render crashes FCP & other proxy problems

[ilinx]

Hi,

We've almost got a first cut of a feature length movie edited using the _M QT proxies with the following system:

Mac Pro Quad-Core Intel Xeon
2 X 2.8 GHz processors
4GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2600
3 FireWire disks connected with FireWire 800 (7200rpm)
Final Cut Pro 6.0.4
Red Code 3.1.0

Unlimited RT, orange bar...

So, everything is more or less fine, except for the following problems:

1. Playback in the sequence randomly stops, says frames are dropped, and suggests the problem is the disk speed is too slow (I assume the FireWire disks are not the ideal, but we don't have RAID disks).

2. It won't always let us play back a cross-dissolve.

3. We can't render the sequence!!! Final Cut crashes and we get a message saying the problem was probably the Red Code plugin.

4. We can't export a QT of any kind. Final Cut crashes with the same message.

Any ideas? We need to be able to output a QT to make a DVD of the cut for the director!

Thanks so much....

[Hans-Georg Daun]

I'm not sure that this is helpful, as it will take quite a while for a feature length movie, but my recently released Clipfinder application (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18371) will let you extract a list of clips from an FCP XML export, do a batch render of those clips to ProResHQ and replace the proxies in the FCP project with ProRes files. Details can be found in the Clipfinder Help.

Good luck !
Hans

[ilinx]

Well, so far I was able to export a QT by putting the whole cut into a ProRes 422 compression sequence, without changing any other settings. Is this a
"duh, of course" thing?

I'm going to experiment with the rendering, speed changes, and dissolves with this too.

[teo]

I have same problems rendering/exporting M proxies, try with H ones... for me it works. But you will need to reconnect M proxies with H proxies in your edited sequence.

[Uli Plank]

1. Playback in the sequence randomly stops, says frames are dropped, and suggests the problem is the disk speed is too slow (I assume the FireWire disks are not the ideal, but we don't have RAID disks).

2. It won't always let us play back a cross-dissolve.

3. We can't render the sequence!!! Final Cut crashes and we get a message saying the problem was probably the Red Code plugin.

4. We can't export a QT of any kind. Final Cut crashes with the same message.


1. An ordinary FW disk is a bit slow for REDCODE. If you don't convert to ProRes as a first step, your QT proxies will always reference back to the R3Ds. I'd get an e-SATA card and fast e-SATA drives, they are pretty much OK.

2. Normal, R3D realtime decodingis quite a feat.

3. Not normal! Make sure your timeline codec is set to ProRes, not R3D.

4. see above

[Ted Chu]

I had the same FCP issues recently and discovered that the camera had dropped frames while shooting (the R3D files had missing frames). We had to reshoot. Might be a workaround though.