What app are you using to transcode DSLR to ProRes or other.

Hi, wondering what you are using (app wise) to transcode or are you importing directly into fcpx.

I've been importing directly but wondering if that's not the best method. Reason I am asking is after working on projects for a week or two, I do notice the app is slowing down after adding this and that.

Trying to get a true grip on fcpx My current setup is two 4gb striped raids one with the project and raw files the other as bkup project and cache drive.

Thanks to all this year for helping me out.

FCPX can transcode to Optimized and/or Proxy files during import.
What camera are these files coming from?

dfphoto wrote: ....I've been importing directly but wondering if that's not the best method. Reason I am asking is after working on projects for a week or two, I do notice the app is slowing down after adding this and that...

Traditionally editors (or the assistant) would examine the material before import, put it in folders as a 1st-pass select, then import that. This practice came from the era when editing software either required transcoded material and/or had poor tools for organizing the imported content.

Today FCPX generally does not require transcoding before import, and the organizational tools and speed of examination within FCPX are faster than any external tool I've seen. Thus it calls for a procedural change of simply importing everything with "leave files in place" selected. Range-based tagging is far superior to putting clips in bins, and the skimmer is much faster than other tools. The library can later be consolidated to just the actually used material.

You can always transcode after import on an as-needed basis. 4K material (esp 4K multicam) might benefit from transcoding to proxy for smoother response.

I recently imported 2.2 terabytes of camera-native material FCPX, which comprised 5,667 clips, 117 hours of mixed 1080p and 4k material. This was with "leave files in place" and no transcoding. After import the Event Browser filmstrip view was a little sluggish until I scrolled to the bottom; after that it was fast. This was on a 2015 top-spec iMac 27 with 8TB Thunderbolt RAID-5.

Re FCPX slowing down, that can happen for various reasons. The most common case might be leaving background rendering on and using compute-intensive plugins. Even with background rendering off, if you apply a compute-intensive plugin like Neat Video noise reduction or Digital Anarchy Flicker Free, it might re-render the clip if you do any subsequent editing on it. In general wait until the last phase of editing to apply compute-intensive plugins.

While not normally needed, an advantage of transcoding to proxy files is effects are applied at the lower proxy resolution until the final export is performed. Thus responsiveness will be much faster during the edit phase.

As an experiment you can wait until it feels slow, then select and render (not export) the entire timeline. Then see if the same tasks seem slow.

Since FCPX keeps track of used media, you can also do a query for that and selectively transcode to proxy just those clips.

Hi Joema, thanks for the help, I was editing a corporate job last week I had 7 3 min videos from the Canon 5dmk3, 70d, and Canon XF100 MXF files.

I normally use a proxy on import and that's it, but getting towards the end of the editing process, with final sweetening, and all that stuff, plus the Neat Video v4, I saw really long export times and virtually no playback.

I am cutting on a macbook pro 2.6 with two striped raid usb 3.0 drives the striped are simply 2 2tb drives. I get about 215-235mb/s transfer with them.

I have one as the drive with the raw data and projects the other as the cache drive the mbp as the backup for the projects.

I have more than 55% free space on all the drives.

I just got the neat video (for the xf100 to match) and I suppose that's the big issue. However, using compressor, I saw more than 4 hours to export and that wasn't even finished.

In fcpx export took at least 2 hours for a 3 min. video maybe, I need to dump and reformat the drives and try again but the project library has 700gb in it maybe that's an issue as well.

Software video transcoding will lose some of the data。i use fcpx Built or Adobe Media Encoder

Ben,

I'm also working on a project with 2tb of footage from RED, Sony ar7ii, 5d, and 70d this project had a lot of issues with the debayer export the footage (red) looks very grainy vs the red cinex export of the same files. I got my butt slammed for this and now i have to redo the entire 5 day shoot. Transcode and color, he's furious that I didn't transcode, then use resolve.

dfphoto wrote: ...Neat Video v4, I saw really long export times and virtually no playback...macbook pro 2.6 with two striped raid usb 3.0 drives....I just got the neat video (for the xf100 to match) and I suppose that's the big issue. However, using compressor, I saw more than 4 hours to export and that wasn't even finished....In fcpx export took at least 2 hours for a 3 min. video maybe, I need to dump and reformat the drives and try again but the project library has 700gb in it maybe that's an issue as well.

The issue is likely Neat Video, which is extremely compute-intensive and slow to run. It is further worsened by 4K which makes it 4x slower still. On some platforms Neat Video can use the GPU -- there is a configuration setting within the Neat Video panel for this. It will tell you whether GPU acceleration is available. It is available on my 2015 MacBook Pro but it didn't make much improvement over the CPU. It is not available on my 2015 iMac 27.

Neat Video is a good product but the goal is control the lighting and ISO during shooting so you don't have to run it on everything. If used, only apply to the clip ranges where it is really needed.

It's a similar situation with Digital Anarchy's Flicker Free, which can miraculously remove flicker, such as from fluorescent lights or exposure stepping. However it is extremely slow to run, so the goal is get the video and audio right in the field and not use complex, time-intensive fixes in post: www.digitalanarchy.com/Flicker/main.html

Hi, I realize that, but I had two issues.
On my particular project, the XF100 is pretty horrible at low light.
I also had a major lighting issue, (this was an awards event like Ted talk) but the location had zero lighting for the speakers I'm talking
6400 iso at 30" f2.8.

I was able to add one little battery operated light which would have been ok but the speakers then freelanced and moved away from the podium. So they were out of the light and 2-3 stops under, so I had to gain up to max.

The next gig, I bought the HC-x1000 4k camera and didn't know the iso of that camera is iso 50 at best, so again at 800 iso 30"-f4 (on the canons) the hc-x camera was at +12 gain (this camera is 3 gain per stop or so and after testing this camera is noisy at +2 vs the 5dmk3.

The big gig I'm on the Sony AR7II is total crap in low-light I don't have any idea what people are looking at, but vs the 1dx and 5dmk3 (1dx was for stills) the ar7ii needs a lot of noise reduction also the 70d is pretty bad here. (I didn't shoot this gig).

I'm old school and try to shoot correctly but when you hire people you don't really know what they are doing and in my case they screwed me over. My fault in the end but I'm doing what I can to deliver like all pros do.

I just bought editready hope it works as advertised.

dfphoto wrote: ...The big gig I'm on the Sony AR7II is total crap in low-light I don't have any idea what people are looking at, but vs the 1dx and 5dmk3 (1dx was for stills) the ar7ii needs a lot of noise reduction also the 70d is pretty bad here...

I use both 5D3 and A7RII. The A7RII has significantly better high ISO (low light) video performance -- provided you use Super 35 mode. In regular full frame mode you are right the 5D3 is better. However the 5D3 is really good in low light, so that's a pretty high bar.

Always shoot A7RII low light video in 4k Super 35 mode -- it makes a huge difference.

Yes a dark event where you cannot control the light is almost impossible to get good results with a traditional small-sensor camcorder. The XF100 uses a 1/3-inch sensor so it's small.

We also use the new Panasonic AG-DVX200, which has a micro-4/3 sensor, much larger than a traditional camcorder but smaller than APS-C. It does much better in low light, has all the traditional pro camcorder features. I highly recommend it for event videography, documentary, ENG, etc. However even the DVX200 cannot equal the low-light performance of a 5D3 or A7RII in Super 35 mode. But it's good enough that you normally don't have a problem, except at really dark events.