Hi,

I'm preparing a project for editing in MC 6.

I have about 10 hours of AVCHD media and about 20 hours of XDCAM HD media.

I AMA-Link to the AVCHD volumes and transcode to DNxHD and I AMA-link to the XDCAM HD media and consolidate that to the media drives.

This has taken me approximately 12 hours until now and I'm only half way through and I constantly have to babysit the Avid because if i give it too much stuff to transcode in one batch it will crash.

On Monday my assistant accidentally prepared the same project for editing in Final Cut Pro 7.

It took him about 5 hours and everything was ready to go.

So my question is: What am I doing wrong? Is there any way to get the footage into the Avid in a reasonable amount of time?

Working with AMA-linking is not an option because then everything ist just too slow and very unstable.

Thanks,

André

How are you drives connected both the source media drives and the destination media drives?

Thats a lot of media to move around and a slower interface will impact times.

Also on the FCP what media has he created and is that comparable to the Avid media?

Will the FCP need to do rendering later on? Will the Avid?

And the AVid shouldn't choke or crash. We regularly leave a whole batch of stuff running, often overnight and rarely have an issue. Crashes may indicate an underlying problem that may even be slowing you down.

Andre711:

This has taken me approximately 12 hours until now and I'm only half way through and I constantly have to babysit the Avid because if i give it too much stuff to transcode in one batch it will crash.

On Monday my assistant accidentally prepared the same project for editing in Final Cut Pro 7.

Why did you insist on transcoding the AVCHD material right away?  Sounds like you should have started working and then transcoded at night.  That's is the intention of AMA as much as I understand it anyway.

So... 20 hours (XDCAM) + 10 hours (ACVHD) and it's taking you (extrapolated) 24 hours?  That really does seem excessive.  Maybe you're using slow USB drives or something to that effect?  

Granted...ingesting XDCAM can be tedius because you're loading a bunch of disks into a deck. Not sure what your bottleneck is without knowing more info.   

Both drives are on our SAN.

The Avid is connected via Gigabit-Ethernet.

I don't think this is the bottleneck because read/write speed during transcode is nowhere near the maximum speed of the connection.

FCP creates Prores media no rendering required later on.

We have big problems with large batches. Sometimes even with smaller batches of 5 to 10 files.

I can't find a pattern of when and why the Avid crashes during transcode or consolidate operations.

André

You are absolutely right tfg this is what AMA is meant for but unfortunately AMA is way to slow an sluggish to really use it for editing work.

Then there is the thing with the transcode not finishing because the AVID crashes after a while.

I don't think slow drives are the problem. All the media comes from one drive on our SAN and goest to another drive on the SAN. Connection speed is not an issue because with read/write speeds of 15 MB/sec the connection is not even at a quarter of the maximum speed.

The machine is a new iMac i7 with 16 GB of RAM.

André

Andre711:

You are absolutely right tfg this is what AMA is meant for but unfortunately AMA is way to slow an sluggish to really use it for editing work.

I'm definitely suspicious about something being wrong on your system judging by the format and specs.  The performance the stability is way off.  Let's compare your i7 iMac with my i7 laptop:

1) AMA linking XDCAM and editing should be a piece of cake, nearly the same performance as Avid MXF Media.  

2) Even AVCHD should perform 'workable" under AMA.  Each video streams takes about 20% of my cpu power.  I can handle 3 streams easy, 4 streams it starts so crack a bit.

3) a 9:53 AVCHD clips took 5:25 to convert to DNxHD.  About 60% of real-time.  Compare that with your results...

Anyway -- sorry I cannot give a real solution, but your system seems to be struggling here with something... 

I'd try moving some test AMA source files locally to the machien and then try the AMA linking. See how playback is then. Then try Transcoding again to a local drive and see how that compares to the SAN performance.

I tried various machines and mediadrives in the last couple of days.

AMA performance and transcoding speeds are best on local drives or fast attached storage.

I still can't get trough a whole batch of transcoding without errors.

Small batches do work but larger batches of more than 10 files almost never finish.

I tested this on five different machines. No success.

André

Do you have the Driver Software for the XDCam installed? As that sound more likely to be the issue.

For clarification, what actual version are you using?  MC v6.0.1.1 has a number of bug fixes, in case you're still on MC v6.0.

Yes, the latest driver software is installed.

This also happens with clips in other formats.

AVCHD or Gopro Mp4 clips.

The version number on the startup screen says 6.0.1.

I'm downloading 6.0.1.1 right now. Didn't know there was an update after 6.0.1.

Let us know what happens when you do.

As an FYI, the moderators will always try and announce what the current releases are in the sticky threads at the top of the forum list.  That's where you'll see the current versions of MC v5.0.x, v5.5.x, and v6.0.x.

Hi,

I just wanted to report back on the stability with big batch transcodes.

6.0.1.1 is much more stable than 6.0.1 and so is 6.0.3.

So thanks for the advise with the updated version.

André

Andre711:

Hi,

I just wanted to report back on the stability with big batch transcodes.

6.0.1.1 is much more stable than 6.0.1 and so is 6.0.3.

So thanks for the advise with the updated version.

André

Great glad to hear the updates have helped.

Out of interest is the SAN stroage still an issue and are you working locally or has that resolved as well?