I'm cutting a feature film at the moment. 2 Hours long. Image of the timeline below.
I've been using Avid for more than a decade on various systems and one thing has never changed - editing on long sequences is sluggish. It plays back smoothly and responsively - no problem there. But any time I make a lift, extract or trim, there's about a 3 second delay.
All media is DNxHR SQ/LB @ 2K on a RAID drive or NVMe SSD both with at least 500MB/s read and write. I've tried the PlayLength button, tweaked my media cache settings, turned off all waveforms, clip data, etc. - no improvement.
The way I usually attack it is to break it down into acts and work on each 20-30 minute sequence before recompiling back into the long cut. As you can imagine, it's a bit of a pain when I just want to make a few frame trims here and there.
Have I been doing it wrong for the past ten years? Is there something I'm missing? How do you guys do it?
My system:
Avid Media Composer 2018.12.1Windows 72x Intel Xeon E5-2630 v4 @ 2.2GHz, 64GB RAMQuadro M4000
Playlength is your friend. https://community.avid.com/forums/p/88639/503153.aspx#503153
As is working in reels.
Hi Job, thanks for the quick reply. Both I've mentioned above and doesn't solve the issue unfortunately.
To clarify, playback is smooth and I have no issues scrubbing across the timeline. It's when I have to perform edit actions that Avid crumbles.
You could try muting/disabling some of the video and audio tracks when trimming etc and see if this improves things.
Also, try switching off 'render on the fly'.
Both of these tips are an attempt to lessen the load on the CPU/memory to speed things up.
If the system won't run with a 20-30 minute sequence loaded, then something is wrong. Does it do this on all projects? With a new user?
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who only consider the price are this man's lawful prey." - John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Carl Amoscato | Freelance Film & Video Editor | London, UK
Bruno M: You could try muting/disabling some of the video and audio tracks when trimming etc and see if this improves things.
Thank you Bruno - that's an interesting idea that I've never tried. I gave it a go by disabling all tracks and indeed trims and edits are fast and snappy. Gives me an idea to try a workflow where most tracks are disabled except for 'working tracks' which I can quickly move clips into and slot back once finished. It's certainly faster than splitting into reels and recompiling.
camoscato: If the system won't run with a 20-30 minute sequence loaded, then something is wrong. Does it do this on all projects? With a new user?
System works fine with 20-30 minute sequence. The issue is with sequences longer than an hour. I'm just wondering if other editors have the same issue? Or do people rarely work on hour to 2-hour programmes?
I have a 90-minute sequence. It's a compilation of 5 short documentaries. DnxHD175x media, with 8 tracks holding a smattering of unrendered lower thirds, titles, subtitles, etc. Just did a test in MC 2019 and when making an edit where there's only media on a single track there's a 1/4 second delay. Making an edit to 8 tracks of media there's maybe a 1 second delay. Assuming that if I rendered, the delay would be less? My specs:
Z440 with Xeon E5-1660 v3 @ 3.00 GHz
32GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro K2200
Media on a 24TB RAID array.
I just cut a 90min uhd doc.
my system has 128gb of ram and had 14 cores over locked.
It was sluggish at times but probably faster than your setup.
my suggestions are. Render everything. Use less audio channels. Work in smaller sequences and only use the long one when it's time to export.
Rather than render everything I mixdown each part as completed and edit the mixdown back onto a empty top layer video track. Takes the same time as rendering all the parts in the finished section(s) When ever you need to play backs monitor the mixdown layer. (Same principal works for audio mixdowns)
I use a dedicated mixdown bin so I can delete some or all of them easily at any time. Any changes are easily covered by marking in and out around the changes making a mixdown of the in to out and edit this mix down back into the mixdown track.Given a little thought there are no changes that you make in your timeline that cannot be catered for on the mixdown track.
If storage space is not an issue make your mixdowns at final delivery resolution for very quick same as source exports. The mixdowns as the project progresses will reveal any final render issues. When the final pic lock is in place delivery the mixdown track gives me hassle free final output.
For what it is worth I use a separate local drive for my mixdown media. Over 2 decades ago thinking of mixdowns as my best friends and renders as my worst (for media management) nightmares I developed this workflow and it has never let me down. Currently working with a nearly complete almost 2 hour HD timeline.
Jack,
Your experience is not abnormal.
I currently run about 20 audio tracks and color correct all the footage on sequences of an hour show with DNxHD36 media.
I restart the Mac a few times a day to keep things snappy. Waveforms and a load of bins open, as well as a stack of undo's in Ram of the main sequence seem to not help.
Perhaps there is feature request in there that certain actions toggle the playlength?
This is such a good topic, thanks for all the tips and tales!
is there a sense that Avid Pan & Zooms, even when rendered, contribute to the kind of performance hits you are talking about? I always felt those Hi-Rez Source files might be culprits when I’ve had slowdowns.
Hi Andrew, I like your Mixdown-as-you-Go approach and the use of separate drive. Now that we have modifiable GroupClips, does it make any sense (assuming you have the time and storage) to add/sync a low Rez version to existing Hi-Rez groupclips (HD -sized Projects) and would that be a way to help out a stressed out work-in-progress timeline?
-Telegram!
Telegram!:is there a sense that Avid Pan & Zooms, even when rendered, contribute to the kind of performance hits you are talking about?
Telegram!:does it make any sense ........to existing Hi-Rez groupclips (HD -sized Projects) and would that be a way to help out a stressed out work-in-progress timeline?
Thanks for sharing your experiences everyone.
After doing audio mixdowns of the entire timeline (sent a rough cut AAF to sound post so we can work concurrently) performance is much better. So in conclusion I think this particular slowdown I'm describing is purely a computational limitation that has only to do with how many clips you have on your timeline, regardless of resolution/effects/etc. It's just the way Avid handles trims and edits - I guess it has to recalculate something for every clip in the timeline.
I wish Avid would look at handling this more efficiently in the future, but for now I believe the best and simplest workflow is to split into reels.
What really taxes a system is the number of individual pipes or connection requests going back to your storage. The more clips, the higher the overhead and then more slow down. Mixing down and reducng these will help greatly. You will notice that you can play a high bit rate multi-channel sequence which has been mixed down, but it will struggle with lots of individual clips.
© Copyright 2011 Avid Technology, Inc. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Site Map | Find a Reseller