Crowing]

Hah thanks,
its pushing my computer to the limits though. Any sugjestions for what mac will work better? I have been thinking, i dont really need a notebook computer as of now. they are more expensive than desktops. Has anyone had experiences with the new imacs? I think im gonna spend about a grand, perhaps a bit more.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Hah thanks,
its pushing my computer to the limits though. Any sugjestions for what mac will work better? I have been thinking, i dont really need a notebook computer as of now. they are more expensive than desktops. Has anyone had experiences with the new imacs? I think im gonna spend about a grand, perhaps a bit more.

In terms of making your existing iBook work better, make sure you keep your permissions up to date, and clean out caches and run cron scripts. You can use OnyX to do all those things at once and just run it every week or two. Also, you can get rid of any languages and printer drivers you're not using to free up literally gigabytes of space.

An iMac is probably your ideal choice. A Mac Mini won't be powerful enough and you'll have to get a screen, etc, and a Mac Pro would be serious overkill (and you'd still have to get a screen). Although a Mac Mini would still be way faster than what you've got now.

Don't forget, though, that Apple is essentially discontinuing FW400 on all their models. I'm not sure about the Mac Mini, though. So you'll have to get an adaptor for your camera and either more for your drives or new enclosures to use FW800. Or... you could get a drive enclosure that has both FW800 and FW400 on it, connect to the iMac via FW800 and connect the camera into the FW400 port on the drive. I've actually done this on my computer and it works just fine.

[The Crowing]

I'm thinking about this one http://http://store.apple.com/us/pro...mco=MjE0NDk5Mw any thoughts?

[iThinkergoiMac]

The link is all messed up and takes me different places. But I just figured it out. That would work out for you just fine. We're using iMacs at my school that are slower than that one and I don't have any problems with them. Refurb items are great too. I think you'd likely be quite pleased with that one, it'll be a world of difference from your iBook.

[koolpenguin89]

Scott, if you go through that video frame by frame, you can see that there are tons of duplicate frames and that even though it has 24 frames each second, pulldown was not really removed. That being said, it doesn't look terrible or anything, just maybe a little jittery. Like we have always said here, the only way to truly remove pulldown is to do it before the footage is cut.

Dylan

[MrEPinky]

I use a new iMac at school for all of my capturing and editing. Using this process I've haven't had any problems using FCP. The iMac handles everything I've thrown at it.

I use FCE on my Macbook Pro. Such a downer that I can't do 24p on it. I'm so close to graduating that I've decided to hold out for the next installation of FCP rather than buying the non-upgradable student version.

I capture my footage using the standard Apple 1080i60 on my FCE when I'm away from school and then run the pulldown removal with Compressor in FCP when I'm at school. You can only edit the processed 24p footage with FCP. I've been shooting documentary stuff this semester in 24p, almost wishing I'd just shot 30p and saved myself an extra 4-5 hours while being able to edit footage at home. Expect to spend an hour in Compressor for every 60 minutes of footage.


Anyone else getting strange artifacting/smears in Scott's footage? You had me excited, but that clip looks icky on my screen.

[scotthampton]

Scott, if you go through that video frame by frame, you can see that there are tons of duplicate frames...it doesn't look terrible or anything, just maybe a little jittery....

Hmmm...back to the drawing board...

[scotthampton]

...Anyone else getting strange artifacting/smears in Scott's footage? You had me excited, but that clip looks icky on my screen.

On the one I posted or the others on Vimeo? That's funny, as I don't see it on my iMac or my MacBook, one with an Intel Core Duo processor and the other with an Intel Core2Duo. I use Safari, Firefox, and OmniWeb to preview my stuff before posting and I don't see the jitters. Once, when Vimeo started the alien skin, but I don't see it. Hope I don't have to get a Windows box to test stuff on, too...

[scotthampton]

Anyway, here's the reference point I consulted:
http://wallybarthman.files.wordpress...infceguide.pdf

Perhaps someone else with FCE4 would like to try it and see how it works?

[MrEPinky]

I'm prepping for finals this week, but if I get a bit of time I'll give it a go.

[scotthampton]

MrEPinky,
Sounds good.

I don't remember if I followed it to the letter, but I will try it again.

I really want FCS now, but with version 3 looming, it's not a good idea for the same reasons you specified.
Scott

[The Crowing]

An iMac is probably your ideal choice. A Mac Mini won't be powerful enough and you'll have to get a screen, etc, and a Mac Pro would be serious overkill (and you'd still have to get a screen). Although a Mac Mini would still be way faster than what you've got now.

i wont be able to afford an imac for another 3 weeks just about.....I just got my hv30 and all of my add ons and no way to edit in HD....its a horrible thing. anything i can do with my current setup? Here it is if you were wondering.

