FCP MINI MAC RENDER FARM HELP/ADVICE

Question

A little help from someone who may know - have been getting advice from a myraid of people here in L.A. - even people in the Apple store - and living here in L.A. it seems many answer without really knowing - and - I have searched a bit here on the forums - as well as the web - and am getting very conflicting reports...
We are looking to increase renter times while editing in FCP HD - using plugins such as twixter and such - and - the render times are killing us - even cutting the time from 2 hours down to 1 and half hours would help - we are under a time crunch as our movie is due finished by the 15th of Jan - and - we have to use these effects - so - anyway - we were told that a cheap way of doing this was to buy some mini macs and farm them into the G5 and it would help.
Yet - I see where Patrick has posted a time ago that this would not work as the FCP will not allow.
Before we drop 2 grand on the mini's - anyone have any info that would help guide us.
The people at the Apple store seem to feel it would be no problem at all... but we are nervous.
Thank you for any help or links that could help us - and - or - guide us in how to set this up.
Thank you - Ward.
Dual 2.7 ghz Power PC G5   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   8 GB DDR SDRAM

Answer 1

Yeah, that workflow isn't so great if you have to figure a cut out in a VFX app, then throw it back into your editing system, only to discover it doesn't really work. Backwards and forwards between apps...ugh. Editing is about the discovery process, and stepping out to other apps takes you away, not only from your dailies, but from the context. If you can pull this off in FCP, you'll be the better for it.
One question - are you also applying effects other than just Twixtor to these clips? If so, once you have them set as you like them, turn them off until you get the Twixtor effect right - then turn 'em back on again for a final render.
Another question - what are your media and render settings? What rez are we talking about here? Have you set Render rez to Precision YUV?
Yes, the mini will help, there's no denying, but it is a slower system, with a slower system drive, a slower memory bus, and you're gonna have to whack some more RAM in there - at least a Gig anyway. That's $599+$122. Plus the FCP licence (uhhhh....$1299) and a Twixtor render licence ($65 or $119 depending on Regular or Pro version). So it's over two grand already, and you don't have a monitor as well as that it's really not going to be an amazing performer. If you're gonna spend money, get some better hardware - maybe an iMac?
I think you should divide and conquer - move your non-FX 'story' editorial only onto the slowest system, and keep cutting - presumably you still have those battles too, as you're a month out on the movie. Assign someone else to the FX work on the G5. Spend all day setting up sequences, doing the best you can to guess that it's right - but without rendering. Render like crazed weasels overnight. Check the renders and make your best estimates at fixes fix in the morning - but do not render again. Put those sequences aside until later, and move on to new sequences, set the FX up, and again at night leave the beasts to render. Within a day or two you'll start honing in on the FX, then start locking them one by one. Pass back fully rendered clips to the story editing system, and bingo.
One final thought - but it's total shot in the dark. I'm guessing that if you had extremely low rez material, the effect would render even faster. Perhaps if you re-encoded some of your relevant dailes but at a MUCH lower rez, then worked out the Twixtor effect on that material, it would render faster? I don't know the answer as I've never done this on FCP, but on an Inferno or other VFX app, this is a very common way to massively speed up your workflow. When you have the effect right, you just copy the filter and apply it to the full-rez sequence. Might be worth testing to see if that helps?