Proxy media-when to use?

Hi everyone,

I am a tad confused on when or how to use the transcode options, Create Optimized Media and Create Proxy Media.

As I have the new rMBP with 4gig of RAM, it is underpowered, should I use Create Optimized Media and Create Proxy Media all the time?

If yes, 2nd question, will this not use up considerable hard drive space?

Justine

My computer performance is poor, (White MacBook, with nVidia 9400M video card), so is use proxy options.

When you export the project out at a higher resolution than ProRes 422 Proxy, it gets the data from where? I thought, sorry for sounding stupid, I thought that when you import material, it only imports into FCP at ProRes 422 Proxy, if this is what you set you in Preferences?
Justine

Hi Justine,

FCPX imports your footage, natively- and you can even play those clips back, in real time, un-rendered. Camera imports differ, i.e. MXF databases from P2 cards.

However, in any case, you can choose to transcode your media on import, if you so wish. Or you can do it, from the Event Browser, post Import.

This, most often, is done because you are looking to improve performance on editing/real time playback or you already know that your target export codec falls in suit. (And so far, this has been particularly important in Mavericks with FCPX 10.0.9)

When you transcode your clips, to Pro Res 422 or Pro Res Proxy you are generating seperate optimized and proxy clips that reside as *new* clips inside your event folder structure.

Often these codecs do take up more room on your hard drive than the native clip would have. Its part of it, particularly when going from a compressed database of files or codec to a 10-bit codec like Pro Res 422.

Note, that Proxy is more of a mode situation- where only clips with generated Proxies will show up when Proxy is checked in preferences. Proxies are more about representation/function than actual delivery, unless its for something like dailies.

Optimized 422 clips are both for improved performance and, are also, of delivery caliber- depending on your final codec output.

These two options are not just about improving performance for playback, but also part of an older, larger thought process of taking what you have and knowing, ahead of time, what you are exporting to- then keeping as few steps as possible between the two points, to avoid, what in the days of tape, was known more as generation loss and now is known more as transcoding.

Optimizing H.264 clips to Pro Res for Pro Res master export is fine.

Optimizing H.264 to Pro Res for H.264 export, wouldn't necessarily, be prudent.

Make sense?

I gotta be honest and hopefully not too forward- but with 4GB of RAM you are going to have to be very patient, no matter what program you are using these days.

Hope this helps-
Dusty

This is covered well in the manual, but in short:

You ingest "Original Media," whatever that happens to be. In most cases you can edit that directly.

If your system has a hard time playing the original media (in my case: too many simultaneous streams of AVCHD/H.264 - my processor/graphics card can't keep up - or GoPro H.264, which is bizarrely challenging), transcode to 'Optimised media.' This is ProRes422, which plays back very smoothy. There's only a modest overhead for grading ProRes, too.

However, ProRes422 is physically large, and hence requires (a.) lots of hard drive space, and (b.) lots of drive bandwidth. If you struggle with either of those, transcode instead to 'Proxy Media,' which is ProRes Proxy.

Proxy is a quarter the frame size of Optimised, and a quarter the size on disk (about 15Gb/hour for 1080p25 original media). It plays back very smoothly indeed, even with multiple streams, and works well for grading. It's what you'd typically use if you were attempting multicam projects on a system with limited GPU or drive bandwidth.

You can transcode at ingest time, which ingests the original media and queues the transcode process in the background. Relinking is transparent to the user.

The one big gotcha is that FCPX 10.0.9 will export whatever the current playback setting is. So if you're cutting in Proxy, you have to switch your preference to 'original or optimised media' before you export, if you want a full-resolution render.

Again, this is all in the manual - 'Transcode media files.'

To sum up, when using the 2013 rMBP with 4gig RAM, use proxy media?
Just one question remains...DO I use proxy media or optimized media for multicam?

upgrading RAM, the laptop is out of the question.

Justine

Hi Justine,

It's a guess, unique to your particular situation, of course, but- depending on what codecs you are working/starting with, I would suggest trying native first and if that doesn't work for you, performance-wise, try proxy for multi-cam. Best of luck.

Cheers,
Dusty

Hi Justine,

If getting sufficient RAM is not an option your best alternative is to convert everything to Proxies. The Proxy workflow in FCPX is unique as you can instantly switch from Proxies for editing to Original quality for fine-tuning and exporting. But IMO it is cheaper to add RAM than to spend your time waiting for Proxy conversions on every job you are doing.

The amount of RAM you need very much depends on your workflow. FCPX works perfectly with 4GB RAM, I have even tested it with SD footage on a 2008 MacPro with only the basic 2GB RAM and it ran smoothly. But the higher the resolution of your footage, the number of graphics/effects/titles you use and the amount of data (including thumbnails and waveforms) that has to be cached, the more RAM you will need to work properly. 8 to 16 GB RAM is widely accepted as the minimum you need to comfortably work with modern formats on any 64-bit NLE.

For multicam you definitely will work faster with Proxies on this system, but more important with multicam is to make sure you are using a fast external drive that can feed the different video streams to your system without creating any bottlenecks.

- Ronny

MsJustine wrote: DO I use proxy media or optimized media for multicam?

I'll typically use proxy media for multi cam regardless of the machine I'm working on because things are a lot more snappy when editing multi cam with proxy than with either original or optimised.

As soon as I'm ready to colour correct and/or export I'll switch to high quality mode which will use the original media instead of proxy OR the optimised media if I've bothered to create any.

Once the project is done I'l delete both optimised and proxy media (as well as render files) prior to archiving because they can very easily be recreated again if required.

I agree with Ronny, also for Multicam I would just go with Proxy on Laptop with your specs.

Two last notes from me here:

MsJustine can't upgrade beyond 4Gb RAM because her 13" Retina MBP isn't upgradeable. Yes, this is sucky on Apple's part. At least with the 15" systems they fit 8Gb standard, which I think is the minimum required for comfortable FCPX use. Justine's system is going to be RAM-constrained no matter what she does. One thing I would suggest: it's worth running 10.9 Mavericks for the better RAM handling alone. My 8Gb Retina is much happier than it was under Mountain Lion.

Secondly, we don't know how her media is stored, though we do know (from another thread) that she's doing lots of multicam work. Multicam eats disk bandwidth, particularly when working with Optimised (ie. full ProRes) footage.

In this situation, I think Proxy is absolutely the way to go.

The rMBP 13" doesn't have a discrete GPU which is a performance hit. The new iris graphics in the 13" is pretty decent with fcpx (my wife has one) but it's pretty sluggish on GPU intensive codecs. Proxies were a major performance boost for the doc she is working on.