Model Name:iBook G4
Model Identifier:PowerBook6,5
Processor Name:PowerPC G4 (1.1)
Processor Speed:1.07 GHz
Number Of CPUs:1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.25 GB
Bus Speed:133 MHz

[iThinkergoiMac]

Huh... I used to have the exact same iBook configuration, though with less RAM. Well, my family did. Anyways, I listed a bunch of things you can do to keep your iBook running at optimal performance in post #28. Hardware-wise, you're pretty much maxed out unless you wanted to go for a bigger HDD.

Assuming you have the software, which I'm pretty sure you do, there's no reason you can't edit the HDV. It'll just take forever, but you should be able to do it.

[The Crowing]

oh yeah i already went for a bigger hard drive too. that was a big job. no fun. but i went from a 40 gig to a 120.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Nice. We did that once with our iBook because the original one failed. It is a big job, but we mostly enjoyed it. My dad and I were doing it, and at one point he was trying to figure out how to get the aluminum internal frame out. He took that corner that's really thin and started to pull up on it. I kept telling him he was pulling too hard and then it suddenly snapped off. Good times.

We also had extra screws in the computer that fell out when we opened it and tipped it up. When we went to put the computer back together, we just snapped the corner back in and it stayed nicely. What a day...

[gatti]

I've been doing that same process and it seems to work well with me. The only difference that I've done in the JES "Output" tab is change the Video output compressor to Photo-JPEG instead of Apple Intermediate Codec. I wonder which one yields better quality...

Anyway, here's the reference point I consulted:
http://wallybarthman.files.wordpress...infceguide.pdf

Perhaps someone else with FCE4 would like to try it and see how it works?

[The Crowing]

I just want to say how horrible it is to have my beautiful camera rig sitting in my room with no way to capture and edit footage. I'm starting to think i should have gotten the computer first. i wont have enough money for a new one for another two weeks. My camera will have dust on it.....

[iThinkergoiMac]

@ gatti: I have found that I have to constantly render with Photo-JPEG, but I'm hearing I won't have to with AIC. I'm home from college for the summer, so I haven't had a chance to figure that one out. We'll have to see how it works when I get a chance to shoot some video.

@TheCrowing: How come you can't just use your iBook with FCS2 on it to edit your video? The whole point that this thread started on was that you had FCE, then got FCP 6 (as part of FCS2 I assume, since I think that's the only way to get it). It'll be slow on your iBook, but it'll certainly work. Even if FCP doesn't, FCE will, and you can shoot in 60i to get some filming experience in.

You've got the tools right there, go out and have fun with them!

[gatti]

I've been doing that same process and it seems to work well with me. The only difference that I've done in the JES "Output" tab is change the Video output compressor to Photo-JPEG instead of Apple Intermediate Codec. I wonder which one yields better quality...

Here's some info I got directly from the JES developer:

"In most cases the difference is minimal, both quality wise and file size wise.
Photo-JPEG is constant quality, AIC is constant data rate. For movies with very much detail Photo-JPEG is better, but file size will be larger.
Photo-JPEG is still used a lot by the pros for archiving."

Jan E.

[The Crowing]

The problem is. I capture my footage with FCP, then i remove the pulldown with JES, then i import the pulled down footage into FCP, i then drag the clips down to the timeline, here is the part that doesnt work with me. if the clip is a minute long. it takes almost 20 minutes to render. i tried doing a process to make the clips smaller but it didnt help at all. Its too long of a process to edit. i work full time and if i get home at 5:30pm , to edit a 3 minute movie i will be up until 1 am. Which is why i have almost given up on editing untill i get an imac. unless there is a sugjestion...please????

[iThinkergoiMac]

I think if you set JES to export the video as AIC, not PhotoJPEG, and then set your sequence to use AIC as well, you shouldn't have to render.

You could always just shoot 60i for now, but that may not jive with what you're trying to do...

[The Crowing]

How do i set the sequence to AIC? and will the quality still remain?

[iThinkergoiMac]

Go to the sequence settings and change the compressor to AIC. The difference should be negligible; it's the default codec in FCP HD (4.5), so it's high quality. Seems Photo-JPEG is technically better, but I think it would be difficult to notice the difference, and you'd probably need a higher quality camera than the HV20 to have it matter.

[The Crowing]

I changed the settings and i still have to render every clip i drag to the timeline. Am i doing something wrong here?