MOTUnation.com

hello all (and especially music for film people),

i did some searches in this forum and couldn't find any answers., so here goes my question . . .

i'm about to score my first feature length film, and i'm wondering which video option will give me the best CPU performance:

(A) a quicktime window within DP, or

(B) using a firewire video converter (such as the canopus or the miglia) to export the quicktime movies to an external video monitor?

i already have an extra tv i can use, and obviously the external firewire option will free up desktop space on my mac. i'm just wondering which is the better way to go performance-wise. or is there even a difference? performance is more important to me than the $275 for the firewire video interface.

thanks!
matt

p.s. if firewire is the way to go, what's the best one out there, price-wise and feature-wise?

p.p.s. i have a dual-2.5 G5 with 1.5 gigs of RAM - running DP 4.52 - i haven't updated to 4.6 yet due to the cautionary tales i've read so far regarding crashes.

Hi,

I've tried both ways and have settled on the quicktime movie window within D.P. on a dual screen monitor set up. I can't say that I noticed any difference in performance one way or the other. I'd be interested to see if others have noticed any difference in performance. I use an old Director's Cut for my firewire video converter.

b.

I have not ever used an external black box for Video, but I will say this:

Your buffer settingin DP, as well as how many unfrozen plugins, track count, and everything that could possibly tax your CPU will affect the video by dropping frames. With an external blackbox to handle video, whatever that translates to be, as long as it isn;t taxing your CPU, then you will most likely get better results.
Here's a great trick given to me by a Quicktime GURU:

Save your CPU by making your .dv files SINGLE FRAME (within the quicktime app) I found that to make a HUGE difference.

Hope that helps

hey treatment,

I had a look through the export options in QT pro and couldn't see what you were referring to as 'single frame'. Sounds like a big help on CPU can you be a little more specific on how to adjust this?

Thanks

Andrew

Quicktime: Open Movie
"Get Movie Properties"
Select "Video Track" and "Quality"
"Single Field"

Its that simple. Then, you can save as a .mov and make an alias to the original DV file, or you can re-export it to DV depending on your needs. Hope that helps.
Treatment

Excellent! thanks

When using firewire out via a converter box, your Mac has to spit out roughly 4 MB per second (the DV rate). The firewire converter is really just that -- a converter. It isn't doing any processing work other than just converting the video so you can see it on a regular NTSC TV. If get a dedicated PCI card (Aurora Igniter, etc) then you will be taking a load off of the computer and putting it onto the card, but they do cost money and take up a slot.

I used a converter box (ADVC 100) for quite a while until it started to choke my G5; with all the softsynths and samplers streaming, the video was the proverbial last straw. I've found that by exporting the Quicktime movie via Quicktime Pro using the h.264 codec or mp4 codec, you end up with a file size that's a very small fraction of your originally captured movie (and in super quality too, virtually no different from the original). And playing this back with DP running everything including the kitchen sink taxes the CPU very little. I ran this test on a file that had a lot of trouble playing via firewire out, but ran smoothly using the method described above. If you don't have a 30" Cinema display and you don't want to lose screen real estate, you can hook up a second Mac monitor (cheap LCD, whatever) and dedicate it for video playback. The added advantage to this is that you'll also be able to play any type of movie that Quicktime supports. If someone gives you a PAL film, a 24 FPS clip, an MPEG file, a DVD, etc., you can play them all. With firewire out, on the other hand, you can ONLY play DV format video.

We did a feaure length film with this system.
If you have a minidv camera you can use "Echofire software -$100" out to the camera (via firewire) then out of the camera into your tv. It almost totally frees up the cpu.
It's worth buying a minidvcam cos nowadays they are so cheap.
btw that setup is very reliable (for the money)

something to keep in mind performance-wise too is playing the video back from a different drive than your audio and your VI's

i've found that the mp4 or h.264 [or other h.XXX codecs] made from a uncompressed quicktime the way to go. you get pretty good video, and super small file size, so you'll probably never choke on it.. [400 x 300 is what i prefer] though i guess you could keep it at 720 x 486.. maybe run it off another FW drive, and just hook up another 15" lcd to look at it.. and yes, single field, since computer screens don't show dual fields [your just wasting bandwith trying, and actually getting something that looks crappier]
fields are only for TV sets.

oh, and ram ram ram ram.
1.5 seems like a minium you'd want.. imo once you start putting video in the equation.. you can't have enough ram. though you never can to start.

Freddy Bloggs wrote:We did a feaure length film with this system.
If you have a minidv camera you can use "Echofire software -$100" out to the camera (via firewire) then out of the camera into your tv. It almost totally frees up the cpu.
It's worth buying a minidvcam cos nowadays they are so cheap.
btw that setup is very reliable (for the money)

I was just about ready to spring for a Canopus ADVC110 conversion box which is around $240 when I thought I'd reconsider the camera pass-through route. I'm kindo of in a hurry and don't have a lot of money but it might be worth it to spend double or 2 1/2 times the price of the Canopus if I can end up with a camera as well as being able to get video/TV into my Mac. I wonder how much more I would have to pay to make sure I get a camera with the video pass-through. Anyone know of any sites that adress the video pass-through criterion? The thing that worries me is there could be so many little gotchyas like the resolution or the camera automatically shutting off after 10 minutes. There is a lot to research and I'm hoping someone has already done that. I need to transfer video into my computer so I can make some demos soon. I don't know if I have time to research a lot of cameras since I'll probably have to buy a used one. I'm hoping someone will say just get the Canopus ADVC 100 on Ebay and I'll have no problems. TIA

canopus method works great. that's what i use all the time, i except for i use it on a separate mac running virtual vtr (though i can't think of a reason why you couldn't just buy another license for DP and use it on another mac, if you've one floating around, instead of buying virtual vtr??)